By Maggie Cassidy

At the corner of Opera Place and Huntington Avenue, among the swarming masses of hustling students and persistent traffic, sits a lime green box.

The box, which appeared just this month, stands out in the crowd. Written down the side of the box in white letters and a pink graphic is “skirt!,” the name of the free monthly publication held within.

Unlike the gray, dirty boxes at many other street corners that offer dating advertisements, automobile listings or other free tabloids, the lime green box contains magazines that offer a “refreshing take on approaching women in print,” said skirt! Boston editor Alison Murray.

“None of skirt! is concerned with losing 10 pounds by Thanksgiving or how to apply your makeup or the outfit to wear to this year’s holiday party,” she said. “I think it strikes a chord with any woman who pays any attention to any media.”

While skirt! has been in publication for 13 years, publisher GateHouse Media is expanding the publication city by city, recently moving into Houston, Richmond and Memphis, as well as Boston.

Sections like “she’s so skirt!” feature successful women making a difference – this month features Dove Marketing Director Kathy O’Brien, who spearheaded Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty – and dashes of short blurbs on things like cosmetic surgery. Murray said the publication is so unique “it almost sells itself.”

“One thing about skirt! that I think is really cool is that we publish a lot of women’s first-person essays,” Murray said. “[There’s] more of a voice to women, and the essays are fabulous. They’re not all well-known writers and it’s a great market for people who are interested in creative writing.”

But while students and passersby have kept the lime green box on Northeastern campus empty for at least a week, some say they have yet to be impressed with the free publication’s.

Alison Cunningham, a junior history and international affairs major and the treasurer of Northeastern’s Feminist Student Organization, said skirt! failed to meet her expectations.

“I was really excited to see the boxes come out and it being advertised that there would be a new free feminist publication, but when I read it. I was really disappointed,” she said. “It basically consists of a bunch of three-line stories about women. It doesn’t have any real substance to it.”

Cunningham said the city is in need of a strong free feminist newspaper with articles about women’s issues with “substance,” but skirt! failed to fill that void.

“I think that the stories promoted women more for their accomplishments as people and not so much for their accomplishments as feminists or as women who get things done for women or communities in need,” she said.

Stephanie Crisp, a sophomore English major, said the magazine misses the mark. She pointed to the “excessive amounts of ads,” large pictures and small articles that plague skirt!’s pages.

More than 30 of the paper’s 72 pages are full-page advertisements, not including half-page and smaller promotions. Many features, like the Kathy O’Brien profile, are only about 100 words.

Crisp said she doesn’t consider herself a feminist, but thinks “it’s important for women to have a positive image of themselves and not to be stuck into stereotypes,” she said.

“There might be a market for this type of publication, but I don’t think this really fits what it’s supposed to be,” she said, referencing a first-person essay by Michelle Rider called “My First Love.” “This article, it fits stereotypes of women. It talks about baking and how much she loves shoes and diamonds, so I don’t see how that would really be improving or promoting the positive image of women that it should be.”

Murray said the magazine attempts to offer an alternative to other magazines that target female audiences, like Glamour and Elle, among others.

“Your eyes sort of glaze over. You can’t even name them all, but skirt! certainly stands out because it’s got a very unique look to it and unique content as well,” she said.

However, Crisp said while she liked the bright colors of skirt!, she’d read the Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan magazines strewn around her West Village apartment.

“I think [skirt! is] trying to be friendly to women who probably don’t want to be bound down by the feminist label, but by doing that it’s kind of alienating itself from the real base of feminists while still not being engaging enough for someone to choose to read this over Cosmo or Glamour,” she said.

Murray said skirt! Boston is in its infancy and will improve each month.

“Give us a couple of issues,” she said. “The more you get used to it, the more you’ll like it and appreciate what we’re doing.”