Girl on Girl
How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
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- 7,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
*A TIMES PAPERBACK BESTSELLER*
*FOYLES NON-FICTION APRIL BOOK OF THE MONTH*
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025
A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2025
AN AUDIBLE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
'Fascinating and powerfully argued' Daily Telegraph
'Blistering' New York Times
'Riveting' Vogue
'Gilbert is a serious and attentive chronicler of a fraught era' Financial Times
'Essential reading' Irish Independent
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Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and the manosphere on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong?
Despite decades of progress, modern womanhood feels more challenging than ever. Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert reveals how today's misogyny emerged from another turbulent era: the late 90s and early 2000s.
Spanning the past thirty years of pop culture - from Madonna to Taylor Swift, #GirlBoss to OnlyFans, Real Housewives to trad-wives - Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has warped women's relationships with themselves and others.
We cannot move forward without fully reckoning with the ways pop culture has defined us - this book shows us how.
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'A captivating must-read' KATE MANNE
'I folded down every single page' PANDORA SYKES
'Vast, engaging and brilliant' Stylist
'A book that will make you think, and want to discuss' Glamour
'Add this book to the list of titles that urgently provide context and answers to the hell storm that is [vaguely waves around] everything going on right now' Harper's Bazaar
READER REVIEWS
'I loved this book. It found me in a time I really needed it'
'If you are a living, breathing, human of any gender, this book is eye-opening and important. Just read it'
'The kind of book that will stay with you'
'An absolute powerhouse of a book'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this triumphant debut, Pulitzer finalist Gilbert dissects three decades of pop culture, from the Riot Grrrl 1990s to the #Girlboss 2010s, arguing that the era's depictions of women evolved in ways that ended up warping their self-esteem. Analyzing a head-spinning array of cultural artifacts—from high art to gossip columns—she dredges up long-forgotten relics, among them the reality TV show "Are You Hot?" in which "members of the public stripped in order to be assessed by a panel of judges," and "The Swan," in which contestants were given "dozens" of cosmetic surgeries. Gilbert identifies a series of interlocking cultural shifts over this period that, in her telling, amounted to a subtle backlash against feminism. Examples include the late-'90s replacement of "angry and abrasive and thrillingly powerful" women musicians, like Tori Amos and Sinéad O'Connor, with more childlike or even underage stars like Britney Spears. Gilbert traces the origins of this drift to the objectifying influence of pornography, which, as it rapidly proliferated in online spaces, began to infect pop culture with a degrading attitude toward women. She also makes a convincing case that the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade was the long tail of this backlash. It's a tour de force of cultural criticism.
