My First Zine: Take a Look at the Invisible Girl
The Zine-O-Sphere #004: My first zine and reflections on being nineteen
In the Fall of 2017, I was nineteen-years-old, single, and a virgin.
Now, I wasn’t someone who held onto virginity for religious reasons or because I just hadn’t had the chance yet. I’d had plenty of chances. Well, okay, at that point, I’d had maybe one or two real chances and squandered them out of fear, awkwardness, and immaturity.
When I was in the thick of it, I thought it was mostly involuntary. I liked people. I made the effort to date. I used the apps. I talked to older, attractive men all the time, even as a high schooler. They just didn’t want to date (see here: fuck) me.
It was actually kind of a funny personality quirk of mine. For those of you poor, poor souls who knew me between the years of 2016-2019, you likely heard me rant and rave about my (perceived) inability to get laid. The real truth of the matter was: I was fucking terrified. I was a virgin because I was a stunted, scaredy-cat bitch.
I was intimidated by all the people I assumed lost their virginity in high school or in their freshman dorm-room or in a bathroom of some sorry music major’s party. I was disgusted by men who thought asking if I was “shaved down there” was a great first pick-up line (a real thing a real guy asked me in the annals of Tinder). I was jealous of all my friends who’d seemingly “gotten it over with” when they were sixteen, while I watched bootlegs of Spring Awakening and Next To Normal at 2AM while fantasizing about living in New York City amongst Broadway’s best and brightest.
The truth? I was so scared of the very idea of physical intimacy that I avoided it like the plague. So much so, that people started avoiding me. If I so much as told someone I was a twenty-year-old virgin, they would cut off the romantic interaction at the knees. In their defense, many of them provided a genuinely well-intentioned rationale for their rejection:
“You should have sex for the first time with someone you really like/love.”
I mean, duh. But to say that to a young, rejected, and completely irrational individual such as myself, who derived all of her self-worth from the opinions of the men around her? It was no better than a slap to the face. It wasn’t, but it sure felt like it at the time.
This is all to give you some understanding of the lived experience of nineteen-year-old me: young, outgoing, and intelligent, yes, but still desperate for any sort of male validation, no matter the source.
I was also one of the very fortunate undergraduates to be part of what we in academia call a “living-learning community.” That is really just a fancy phrase for “You get to live, work, and study with people like you* in an intellectually-stimulating environment.”
(*the punks, the weirdos, and the gays.)
As part of that program, I took a host of classes on niche humanities topics—Global Cult Cinema, Shakespeare & Kurosawa, Medieval Women…Basically, I took any class you would hear about in a right-wing podcast episode bemoaning the danger of a “radical” liberal arts education. Despite what Republicans might want you to think, these sorts of classes were a lifeline in a era of debilitating depression, unending anxiety, and a general lack of perspective or real world experience. The readings, music, and projects from that program seriously changed my life.
It was there, in that too-hot, too-cramped classroom, I found zines.
There was a little inside joke that flitted through the hallways of my dorm throughout my freshman year of college.
Once every four years or so, everyone’s favorite professor taught a coveted class in women’s media—music, literature, film, and zines. My advisor cheekily called the class “Dirty Books,” a reference to the sort of intense reading material the course covered in great detail. The idea of reading women’s erotica in a classroom full of other nineteen-year-olds elicited an awkwardly breathy laugh from the top of my throat.
I could see it so clearly—the image of twenty-to-twenty-five college kids discussing mutual masturbation and bondage at the seminar table, while I watched on in silent, red-faced embarrassment. I had nothing to add to a conversation about sex, after all.
Despite the rumors, Sense & Sensuality was actually a crash course in women’s lived experience and material culture. We read countless zines, personal essays, and novels, all written by women and/or non-binary writers, movers, and shakers.
A typical day in that seminar went like this:
First, we received an introduction to a new femme-identified or AFAB musical artist. We heard one of their songs and watched a music video or two, followed by a mini discussion about the artist and their work. (This is where my love of punk music was born.)
Then, we discussed the previous week or night’s readings, including works from Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Rita Mae Brown, and Toni Morrison. We all offered up some basic, undergraduate-level understanding of the reading and how we felt about it.
Other times, we watched a film or short video about course topics—the history of Riot Grrrl, alternative press, etc.
A witty snap I sent to all my friends just before Sense & Sensuality began
Sense and Sensuality was equal parts revelatory and stinging. I found the words of so many incredible people I now hold up as purveyors of truly transformative movements—Riot Grrrl, Intersectional Feminism, Trans Rights, 80s hip-hop and DJ culture, and so many more.
