Back in July, our guest blogger Kate Smurthwaite posted a review of a new site for women run by Gawker.

Jezebel, as Kate pointed out, seeks to portray itself as different to the typical bitchy women’s magazine, but falls into many of the same pitfalls. Recent typical posts say women who don’t shave their armpits smell, point out Britney’s double chin, etc, etc, etc. Many fans of Jezebel wrote in to The F Word to dispute her review, mostly based on the assumption that she was missing the point. Rather than seriously endorsing the usual women’s mag combination of celebrities, thinness and bland, mainstream ideas about what women are interested in, Jezebel satirises it.

You can see many examples of this point of view on our comments page, where you can also find Kate’s response.

Meanwhile, over on Jezebel, the blog’s readers were commenting away themselves. For example:

“Did someone tell you you were ugly when you were little? Did the man in your life tell you to take yourself seriously? Still mad about missing that nosejob? Or was it the frustration of noting the lack of a size 12 at the Kate Moss Top Shop sample sale?”

While most of the comments submitted to The F Word were polite and reasonable, on Jezebel the debate deteriorated into personal and offensive remarks about Kate’s looks, name and sex life. Which, frankly, says a lot about the community Jezebel is creating.

Well, Kate has now posted her response over on her blog. Go read it.

Posted by Jess McCabe on 23 June 2007, at 7:01 PM