Michael Lucid’s documentary “Dirty Girls,” shot in 1996 and published on YouTube in 2013, depicts a group of American punk teens breaking gender norms within the walls of their high school.

Watching in 2024, it is clear that the dirty girls were ahead of their time. They speak of self expression and challenge ideas of femininity. Many of the feminist ideas crucial to the dirty girls' words, writing, and identity are now accepted and understood by mainstream culture, especially within Gen Z. 

The documentary showcases a small, black and white, photocopied pamphlet entitled Sour Grrl. The magazine – or zine – passes through groups of Calvin Klein t-shirts and denim jackets. Although Sour Grrl contains mature and progressive ideas on consent and the pressures of the patriarchy, the general student body is seen ogling at the zine with a disgusted air. The booklet contains phrases like “I have a right to be mad. I have a right to be sad. I have a right to be disgusted.”

The documentary depicts the zine as a mode of creativity for avant garde ideas, spreading from person to person, hand to hand and eliciting varying reactions. For many students in the documentary, Sour Grrl is shocking: a physical manifestation of new ideas. This is what makes the zine, as a creative outlet, so special.

A zine is a noncommercial publication that often tackles a specified or niche subject matter. They have been historically used to fight oppression and raise awareness for the struggles facing marginalized communities. Due to their independent, nonprofit nature, zines have remained ahead of the curve in circulating ideas that were considered too provocative for mainstream media.

Sour Grrl was a part of the girl zine movement of the 1990s, ushered in by the larger punk Riot Grrl movement. Riot Grrls pushed back against the misogyny within the punk scene and used zine creation as a means to raise awareness for issues facing women in the community; issues like sexual assault, and consent. 

“Because doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives,” reads The Riot Grrl Manifesto in Bikini Kill Zine 2.

The Riot Grrl movement was largely white but long before it, Black feminists used zines and periodicals as a way to speak out against oppression, as Halima Jabril discusses in her Bad Form article. Jabril states that while white feminist thinkers like Gloria Steinem were published in TIME Magazine, the women at the front of the Black Liberation movement often operated through independent  press. 

In the ’90s, zines were solidified as a way for independent creators to challenge forms of oppression, and speak on subjects outside the mainstream media. It just so happened that Americans experienced the rise of the internet at the same time. 

Austin zine enthusiast and founder of the Sherwood Forest Zine Library Michelle Milette describes zine creation as “complete simplicity … total freedom to write about whatever you want.” It does not abide by the rules of a government entity or publishing house. It is mostly, independent. 

Milette remembers being exposed to fresh ideas through zines distributed at punk shows and record shops in Boston, where she lived as a young adult.

Milette said zines of the early 2000s discussed otherwise “taboo” topics, like consent, menstration, sex, and suicide. She said zines spurred important conversations — “it wasn’t pretty, but it was definitely powerful,” she remarks.

At the turn of the century, zines existed in stark physical contrast to newer forms of self expression, like blogging, Milette remarks. Where blogs and social media posts are often bogged down by bots, trolls and comment-section-madness, the zine exists as a vestige of physical media. It is a way to express ideas — however “absurd” — and release them into the wild without the immediate feedback-loop of internet posting.

Milette argues that in many ways, the internet actually “helped maintain the zine.” So much of the internet has become monetized, making it hard to find “authentic material,” Milette said. On the contrary, a zine exists as the most authentic of material, because it typically comes straight from the source (the author), and does not require much, if any, financial backing. 

Anyone can take a sheet of printer paper, write on it, cut it up, and staple it back together. Voila — they have a zine, ready to be copied and redistributed. Those who are tired of the phone screen, turn to the zine. 

To say many people find themselves disillusioned with social media feels like a drastic understatement. In reality, it has warped the way most young people view reality — how they interact with each other and the world around them. So, something as simplistic as a zine, a real testament to the capacity of physical media, is refreshing. 

Although the zine is a physical piece of information in a digital world, social media and the internet have made zine distribution and creation more accessible to the general public. What used to be mostly reserved for punk and political scenes, is now reaching larger audiences. Marginalized subcultures are the reason zines exist, Milette said, and with the internet, the information circulated by and around these cultures are reaching more people. Milette cites social media sites like Tumblr as modes for the larger circulation of zines and zine culture. 

Now, creators are making zines at a rapid rate for almost any reason: to share creative writing, to publish research in an accessible forum, to document their favorite movies, or bird noises.

Queer creators use zines to discuss their own sexuality. Milette notes that the subsect of Queer zines is one of the largest in her library. Activists continue to use zines to discuss racism, sexism, and capitalist structures. In the age of the “infographic” (a social media post tackling a certain social issue, typically sparse and fleeting) a zine exists as a piece of media that requires research. It can not be scrolled past or clicked out of. 

It is no secret that print is, in many ways, dying. The number of journalists at U.S. newspapers has dropped 39% since 1989, according to The Brookings Institution. 

Gen Z has a growing distrust of mainstream media, and for legitimate reasons, such as capitalistic ties and misreporting of global issues to favor western powers. Jabril equates Generation Z to “Generation Zine:” it feels fitting that young people have such reverence for the zine as a creative forum. It operates outside of the power structures they have become so distrustful of. 

The zine remains, and will remain, as long as people with provocative, political, or challenging ideas have a desire to share them. In an increasingly commercial world, the zine stands as a remnant of true creativity, the kind which comes directly from the mind to the page, to the public’s two hands.