The Four Questions with Laurie Henzel, Bust
Laurie Henzel, Co-Publisher/Creative Director of New York-based Bust magazine, met Debbie Stoller, Co-Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, in 1993. They had worked together at the Nickelodeon cable network and started up a Xeroxed and stapled zine, which they christened Bust. Since then, the Bust Inc.-published bimonthly has developed into a glossy women's lifestyle magazine with a readership of 300,000.
Henzel, who recently joined the IMAG Advisory Board, describes Bust as "a brand for hip young women with feminist ideals, who are tired of the typical women's magazines that only cover fashion/beauty and the latest celebrity sightings."
Targeting "cutting-edge women" ages 18-34, Bust covers pop culture, crafting, fashion, sex and does interviews with celebrities like actresses Chloe Sevigny (on the June/July cover) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (from the film The Science of Sleep, on the April/May cover). The magazine, whose tagline is, "For women with something to get off their chests," is "a cheeky celebration of all things female," as Henzel puts it. Its website (www.bust.com), which launched in 1994, now averages 1.9 million page views monthly.
Here, Henzel shares her thoughts on the magazine’s name, user-generated content, their Boob-tique, and the “n-word.”
Q. How did you arrive at Bust as the magazine's name? Was there any internal dissension? And were there other suggestions in the running?
A. Debbie Stoller wanted a name that was provocative, funny and also sexy. Bust can mean a lot of things—women have busts, of course, but “bust” can also sound quite aggressive, and here at the magazine we’re always Bust-ing stereotypes about women. At the time, in 1993, we took a cue from men's magazines like Details, or Esquire, that offered readers a wide variety of topics, not just fashion/beauty articles. We never had any other runner-up names—although we thought if we ever started a men’s magazine, we could call it Nuts!
Q. To date, which magazine article has sparked the most reader feedback and excitement? How about on your website?
A. We ran an article about hipster whiney boys called "What up, Wimpster?" that our readers loved. They all said they knew or had dated guys like the character in the article. We don't put our content online—except our table of contents. But we have so much user-created content on our website. Particular favorites are the Bust Lounge, which is our bulletin board, and The Girl Wide Web, which is our library of chick-centric links, that’s created by users. We have over 10,000 links in there.
Q. Lots of magazines have gone into spinoffs of various kinds. Do you have any interest in developing programming for, say, Oxygen or Lifetime? Or would you rather develop more books and other merchandise?
A. We have been approached by a few TV people to develop a show and we always think of fun ideas. But, frankly, we are a bit understaffed to dedicate the time to develop something thoroughly. Our master plan has always been to reach as large an audience as possible across multiple platforms. We are lucky to have a very strong community that we built over the years on bust.com. We also have a few Bust-branded items for sale in our online store, The Boobtique—and we'd love to have a brick-and-mortar store in New York City or L.A. someday.
Q. What do you think of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons' proposal that rap artists stop using "ho," "bitch" and "the n-word" in their songs in the aftermath of the Don Imus firing?
A. It will never work. And we prefer the strategy of “reclaiming” words and changing their meanings, rather than prohibiting people from using them. The fact that advertisers are not interested in supporting a radio talk show with an elderly hate-monger is a good sign, but prohibiting the use of certain words is a strategy that is unworkable.
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