Shocking Pink

Title: Shocking Pink	Dates: 1980-2; 1987-92
Periodicity: irregular	Price: 20p (issue 2) 60p (c. 1987)
Circulation: –	Place of Publication: London

Description

A young feminists’ magazine which posed itself as a direct challenge to commercial teenage girls’ magazines such as Jackie. Inspired by a workshop held at the Young Women’s Conference in 1979, and established with support from Spare Rib, Shocking Pink was collectively produced by a group of young women aged between 16-20 from, as the editorial to the third issue puts it,

different race and class backgrounds. None of us are members of established political parties. Some of us are lesbians, some are heterosexual (straight) and some of us are questioning our sexuality.
SP3

Shocking Pink was closely connected to its more serious older sisters, as well as often critical of ‘second-wave’ values, but in its focus on a new and younger generation, it anticipated the ‘Riot Grrrl’ zines of the 90s. Bringing together a uniquely ‘punk’ aesthetic and an irreverent, playful style, Shocking Pink published 15 issues over 9 years, but with a break in publishing between 1982 and 1987. Its later collective members describe it as having a ‘kind of no-editing policy’ (see ‘an interview with Katy Watson).

You can learn more about Shocking Pink by listening to our podcast, ‘For Girls, By Girls’ featuring Sally Orson-Jones of the first collective in conversation with Ione Gamble of Polyester Zine.

Sally Orson-Jones from Shocking Pink talking with Mel at our first Activist Legacies Roundtable at the LSE in September 2022

Shocking Pink‘s Mission Statement

‘Shocking Pink is a magazine produced by a group of young women who got together over the last year. We all have one thing in common; we are enthusiastic and we know there is an immediate need for an alternative for us and other young women to read. We feel that magazines like “Jackie” “Oh Boy” “Blue Jeans” etc don’t give a realistic impression of our lives.’

_{Shocking Pink 1}

‘In case you don’t know yet, Shocking Pink is a magazine for & by young women dedicated to the overthrow of society as we know it, since we’ve decided it’s not good enough.’
Shocking Pink 10

A Part of a Leeds Postcards deign which was re-used in an issue of Shocking Pink — _{A section of a Leeds Postcard image reused by Shocking Pink on one of their letters pages}

Key Campaigns

Abortion
Sexuality
Periods
Violence against women
Racism
Women’s rights
Nuclear power and weapons
Education and work

Magazine Aesthetic

Shocking Pink has a striking punk aesthetic that borrows from punk magazines of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Printed in black and white (with one or two colour covers, often pink) on cheap paper, Shocking Pink was a low budget magazine. Covers were often collaged, and typed text was punctuated by hand-drawn cartoons and handwritten text, with some cut outs from commercial newspaper and magazines. Topics ranged from the highly political (‘Marching Against the National Front’, issue 1) to the lighthearted (101 ways to subvert femininity: NO ONE: tampon earrings, issue 8) to the deliberately transgressive (see an affirmative article on masturbation, issue 2). Frequent parodies and lampoons of romantic ‘photostories’ (common to mainstream girls’ magazines), dating advice and fashion articles etc. Confrontational, joyous and irreverent in politics and style.

Historical Contexts

Shocking Pink emerged out of the harsh economic recession and high youth unemployment of late 1970s and early 1980s Britain. Its energy and brio, especially in its later issues, contrasts with what is generally characterised as the dispersal of feminist organising by the end of the 1980s. It was distributed at political demonstrations such as the anti-poll tax protest of March 1990, which led to rioting in Trafalgar Square (and in some accounts the eventual downfall of Thatcher).

Editors

A number of different collectives known as I, II and III.

Collective I included:

Sally Orson-Jones
Miranda
Lisa Bahaire

Collective II included:

Louise Carolin
Rebecca Oliver
Angie Brew
Jo Brew

Collective III included:

Katy Watson
Vanida
Louise

Printers, typesetters, publishers and distributors

Printed at East End Offset; typeset at Leveller Graphics; distributed by Central Books.

Eventually produced out of an office based at the anarchist squat centre of 121 Railton Rd, Brixton.

Former collective member Katy Watson remembers the process of putting together an issue of Shocking Pink:

I learnt how to use the typesetting machine, it was a beautiful old machine, very difficult to use and user-unfriendly compared to the DTP that was going to come in a couple of years later but the results were really beautiful. We’d come up with lovely long columns of beautiful quality typeset articles – galleys – ready to stick down in our mad collagey style that we had at Shocking Pink. Then we’d all spend a whole weekend spending 16 hours a day sticking it all together, doing lots of art work round the articles.

^{from ‘an interview with Katy Watson‘}

Watson also remembers the process of distribution:

After a new issue came out we’d go round selling it, even selling outside Brixton tube station just like the SWP would with their paper, or else we’d go the easy route and go to lesbian pubs and sell it there because it was easy-peasy selling it as a dyke thing, We’d go on demos with it and flog it. It was such a sort of positive publication it was very easy to promote it, you didn’t feel like you were forcing anything difficult or worthy on people that they are less keen on sometimes.

^{from ‘an interview with Katy Watson‘}

Business model

Relied on sales, donations, small grants, fundraising events and gigs and classified advertisements. Its launch edition cost £800 to produce.

Connections to other feminist magazines

Supported by Spare Rib in its early stages; frequently ran adverts for other magazines, such as Outwrite; interviewed Red Rag in issue 6; the money left at the end of the magazine’s run went on to fund two new feminist magazines, Bad Attitude and Subversive Sister. Bad Attitude styled itself as ‘Born from the ashes of Shocking Pink’.