Freefeeder at 25
looking back at a zine of the late 1990s
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Today was the first FRONT SEAT OFFICE HOUR. Success! It was a lovely, intimate space and we did some talking and co-working. I’ll be announcing the next one soon—it’ll be in late July. Paid subscribers are welcome to come sit in the Front Seat!
This week I took my 12-year-old to Skylight Books. In their Arts Annex they have zines for sale. My kid asked, Are those zines? stumbling a bit over the pronunciation, as though ‘zines’ rhymed with ‘lines.’ Yes, I said as I touched a few and rotated the turnstile.
Freefeeder was my third zine—the first made in second grade (title unknown), the second made in high school—Sighs From the Deep Sea. Freefeeder would not have existed without the influence of nomy lamm, who I knew from Olympia, Washington and through her own zine i’m so fucking beautiful.
To look at Freefeeder now, I feel a little tender about who I was in 1998, age 25, when I made the zine. I wrote so matter-of-factly, in some cases glossing over nuance in my narrative in favor of getting to the point. I have to release any judgments I have about the way I expressed myself, but honestly, I have very few judgments. I’m glad 25-year-old me was engaging with body image in the way she was. At 50, I have plenty of other body image issues that the 25-year-old me would never have imagined, but she set the stage for how I can cope with all the new and different body issues (aghhh!) as I’ve aged.
Freefeeder also connected me with numerous people, in the ways zines did when the internet was still pretty new. I remember locating a website or two that helped me figure out distribution. I also traded my zine with folks for copies of their own zines, all via snail mail.
The wildest part of Freefeeder’s existence has been its reach. At the moment, Worldcat lists copies of Freefeeder being held at the Seattle Public Library, Michigan State University Libraries, Bowling Green State University, SUNY at Buffalo, and Yale University Library. Freefeeder is also held at the Ruel Gaviola Zine Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Of these places, I remember one, Bowling Green State University, snail-mailing me a request to purchase a copy for their collection.
Freefeeder is about body image, weight, family, and breaking cycles. Twenty-five years later, I still think it contains important messages. Enjoy this analog relic, best viewed on your phone. As always, thanks for reading.
