Jezebel may market itself as “Celebrity, sex, fashion for women,” but regular readers of the site know that’s a simplified version of the Gawker-helmed blog for women that has almost eclipsed Gawker itself. Begun in 2007 as what The New York Times called “a postfeminist companion to Gawker.com,” the site has garnered an avid audience of modern women who eschew the typical gossip blogs.
Don’t mistake the fact that Jezebel is for women with a girlie attitude: the site has a distinctly tough exterior, taking on tough subjects and using language when necessary to make a point. Irreverance is abundant, and so is wicked satire.
Jezebel reports on current celebrity news, fashion and relationships, but like all of the Gawker sites, the content is original and attached to provoking or humorous headlines. Examples of original Jezebel stories include: “The Complexities of Hitting on Your Waiter,” “Barack Obama Wrote Mad Men Fan Mail” and “Ladies Fall Prey to the Aniston Effect.”
The site has often used its articles to take people to task that they find behaving in misogynist ways, most notably The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, after several writers and correspondents maintained that they faced a sexist work environment at The Daily Show.
In Jezebel’s Photoshop of Horrors feature, the site skewers magazines and advertisers who alter actress’ and model’s bodies to look less-than-human. “Lily Allen is on the August cover of Elle UK,” writes the Jezebel staff, but it seems the editors did not invite her jaw bone to the shoot.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jezebel reports that its regular audience is 97 percent female, and that monthly visits to the site total more than 37 million page visits, of which about 200,000 per day are unique visitors.
