Do you love camel toes? Do you love crying over your ex? Do you love crying over your ex while you have a camel toe? Then you might be someone I’d like to be friends with and also, this is probably your luckiest day ever.

Two new zines need your submissions! They are both fantastic and original and fun and creative and I can’t wait to see them when they come out. In order for that to happen, they need your fantastic, original, fun and creative submissions! These zines aren’t affiliated with Autostraddle — we just thought they were awesome.

Camel Toe: The Zine

Abigail Young’s Camel Toe: The Zine is honestly a pretty hilarious idea. On the surface, it’s about camel toes — you know… those camel toes — but really, it’s about something deeper and more important than snickering and staring at women’s labia folds. It’s about body love.

Abigail Young — Photo by Antje Lincke

The idea for the zine came to Abigail’s personal experience with CT. She told Autostraddle,

…latent and blatant messages in our world shout, “Harness your breasts, ladies, your bouncing boobies and nipples are grossing us out! Don’t wear moisture-wicking shorts on that 8-mile run, woman, I can see your crotch crease and it makes me want to VOMIT! Also cover up your cellulite, you monster.”

 As a yoga instructor and a marathon runner, Abigail’s experience with the camel toe distracts her from what she loves. She doesn’t understand why we should spend a ton of money on expensive work out clothes just to “prevent such camel-y calamity” because we’re embarrassed about our bodies. Isn’t that what this is all about?

Young went on to comment on how our society already treats our bodies as unnatural mistakes that we need to correct with merchandise and surgery in order to be attractive to others. She says, “It’s a human body. Can we celebrate this beautiful piece of flesh-and-bone machinery instead of hating on it constantly?” Well said.

Abigail Young’s last zine, “No Name B.”

Camel Toe: A Zine is looking for both serious and humorous submissions. Pictures, collages, odes to camel toe, illustrations and all of your positive thoughts and feelings are welcome. Submissions are due by August 17th and you can email them to cameltoezine[at]gmail[dot]com. You can also buy the finished zine on Abigail’s website.

str8forward

Mariah Prescott

Mariah Prescott’s str8forward is a zine dedicated to those awful relationship stories. This is a zine for terrible breakups and shitty exes and crying yourself to sleep for weeks after the love of your life went to study abroad in Italy and cheated on you and …what? We all have those stories, and this is the place for them.

Mariah’s zine idea came from, as all great ideas do, a terrible breakup. She began to realize that sharing her story with friends was super cathartic.

By framing it in the right way, putting forward a relatable story is grounds for healing. Hearing other’s stories makes hard things feel ok and like you aren’t going insane. There is a sense of stoicism in our culture, that feelings are taboo, and even when we do talk about them, it’s as if you have to brush them aside, bottle them up, or ignore them.

But if you think this is just a place to bash your ex, you’re wrong. Mariah is looking to create a place where people can tell their stories in order to relate to one another. She hopes to create a zine “where people can open up and get personal about the hard times.” Lesbians are so good at this, right? Mariah wants to focus on true “dykedrama” and acknowledged, “When people say ‘lesbians have so many feelings,’ it’s usually true.”

Writers of all ages and experience-levels can contribute to str8forward, where submissions are on a rolling basis and will continue to be an on-going project. Mariah said, “I know there is a plethora of stories out there; it’s just a matter of who comes forward.”

Maybe you’ve seen these around Smith?

You can submit by emailing your story to str8forwardstories[at]gmail[dot]com or visit str8forward’s website for more information.

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