Marketing a Grassroots Magazine
Despite the growing prominence of lesbians in popular culture, Deneuve initially struggled to secure advertisers and funding. The few ads in the 3,000 print first run of the first issue included one for Stevens’ father’s computer company and another for the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. [1] Mainstream corporations initially avoided lesbian periodicals because of both bigotry and their profit drive. Their small subscriber base consisted of women struggling against job discrimination, not wealthy heterosexual households. [2] Furthermore, Stevens avoided fetishizing “sex ads” and making over 40% of the magazine advertisements as a political commitment. [3] Then Managing Editor Zélie Pollon told Salon in 1996 that the magazine’s policy of avoiding putting straight celebrities on its cover limited ad sales but satisfied their lesbian readers. [4]“I do know it is far less threatening to have straight people on your cover. Far less threatening to advertisers and magazine buyers. But I really think a lot of it is for advertisers."- Zélie Pollon
Despite these challenges, the magazine’s subscriber count grew through Stevens’ grassroots advertising strategy. Stevens partnered with lesbian feminist publisher Barbara Grier to include a subscription form in Naiad Press’ newsletter and conducted numerous cross country tours. [5] In April 1992 Deneuve moved from an editor’s living room into an office space in San Francisco's South of Market District, and hired their first employee managing editor Zelie Pollon. By 1995 Deneuve was the nation’s best selling lesbian magazine with a print run of 60,000 and mainstream advertisers, who were increasingly interested in catering to lesbian audiences. For example, in its first 20 years vodka corporations Absolut and Stoli graced Deneuve and later Curve’s back cover 75 times. [6]
[1] Rand, Erin J. “An Appetite for Activism: The Lesbian Avengers and the Queer Politics of Visibility.” Women’s Studies in Communication 36, no. 2 (June 2013): 124.
[2] Whitt, “A ‘Labor from the Heart’ Lesbian Magazines from 1947-1994,” 233.
[3] Franco Stevens, “New Dyke in Town: The Rapid Rise of Denueve,” in Happy Endings : Lesbian Writers Talk about Their Lives and Work (Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press, 1993), 159, http://archive.org/details/happyendingslesb00bran.
[4] David Boeyr, “Keeping a Straight Face,” Salon, October 1, 1996, https://www.salon.com/1996/10/01/media961001/.
[5] Franco Stevens. Brooke Means Business: Franco Stevens, Founder and Publisher of Curve Magazine | Autostraddle. Interview by Brooke Levin, March 28, 2010. https://www.autostraddle.com/brooke-means-business-2-39191/.
[6] Lee, Gretchen. "All our best." Curve, vol. 10, no. 3, May 2000, p. 18. Vermeer, Nicole, and Anna Belle Peterson. "By the numbers: how the last 20 years have measured up." Curve, vol. 20, no. 8, Oct. 2010, p. 41. Gale OneFile: Contemporary Women's Issues,