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Arts and Entertainment

Shonda Rhimes' Glorious New Lifestyle Website Is Now Live

By  Annie Lloyd
Published Sep 18, 2017 12:00 AM
shondarhimes.jpg
Shonda Rhimes. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
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Shonda Rhimes, reigning matriarch of Thursday nights and soon, Netflix, launched her new lifestyle website Monday. Titled shondaland.com (her production company is also called Shondaland), the website features work from established writers like Kara Brown and Samantha Irby, as well as writing from Rhimes herself. Rhimes announced the website back in April and tapped Jennifer Romolini of HelloGiggles to serve as Chief Content Officer.

The website is hosted on Hearst Magazines Digital Media's content platform, similar to Lenny Letter. The website will have syndication opportunities across all Hearst Media brands and will collaborate with Hearst on custom advertorial content, according to Variety. The website will also collaborate with Dove, for which Rhimes is the Creative Director on their Real Beauty films.

Shondaland.com will take on a similar angle as Rhimes' fictional works, like Scandal, which focus on the empowerment of its female characters. The website will exclusively feature nonfiction, journalism, and stories from "real women." In the "About" section of the Website, Rhimes describes the site's mission as such:

If you don't like your story, rewrite it. If you don't rewrite it, someone else will rewrite it for you.

Never let that happen.

The website currently features content on politics, beauty, body image, literature, and an interview with
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Maxine Waters (conducted by Rhimes herself, of course). The site is split up into four sections: "live," "inspire," "watch," and "act." "Live" is the most straightforward lifestyle section of the site and "inspire" includes features on art and culture. The "watch" section features videos of Rhimes giving speeches as well as content from her collaboration with Dove and the "act" section is the political vertical.

Throughout the whole website there is continual emphasis on the idea of a "real woman"; Rhimes has developed an empire making television shows featuring female protagonists running the gamut of lifestyle, choices, and morality, so Shondaland.com is now the next step in bringing that ethos into the daily lives of her fans.