Women's History Month is Women Reviewer Month

Hello boys and girls! This I'm a little late...OK 19 days late, BUT, for the rest of the month and into April, I am going to cover some of the talented women reviewers out there.

Now, I have to say, women reviewers on the Internet (exclude mainstream, professional critics) are something of a rarity. That's not to say that you can't find them, you can, but it's pretty tough. For this sample size, I am sticking with the women of Channel Awesome, the company behind the Nostalgia Critic.

Punch the Way Back Machine to the summer of 2008. Doug Walker announces a contest searching for a female counterpart to review the female-centric nostalgia Walker felt he wasn't qualified to review.

Walker announced the results later that summer and it was a three-way tie between Lindsay Ellis, Kaylyn Dickinson and Krissy Diggs. The tie was broken when Ellis's "Pocahontas" review won the most votes, and thus became the official female counterpart to the Nostalgia Critic, originally known as The Dudette and later The Nostalgia Chick. Walker was still impressed with the two runners-up, and so Dickinson and Diggs were added to the site as well, making the trio the first additions to the Channel Awesome lineup and the first women reviewers as well. Dickinson took on the monicker MarzGurl and Diggs became That Chick With The Goggles; Diggs has the triple distinction of being Channel Awesome's first African-American reviewer as well. Dickinson would become CA's second anime reviewer, while Diggs would become more of a game reviewer.

Diggs would eventually leave Channel Awesome in 2011 and did not produce much content for the thatguywithglasses.com website, while Ellis and Dickinson have remained mainstays, now approaching their fifth year with CA.

The site would continue to add female reviewers over the years. In February 2010, CA added another anime reviewer, Hope Chapman, under the monicker JesuOtaku; in June, Allison Pregler took the monicker Obscurus Lupa and began reviewing z-grade cinema, and Jerrica Barton added her Joker-esque character Diamanda Hagan reviewing a wide range of films, as well as episodes of Doctor Who. In 2011, CA added Elisa Hanson as Maven of the Eventide doing vampire-related content as member of Team NChick (Ellis's own troupe of performers, now known as Chez Apocalypse).

For the next four weeks, I am going to highlight Ellis, Dickinson, Chapman, Pregler and Barton, starting tomorrow with a profile on Ellis and a review of her latest stand-alone episode (I won't review multi-part episodes in great detail) and then Thursday, I'll present 12 recommended Nostalgia Chick reviews.