XOJane

About

XOJane is a womens’ interest website covering fashion and beauty, as well as publishing a variety of op-eds and personal essays. It was founded by Jane Pratt, former editor of the teen magazine Sassy.

XOJane is a womens’ interest blog focused on covering fashion and beauty-related news, as well as op-ed columns and personal essays on a variety of topics and issues, including gender identity, body image and racial identity.

History

XOJane launched in May 2011, followed by its UK counterpart in November 2012 and its beauty site XOVain in March 2013.^[1][2] The online magazine was founded by feminist writer Jane Pratt, who had started and managed two magazines, teen magazine Sassy and women’s magazine Jane, during the late ’80s early ‘90s. The site is owned by SAY Media^[3], a web advertising firm that operates several other women’s interest websites, such as Fashionista^[4] and Cupcakes and Cashmere.^[5]

Cat Marnell’s Departure

On June 14, 2012, Page Six^[24] reported that XoJane Beauty editor Cat Marnell had left the website, following her stay at a rehabilitation center at the insistence of XoJane’s parent company Say Media. That same day, Pratt published a post simply titled “Cat’s Gone,” in which she explained her struggle to understand what to do about Cat in light of her drug problems and insisting she still loved Cat as a person and a writer.^[25] She concluded the article by saying:

“In the end: We both agreed she wasn’t doing her job. Though she plans to write more here in the future, she isn’t on staff. On her last day in the office, Cat Slimed me with some smelly lotion and ran off. Yep, I adore her.”

Girls Parody

On the January 27th, 2013 episode of the HBO comedy series Girls titled “Bad Friend,” Hannah meets with a woman named Jame, the editor of a trendy New York City-based website called JazzHate. Many entertainment news sites following the show, including XOJane, speculated the show could be parodying Pratt and the website.^[19] Those behind the show denied the send up, but Pratt explained the clip is,“… not that far from how we work.”^[20]

Features

The site is broken up into seven main verticals: sex/love, Jane, Beauty, Issues, Clothes, It Happened to Me, and Entertainment. the Jane vertical sends readers to a section titled “Jane’s Phone” that features pictures and thoughts from the sites founder, Jane Pratt. It Happened to Me is a series of personal essays that explore the unusual or profound experiences of the writer. The writers tackle heavy topics such as rape, eating disorders, and drug addiction.

Another personal essay series on the site is called “Unpopular opinion.” Examples from the series include “I Hate Brunch” and “I Support Flag Burning.”^[12][13]

The site also runs an advice column called “You Are the Advice Columnist” that allows readers to submit their questions and leaves the advice giving up to the commenters.^[14]

Social Media Presence

As of January 2014 XoJane’s official Twitter account^[6] has over 30,900 followers and its Facebook page^[7] has over 38,000 likes. The site also maintains an active Instagram^[8] account with over 6,000 followers and a Pintrest account^[9] with over 7,000 followers.

Controversies

Disney Land Rape Headline

On July 17th, 2013, XoJane published a post titled “It Happened to Me: I was Rapped at Disney World and No One Cared.”^[21] The author wrote that she was rapped by a Disney World co-worker in his apartment the summer after she finished college. Jezebel pointed out the headline XoJane used was false, as the author hadn’t actually been rapped within Disney World, and accused the site of bending the true to get more clicks.^[22] Women’s lifestyle and fashion site The Gloss^[23] also accused the site of lying in the headline, while criticizing Jezebel’s original headline for it’s piece “xoJane Lied and Said She Was Raped at Disney World” as it seemed to imply the author was lying about the rape itself.

There Are No Black People In My Yoga Class

On January 28th, 2014, XoJane published an “It Happened to Me” personal essay titled “It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Class and I’m Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable About It.”^[15] The essay described the author, Jen Caron’s, experience in her yoga studio when a overweight black woman entered. She goes on to explain how she felt the woman was angry at her “skinny white girl body” and how this distracted her and troubled her, ultimately causing her to break down crying when she returned home. Within 48 hours the post has gained over 2,500 comments. The same day Gawker^[16] posted an article titled “Black Person in Yoga Class Causes Profound Moral Crisis” which poked fun at the article. Other posts that lampooned the article include The Wire’s^[17]“It Happened to a Well-Off Young Woman Wallowing in Her Privilege” and XoJane’s^[18] own “It Happened To Me: I Read an Essay About a White Woman’s Yoga Class/Black Woman Criss and I Cannot,” both published on January 29th.

On January 30th the editor who assigned the original post, Rebecca Carroll, published a post titled "I Assigned That “Yoga Class” Piece and Here’s Why," in which she explained how the story came to be published and responded to the backlash saying:

“After taking a step back, halfway through my fourth week as an editor at xoJane, I realized that in all likelihood if I were a reader who hadn’t had the initial conversation with Jen and knew the background and context of the story, I would have been equally as offended as the most critical commenters. Because I SHOULD have asked Jen to do more work and questioning before writing about her experience.”

Traffic

Parent company Say Media describes XoJane as “The fastest growing women’s lifestyle brand on the Web.”^[10] The site has about 4 million readers and 10 million page views a month. It receives about 64% of its traffic from the United States, with the remainder coming in almost equal parts from the UK, Canada, India, and Finland.^[11]

External Links