This is How We Recover: The Inspiration Behind Sugar Magazine
The image of eating disorders in media is often the same: an extreme case of anorexia on a white able-bodied teenage girl. Beyond that scope of teaching, few might be able to put an image of what recovery looks like. Maria Wurtz, a 25 year old freelance photographer, realized in her own journey toward recovery that few spaces existed to help give voice to its process. After watching a documentary on Kathleen Hanna, a punk singer, Wurtz was inspired by Riot Grrrl Zines to fill the blank she saw in publications and conversations of body positivity. “My whole thing was to get women to focus on things that matter, anything else, but their body.” She said.
Wurtz, a former photo editor at Rolling Stone, spent her time in college kickstarting her interest in magazines by creating one she’d want to work for. At 20, while focusing on her recovery, she began to make a space where women could do the same work she was doing. She saw communities spring up around body image such as Rookie Magazine, an online monthly magazine for teenagers. Though Rookie had the creative aesthetic and community of writers and readers, it didn’t focus exclusively on eating disorders.
“Rookie magazine was everything I wanted Sugar to be, but I really wanted Sugar to be more about recovery, which is like a whole process that most people don't understand,” said Wurtz. With disordered eating being a normalized part of society, often you might not even realize you have an eating disorder. She learned about eating disorders in health, “but I never learned about eating disorder recovery. I’m almost 100% sure they still don’t teach it to this day.” Said Wurtz.
She used her independent study at her college, Nassau Community College, to start Sugar Magazine, an intersectional feminist publication. Wurtz spent the semester researching print options such as Shutterfly and Blurb to find out how exactly magazines come to physical print. Glued to InDesign, she began to figure out how to lay out an entire body of work. At the same time, she used the agonizing two-week wait between ordering and receiving her test prints to meticulously look for typos, add pages, subtract, and fix the colors of the featured art that became desaturated after printing.
The first edition came to print in 2016. Now with three issues distributed by Blurb under her belt, 13,600 followers on Instagram and a brand new website her class project continues to grow long after graduation, brining new challenges.
“It felt like work when I wanted it to feel like a fine art project. I was like oh, I have to dedicate weekends, that’s really the only way to do it,” said Wurtz. Completing her BFA for photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology, while continuing to bring the publication to life required that she cut extra time from her schedule. Wurtz always knew she needed a social media presence to get the magazine printed. Much of her spare time involved diligently planning each post to remain active on Instagram so followers of the magazine could relish, as Wurtz had, their place in recovery. Recovery is an entire process of its own involving following hunger cues or even seeing a dietitian in some cases. Wurtz describing it as, “You have to learn how to eat again.”
Her post-grad job working for an iconic magazine seemed to always be the end goal. As she worked with Rolling Stone, however, her lack of space to be creative and the perspective of the inner workings of a real magazine helped established new insight to her work outside of the dream job. “The thing that floored me actually wanting to keep doing Sugar was like I kind of felt at Rolling Stone I was making a magazine that didn't matter,” said Wurtz, laughing. Sugar Magazine, in a way, is its own remedy to lack of creative space at work. “The only way to finally feel creative again was to work on Sugar,” Wurtz realized.
Naturally, readers and writers continue to gravitate towards this space as they find it important too. “Submitting to Sugar had a sort of allure because it was so specific to something personal,” said Eloise Moore, a writer who was published on Sugar Magazine’s website. “I liked knowing my writing was going somewhere where other people could relate so highly to it.”
When time and resources became limited, Wurtz began to ask for help from people she knew. “It was really flexible and empowering to work with women who are dedicated to making the world a better and safer place,” said Gina Wurtz, her sister, who reads through submissions for the website.
Maria’s analysis of the magazine and its inner workings has become Sugar’s lifeline. Her goal of making a magazine rather than making the best magazine has allowed her to create while learning. Extending her compassion to her own limitations makes it work in a charming sort of way, the increasing activity on the website adds excitement as well as the anticipation of commenters on Instagram live asking when a new issue will be announced.The space Wurtz makes for herself to grow is equally as important as the space she makes for others.
As she moves forward Wurtz is taking some advice from a former colleague to heart: set realistic goals. She cannot make the magazine her vision all at once. “Publish three stories on the website, and then publish six the next month, and start working on this issue,” she said, planning the improvements she wants to make.
Sugar’s goal in 2016 of brining people close together continues to be met. Wurtz’s dedication helps cultivate an intimacy the publishing world lacked.
The biggest advice perhaps Wurtz can give is her fearless attitude that came with creating Sugar. “I didn’t have any fears. Sugar has a pretty decent following, but I didn't even think I'd get there.” The overwhelming amount of assignments that come with being in school or work full-time made the urge to connect to others large enough to propel her magazine forward. Sugar became a place about having fun, its collaborative voices, relaxed realistic goals and reposted instagram comics that turn a joke on the ridiculous nature of diet culture.
Similarly sometimes, as Wurtz points out, you have to realize the fears and stories you believe about your ability to do something. “No one was looking at me and saying, ‘can she actually make Sugar?” She said. “I can do it. I did.”