Girl on Girl

Reviews

“Amid pervasive rollbacks to women’s rights in America, Gilbert . . . mounts a powerful argument that millennial pop culture ‘turned a generation of women against themselves.’” —The New York Times

“The book takes a hard look at the pop culture of the late ‘90s and early 2000s—the explosion of tabloid photography, increasingly cruel and ceaseless commentary on celebrity blogs, sexualization of young women by the media, etc.—and the lasting damage it has done to modern women and, possibly, the feminist movement itself. It's 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 . . .Gilbert unmasks the collective regression that continues to influence our views on misogyny, feminism, and womanhood today.” —Harper’s Bazaar

“Intelligent and enlightening.” —OurCulture

“In this triumphant debut, Pulitzer finalist Gilbert dissects three decades of pop culture, from the Riot Grrrl 1990s to the #Girlboss 2010s . . . a tour de force of cultural criticism.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Gilbert deserves a medal—not only for her observations and conclusions, but for navigating the sludge she had to wade through to get there. Essential cultural criticism.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Girl on Girl is a work of overwhelming meticulousness and clarity. If you’re confused about the current uncertainty about feminism’s power, Sophie Gilbert has done the work of painstakingly and granularly tracing every cultural thread to reveal how we got here. Gilbert unmasks an insidious cultural coup that seemingly overnight dethroned the transgressive women of the 90s; 'Just like that they were gone–replaced by girls,' she writes. Over and over, Gilbert reminds us: it wasn’t always this bad–in fact, it was getting better, then it got taken away. Girl on Girl is a necessary corrective of cultural memory, but more importantly, it is a definitive archive of that disempowerment and its ensuing cruelties.” —Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC’s Commotion and author of Son of Elsewhere

“With panache, wit, and brilliance, Sophie Gilbert's Girl on Girl offers compelling analyses of how mass culture has diluted and tainted feminism. A captivating must-read for anyone who wants to understand how and why misogyny is as powerful a force as ever.” —Kate Manne, author of Down Girl and Unshrinking

“A riveting, incisive, rousing exploration of millennial culture that reveals the cyclical pattern of political movements, the insidious nature of backlash, and the importance of understanding how we got here, so that we can move forward. Sophie Gilbert is one of our most important cultural critics and I'll read everything she ever writes.” —Melissa Febos, author of The Dry Season and Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

“A deep dive into pop culture's pernicious obsession with female youth. An incisive spotlight that lays bare the trap of postfeminism. A fascinating, compelling, and maddening look at the guise of female sexuality in the new millennium—how it became a dominant yet misperceived source of power for women and, of course, how it was and continues to be used against us.” —Anna Marie Tendler, New York Times bestselling author of Men Have Called Her Crazy

“Reading Girl on Girl feels like revisiting your memories with your brilliant protective older sister making sense of them for you. Her cultural criticism is as coolly sophisticated as it is deeply personal, making you feel like she’s reading your mind. It’s alarming to see so clearly how cruel the aughts were to young women. But the great payoff is, finally, self awareness.” —Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men

“Girl on Girl’s greatest gift is its insistence on treating some of culture’s longest-standing punchlines—porn girls, reality stars, gossipmongers, self-mythologizers—with the seriousness they deserve, interrogating them both as the products of their circumstances and as a material basis for the new world in which we live. The result is dizzying, engrossing, sometimes nauseating; an ambitious modern history of public-facing womanhood that manages to make the senselessness and horror of our current moment feel eminently comprehensible.” —Rayne Fisher-Quann, writer of the blog and newsletter Internet Princess Expand reviews