About Missy Magazine

Missy Magazine

Missy Magazine (own spelling MISSY MAGAZINE, subtitled Pop, Politik & Feminismus — "Pop, Politics & Feminism") is a German feminist magazine published every two months in Berlin. Founded in 2008 by Sonja Eismann, Stefanie Lohaus, Chris Köver, and Margarita Tsomou, it was created to close a gap in the German-speaking magazine landscape: a feminist perspective on pop culture, politics, and style aimed especially at younger women. Its digital home is missy-magazine.de.

Overview

Missy Magazine is a feminist magazine in the pop-feminist tradition — the current within feminism that emerged in the 1990s in the Anglophone world and arrived in the German-speaking world in the 2000s, in which subcultural feminist currents like Riot Grrrl sought not only to criticise a male-dominated pop culture but to produce their own. The title was conceived as the feminist version of the American magazine YM (Young Miss, 1932–2004); the English word "missy" means "little miss". The magazine concept was also modelled on the American magazine Bust, founded in 1993.

In February 2008 the founders won the €25,000 prize of the Hobnox Evolution Contest ideas competition for their concept; with it they founded the magazine in spring 2008 and financed the first issue. The founders serve jointly as publishers and as the editorial team — a collective structure that distinguishes Missy from EMMA's founder-centred model and reflects the younger generation's anti-hierarchical ethos.

History

Missy Magazine appeared for the first time on 20 October 2008 with a print run of 15,000 copies, which has since been raised to a print run of 30,000. It appeared quarterly at first, and every two months since 2017. To secure operations, money was raised through crowdfunding in 2015 and 2018. The magazine appears in the self-publishing house of the Missy Magazine Verlags GmbH.

The magazine has extended its reach beyond print: on the internet radio station Reboot.fm it has its own radio show, Missy Radio; from November 2018 Missy Magazine produced the format Softie for funk, the online youth offering of ARD and ZDF — the format was discontinued at the end of 2019. In 2021 Missy Magazine co-founded the alerta platform cooperative, which has since distributed an eponymous app bundling left-wing media offerings.

Editorial leadership has turned over through the years: until May 2023 Anna Mayrhauser was editor-in-chief, succeeded by Nelli Tügel; since September 2025 Bahar Sheikh and Carolin Wiedemann have led the editorship. The publishers are Daniela Burger, Sonja Eismann, Stefanie Lohaus, Chris Köver, and Margarita Tsomou; the managing director is Ulla Heinrich. The editorial team has included, among others, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah — a prominent voice in German-language feminist and queer discourse.

In summer 2023 it became known that Missy Magazine was in financial difficulties, partly inflation-related: the printing house that produced the magazine had to close, and the delivery service filed for insolvency. The magazine faced the threat of closure. It appealed for 1,500 new subscriptions within ten weeks to finance the next issue — and the goal was reached within 48 hours. The episode demonstrated the loyalty of the readership community and became one of the most-reported stories of independent German magazine publishing that year.

Content

In the scholarly compilation Making Feminist Media (2014), Sonja Eismann described the magazine's founding purpose: to provide a feminist perspective on popular culture, politics, and style, addressing younger women and inspiring their interest in feminist ideas — "to close a gap in the German-speaking magazine landscape" that the founders felt acutely as young feminists themselves. The same text lists the issues Missy sees as urgent: the involvement of younger women and the gap between feminist generations, branches, and classes; the distribution of care work; the pay gap; why traditionally "feminine" professions are still paid less; sexism, sex work, and pornography; new beauty regimes and their effects on young women; the marginalisation of hijab-wearing women; and the continuing oppression of women worldwide.

As for the production of alternative feminist media, Eismann named the biggest challenge plainly: lack of money. Collaboration with other women is fine, sometimes nearly perfect; feedback from other media is often overwhelmingly positive — but there is never enough money or enough time to devote oneself to the feminist media project, because part of the money must be earned elsewhere. The same account notes that big companies still do not want to place ads in a magazine that tells women they are beautiful in all colours and sizes, just as they are, instead of telling them to feel insecure and buy commodities.

Missy has also published in book form: Fickt euch! Sex, Körper und Feminismus ("Fuck you! Sex, Bodies and Feminism"), with a foreword by Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, appeared with Edition Nautilus, Hamburg, in 2024.

Coverage & Audience

Missy Magazine appears every two months in Berlin with a distributed circulation of 30,000 copies (media data 2024). Its ZDB identifier is 2462180-8. The audience is younger, pop-culture-literate women — the generation that came of age after EMMA's founding era and sought a feminist magazine that speaks in the language of pop, fashion, and DIY politics rather than the campaigning tradition of the 1970s.

The magazine's press coverage has traced its arc: the Süddeutsche Zeitung's 2008 launch piece "Das neue 'Missy'-Magazin – Stricktipps, Sextipps, Feminismus" ("The new Missy magazine — knitting tips, sex tips, feminism"); Der Spiegel's launch-week piece "Kopfüber in die Feuchtgebiete" ("Headfirst into the wetlands" — a nod to Charlotte Roche's bestselling novel Feuchtgebiete of that year); brand eins's 2011 portrait "Für freche Gören" ("For cheeky brats"); and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung's 2011 "Die machen jetzt was Peppiges" ("They're doing something peppy now"). The 2023 near-closure and the 48-hour subscription rescue drew coverage in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and taz — evidence of the magazine's standing in the German media landscape.

Ownership

The magazine is published in self-publishing by the Missy Magazine Verlags GmbH of Berlin. The founders — Sonja Eismann, Stefanie Lohaus, Chris Köver, and Margarita Tsomou, joined by Daniela Burger — serve jointly as publishers; the managing director is Ulla Heinrich. The collective ownership structure, with the founders as both publishers and editorial team, has defined the magazine's independence since 2008.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is missy-magazine.de, with a complete article archive at missy-magazine.de/alle-hefte. Beyond the website, Missy has operated Missy Radio on Reboot.fm and produced the Softie video format for funk; as a co-founder of the alerta platform cooperative, it participates in the left-wing media app bundling independent offerings. The 48-hour rescue of summer 2023 — 1,500 subscriptions in two days — was itself organised online, demonstrating the digital community the magazine has built around its print core. For a magazine whose founding editors once financed the first issue with a €25,000 contest prize and whose chronic condition is the lack of money Eismann described, the rescue was a vindication: the readers, asked, answered.

From the €25,000 contest prize of February 2008 to the crowdfunded, cooperatively organised magazine of today, Missy Magazine has remained the pop-feminist voice of the German-speaking magazine landscape: feminist, independent, and — as its subtitle promises — devoted to pop, politics, and feminism in equal measure. Its survival through the 2023 crisis, secured by readers in 48 hours, is the measure of what it has become. The Berlin-based Missy Magazine Verlags GmbH's self-publishing model — crowdfunded, cooperatively networked, and community-financed — keeps the title independent of the large publishing groups.