How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
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Starred review from March 1, 2025
How the last three decades of movies, music, and media have written the story for women. In a carefully buttressed and sharply written analysis that takes into account a dizzying number of cultural products and characters, Gilbert tries to understand how we got where we are today, a moment when the undeniable increase in women's power meets the repeal ofRoe v. Wade and the reelection of Donald Trump. If we can see what went wrong, theAtlantic staff writer says, perhaps "we can conceive of a more powerful way forward." As she considers topics ranging from the Spice Girls to Nora Ephron to Paris and Perez Hilton, fromAmerican Pie toAwkward Black Girl, from Sheryl Sandberg to Sheila Heti to Kim Kardashian, she sees that "so much of what I was trying to figure out kept coming back to porn." Insights of that sort come fast and bright, big and small: "I've always wondered why people diminish girlhood as somehow cosseted or twee, when the reality of coming-of-age as a young woman is so raw, filled with emotional violence and literal blood." "Movies in the aughts [the decade ofShallow Hal andKnocked Up]hated women." "Why is male honesty in art seen as brave while female honesty is so repellent?" The heroes of her account are sometimes unexpected, Taylor Swift and Instagram among them. Her exploration of torture porn and its connection to Abu Ghraib is not for the fainthearted. (If you've never heard of a movie calledHostel, consider yourself lucky.) Truly, 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. But brace yourself--it ain't pretty.
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Starred review from May 30, 2025
In this incisive and witty critique of pop culture in the aughts, Gilbert (Pulitzer Prize finalist and staff writer at The Atlantic) deconstructs the phenomenon of postfeminism by examining cultural trends across film, music, reality television, and more. From the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s to the 2024 presidential election, the book traces the pernicious cultural shift in the ideals of womanhood. Keen analyses of 2000s touchstones, such as Spice Girls mania, the public evisceration of Britney Spears, and the proliferation of teen sex comedies, coalesce into a scathing indictment of the porn industry. Thoroughly researched and superbly written, Gilbert's book makes a convincing case for how the mainstream infiltration of pornography normalized the hyper-sexualization and infantilization of women. The work's chronological organization allows the reader to clearly visualize historical trends and understand the connections between culture and women's agency. This sharp and entertaining delve into the grim side of 2000s nostalgia will appeal to many Millennial readers and is an important work that contextualizes the systemic misogyny that remains pervasive to this day. VERDICT An excellent addition to any nonfiction collection, this book offers a fresh perspective on what happened to feminism in the aughts.--Mia Wilson
Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.