Zine Review: The Stay At Home Girlfriend 22

The Stay At Home Girlfriend 22
Kendy P. / MissMuffCake
http://www.missmuffcake.com/
www.missmuffcake.etsy.com

The Stay At Home Girlfriend 22 is a cute and fun perzine with a huge variety of bits and pieces inside.

If you want a ‘too long, didn’t read’ right from the get go: I really love this zine. On an ‘I would like to get the entire series’ level.

I’ve talked a few times about zines that have come into my life at the perfect time, and this zine is included in that. When I was writing down my review notes for this, I was also struggling to get any writing done, it was too hot to cook… I had to smile at how, despite the distance and time between her writing and me reading, I found so much in common with Kendy.

It didn’t stop there, however. Kendy touched on the topic of anxiety – specifically around other people. I imagine there are plenty of people out there who will identify with things like avoiding people they know at the shops. I love that Kendy later included an Anxiety First Aid list.

There is an ample ‘things I like’ section that had me eager to look up quite a few things – despite the ‘yucky but relaxing’ like that made me a little ill. But that simply proved to be a good reminder that people have all sorts of likes! It also made me want to try out blind boxes because I’ve never had one.

Kendy’s piece on zine community had me scribbling down so many different ideas for blog post topics and will definitely have me going back for multiple reads. There’s so much to think about, and my heart went out to Kendy as we’re reminded that it only takes one (or two) to spoil things – even in something as (usually) awesome as the zine community.

The thoughts on making zines that Kendy shares are beautiful and sad, just going to show that art is hard – even with the creative freedom that making zines can bring.

“You are like why am I doing another issue… Then you get a letter telling you how great your zine is… and you realize that not everything is always going to be good. Making zines is not always going to be great, easy or whatever.”

As I mentioned, this is a very cute zine with stickers, stamps, doodles, and such, but not so much that it’s overloaded or too much. The aesthetic really fits with the variety of different topics.

There is such a variety of things in this zine, and I think it’s a lot of fun. I know I have praised other zines for having longer pieces, but I think it’s all about the spirit of the zine. Bouncing from thing to thing really suits this zine and gets me excited about the content. The style suits the tone, which suits the voice, so on and so forth.

I will be reading this again and saving up for more in the series.

PS. Yay for long-held post boxes!