A publication of the German group Edition Keiz, Kissina is quickly breaking through the glass ceiling imposed in France on magazines with ethnic foundations.

With an Afro-European base, the magazine takes huge risks. Its articles are often culturally sensitive and provocative.

The current edition in newsstands features an interview with Dr. Steve Wilson who recommends to female readers the use of cock-rings to help their men who suffer from medically diagnosed erectile dysfunctions, due to their medical and psychological benefits. This proved to be a shocking discovery to readers as the use of cock-rings is a well-accepted practice among many homosexual men, yet mainly unheard of among heterosexuals.

This type of risk-taking has earned the magazine a thunderous praises from around the French media establishment.

France 2, the second largest television network in France, did a feature story on the magazine for the afternoon and night edition of its high-rated news programmes. And the current May 2005 French edition of Cosmopolitan Magazine has a feature piece on Kissina.

In addition to the Afro-European models seen in its fashion pages and beauty pages, Kissina is the only magazine in France to use in each of its editions an assortment of Asian, Hispanic, European, Arab and mixed-race models in its pages. Full-figured women also grace its fashion and beauty pages, a move that has been quickly mimicked by other mainstream fashion magazines since Kissina’s arrival in newsstands.

At the tender age of 24, Kissina’s founder and editor-in-chief, Sandrine Nzinda, is a local inspiration to girls and young women from the economically depressed Paris suburbs of Grigny where she grew up.

“I wanted to create a magazine that resembles me”, says Nzinda.

“My objective in creating Kissina was to give women, regardless of their size, colour or shape, a voice in our culturally diverse society and to help them and others see that they too are beautiful because of their diversity and of their individualism.”

With the magazine business in Europe and around the world losing advertisement Euros to internet sites and with so many bigger magazines having to restructure or close their doors, many wonder how Kissina is able to know such a meteoric rise in popularity and in public awareness.

The answer is quite simple: diversity. In Swahili, the word kissina means share. The magazine breathes and lives this concept of sharing with all. That has proven to be a wise gamble for a France in the middle of a pan-European cultural, political, economic and ethnic integration.