Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

“Searing . . . There were several passages in Gilbert’s blistering, sobering book Girl on Girl that challenged my selective nostalgia, making me wince. If you too came of age around the late 1990s and early aughts, prepare to have the balloon string of sentimentality pried from your grip. The party’s over. It’s been over . . . Her book is a course correction of sorts, taking a holistic tack to explain our current sociopolitical reality: one in which women’s hard-fought gains are quickly eroding, and men and boys are in crisis . . . Across 10 rigorously researched but never stuffy chapters, Gilbert has compiled perhaps the first comprehensive examination of turn-of-the-millennium mainstream, cool-kid trends and ephemera, and how they were largely molded by those in power to sell a generation of girls and young women reality-warping lies . . . Gilbert isn’t concerned with softening the blow. Instead, she’s intent on snapping millennials out of any instinct to idealize the decades that shaped us—even if that awareness stings.” —New York Times

“So clear-eyed that it’s startling . . . Girl on Girl covers how American culture writ large treated women from the 1990s to the 2010s. It’s to Gilbert’s credit that she makes a cohesive history emerge from this morass of references . . . Her organization is as confident and nimble as her arguments . . . The informed and persuasive essays in Girl on Girl stand alone, even as they build on one another. A chapter on the early years of reality television is exceptional . . . This ground is well-trod, but rarely trod so well . . . Gilbert is a critic skilled in the art of seeing close-up and faraway all at once, a Vertigo effect of cultural observation. Girl on Girl doesn’t settle into outrage or pity, but instead offers a clear-eyed, unblinking stare that conveys one thing: I see what you’re doing.” —The Washington Post

“Gilbert, a staff writer at the Atlantic, meticulously documents the explosion of highly sexualized content in mainstream American culture . . . A reminder of where we come from as a culture, and a reinvigorating exhortation not to return there.” —Los Angeles Times

“Gilbert has earned a National Magazine Award and a spot on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist for her work as a critic with The Atlantic. In Girl on Girl, her first book-length work, Gilbert trains her gimlet eye on popular culture in the past 30 years and the ways that its pervasive images “calibrated to male desire” have reduced, distorted and ultimately undermined the promises of feminism.” —NPR.org

“Gilbert’s is the first book I’ve read that takes on porn and porn culture with the same feminist skepticism that we’ve long applied to all other forms of mass media . . . Or, I should say, it’s the first book on the matter that seems to be widely resonating with the women who lived through it . . . It’s a conversation that is well overdue . . . Gilbert’s book has pried open a feminist door that felt long slammed shut . . . Thank goodness. Here’s hoping other feminists will join in.” —Slate

“Gilbert paints a clear and narrative odyssey of 21st-century feminism and how society has regressed toward the hyper-objectification, sexualization and infantilization of women.” —USA Today

“Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more . . . The result is a devastating portrait of a time when a distinctly American blend of excess, materialism, and power worship collided with the culture’s reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents.” —Daily Kos

“Chapter by chapter, Gilbert methodically shows how the backlash against second- and third-wave and riot grrrl feminism fueled the rise of incel culture, trad wives, the stay-at-home girlfriends on TikTok, and much more. There is a lot to unpack here, but it is well worth the effort.” —AP

“In exploring the years that saw millennial feminism curdle into a wan tool of capitalism (lean in, girlboss!), the book is somehow very entertaining and even energizing, transforming a dismal history into something like a rallying cry.” —Boston Globe

“Gilbert is one of my favorite writers and thinkers, particularly on the subjects of gender and womanhood—and her debut book, which dissects three decades of pop culture through a feminist lens, is sure to be one of the standouts of the year.” —The Millions

“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