SU juniors look to normalize traditionally taboo topics with Moody Magazine
Cassandra Roshu | Staff Photographer
Emma Lueder and Jennie Bull founded Moody Magazine in April, and hope to continue to grow the magazine on campus and beyond.
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On the way home from a shopping trip at Goodwill, Jennie Bull and Emma Lueders started discussing the project that would eventually become Moody Magazine. At first, Bull said she wanted to start a sex magazine, and Lueders wanted a self-love magazine. Then the duo combined their aspirations.
“What if we just made a magazine together?” they both thought during the ride.
Bull and Lueders, both juniors at SU, co-founded Moody Magazine, a publication that aims to normalize traditionally taboo topics and facilitate open dialogue that brings the campus community together. Now, seven months releasing their first issue in April, the duo remains committed to fostering a sex-positive campus, and looks ahead to the future for where they plan to bring Moody Magazine next.
After the car ride, Bull and Lueders started work on their new project. They shared the idea with their friends to help the new publication to gain momentum, sending out a form for people to express interest in joining, Lueders said.
“When you have people that are passionate about the mission, it’s so much easier to produce something,” Bull said.
They quickly realized that nearly 100 people wanted to be a part of their magazine, and the two sifted everyone into different teams such as writing, design, social media and more. Everyone on the Moody Mag team united around their common goal to shed light on taboo topics.
In its first issue, Moody Magazine tackled sensitive, stigmatized topics, such as substance abuse, sex, men’s mental health and self love.
“There are so many conversations that we have with our friends and with one another behind closed doors that never see the light of day, and some of those conversations are the most transformative,” Lueders said.
For both of the founders, these uncomfortable conversations — regardless of the discomfort of the topics — are vital, and require a safe space like Moody Magazine to do so. Bull and Lueders said they feel this is even more important for Generation Z, as a generation that confronts hard topics, to dismantle stigma and normalize what older generations sought to ignore.
“Everyone is welcome here and everything is welcome here,” said Colette Goldstein, head of writing at Moody Magazine.
Since its inception, Moody Magazine has fostered an open, safe environment to ensure their team felt safe and welcome, Goldstein said. The entire range of the sexual spectrum is welcome at Moody Magazine, and no topic is off limits, she said,
“It’s not really about the physical magazine. It’s about the conversations that are sparked after the issue, and the conversations that are sparked because of it,” Bull said. “It’s not about how many issues we print, or even how many people read the issues — it’s about how it really impacts that person who’s reading it and picking it up, and what they do after the fact.”
In the future, Lueders and Bull hope for Moody Magazine to break out of the SU campus borders and become a major publication, the pair said.
Bull and Lueders both hope for Moody Magazine to grow into a go-to safe space online to ask questions about sex, relationships, mental health and more. They also hope to eventually move the magazine to a central publishing location outside of Syracuse.
“There are so many things on a college campus that are virtually silent, even though they’re so relevant and always happening,” Goldstein said. “Moody is that silence. We are bringing light to that silence. Moody embodies all the things no one wants to talk about.”
Published on November 7, 2022 at 12:18 am
