Girl Crush, a new zine.

Thessaly LaForce, web editor of The Paris Review, and Jenna Wortham, technology reporter for The New York Times, recently came up with the idea for a zine called Girl Crush, about female affection for role models. “It’s someone you want to be like, and someone you think is cool. It’s a slightly silly way to say something a little serious—because it’s so earnest to be like, ‘I admire you immensely!,’” said Ms. LaForce, who will attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop upon leaving her job at The Paris Review. Ms. Wortham’s girl crushes include the rapper Kelis, the actress Amy Sedaris, and rock star Kathleen Hanna: “I met Kathleen Hanna and I was just trying not to drool on her!”
Girl crushes, said Ms. Wortham, are “part of being a woman… It evolves from the time you’re little. We look to our sisters, friends, and classmates. You get obsessed with how they wear their hair and how they walk—and everything’s so easy for them!”
The zine—the term refers to a homemade magazine composed, usually, of contributions from friends—has one high-profile contributor, Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, the common girl crush of many young literary types. “She represents a female writer who hasn’t been shellacked with chick-lit covers,” said Ms. LaForce, who also admires Isak Dinesen (“this cool woman who goes to Africa with her husband and has an affair with a hot hunter!”). Ms. Egan’s contribution, a piece of short fiction about girl-on-girl fixation in a Catholic school, was elicited by an email to Ms. Egan’s publicly accessible address: “We thought, why not think big?” said Ms. LaForce.
Read entire article here.
Girl Crush blog here.