At the time, I was very much interested in proving my worth, maturity, and academic prowess to my peers and the powers that be. So, I registered for the class and sought to intellectualize where I could not empathize. I could listen to cool music, read subversive books, and do it all with an all-knowing smirk on my face, right?
Truthfully, I was pathologically insecure. Instead of a careless smirk, I always presented with wide eyes and a deep-set frown. I felt my inexperience was painfully obvious to everyone. It seemed to reverberate through everything, including my first zine. I wrote with the voice of a crusader, but the words rang hollow. I was mostly play-acting at the unapologetic vibrato of zinesters like Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail, rather than really getting at the truth of anything.
I struggled against my nature at every turn and did not always succeed. I was thrown out of my comfort zone. I grasped stupidly at ideas and thoughts I’d only slightly begun to understand. I cried so many times that semester, wishing I could just be “normal,” whatever that meant.
I was also nineteen. With that age, came the endless obsessions. I was so convinced of my own narrative. I thought no one would ever want me. I thought I’d be a virgin forever. I thought I was broken beyond repair, and the only way I knew how to deal with any of that was to write what felt safe.
I felt remarkably unremarkable—utterly invisible.
The Invisible Girl zine
For centuries, minorities of every race, gender, class, and religion have been invisible to the world. Only the “white man” is immune to this systemic erasure. I want to explore what the “invisibles” have to offer. I want to find the voices of those who were left behind and let them speak—not through me, not for me, but with me. I want them to have a voice becuase I do not have a voice. Like those who were erased, I took feel invisible. I have a voice, but they hear not. I want to show myself, but they see not. I want to climb mountains and shout so loud that every living thing on the planet hears my song, but they do not.
I do not. I will not. I fade into the background. I disappear. I am no one. I am everyone. I have no name but the invisible girl.
-an excerpt from The Invisible Girl Manifesto
As I look back on this zine, I see a young woman in crisis. I see unfiltered vulnerability. I see a child begging to be taken seriously. I see so many conflicting viewpoints I no longer recognize. I see brutal honesty wrapped up in a lie.
I also see a clearly intelligent, interesting, and worthwhile person who was too hard on herself. I see the origins of my DIY ethos and artistic practice. I see the messy rebel locked inside the perfectionist people pleaser, intent on pushing her way to the surface by any means necessary.
While I no longer directly identify with most of this zine, I’m immensely proud of it. The threads of my life are so delicately sewn into its tactile, sun-bleached pages. It’s more than a time capsule. It’s an origin story. It’s a melody that still plays any time inspiration strikes again.
This is precisely what I love most about zines. I made this at a time in my life when I felt deeply unfulfilled. Creatively, I was adrift. Still, the raw expression of an artist is unmistakable, however gawky or inelegant.
That class gave me everything—music, zines, a place to go to whenever I felt the walls caving in all around me. Sense and Sensuality is why I work in a zine library and write a zine newsletter. It’s why I’m here, right now. Zines gave me a voice. My nineteen-year-old thoughts, feelings, and fears scream at me every time I pick this zine up.
“I’m here! Listen to me. Take a look.”
Upcoming Zine Workshops, Events, and Other Stuff
8-Ball, one of my favorite zine libraries and community spaces in NYC, is holding a fundraiser. Help them keep DIY culture alive for another twelve years! They need to raise $20,000 ASAP. Learn more and donate here.
Index Space is hosting a 6-8 week zine intensive this Spring! If you’re in NYC, you can find the registration link here.
Wasted Ink Distro is hosting a free virtual event on Zoom! It’s called “Voices of Dissent.” Join Wasted Ink to learn how to layout an 8-page zine and where to put it for free anti-copyright distribution. Register/Pay What You Can here.
‘Til Next Time!
Hi all! Thank you for reading this deeply personal issue of The Zine-O-Sphere. It’s an essential part of my zine story, so I wanted to highlight it before we get any deeper into the weeds. I will give a little bit of my zine librarian background in a future issue as well.
Admittedly, the last few weeks of consistent output have taken a toll on me. I have plans for many a future issue, but I need some time to re-focus and get some writing done. Rest assured, I will return to this newsletter very soon :)
Happy Zine Making!
The Zine-O-Sphere is your hub for all things zines, including books, libraries, digital collections, festivals, distros, workshops, and of course, individual zinesters and their incredible work. My hope is that by sharing these resources more widely, more folks will find their way to the wonderful world of zines.
this was such a lovely read. i have a complicated relationship with intimacy and such, so this was heavily relatable in some aspects. turning to art for vulnerability and finding yourself is so!! good!! and exactly what i did lol