
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
Hardcover
General SociologyWomen's Studies
Publisher Price: $30.00
ISBN13: 9780593656297
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: Apr 29 2025
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.12
Height: 1.29 Width: 6.38 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture
What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement's power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress.
Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and riot grrrl feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. 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. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren't. Gilbert tracks many of the period's dominant themes back to the rise of internet porn, which gained widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness.
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. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and continues to shape our world today.
Also from
Gilbert, Sophie
Also in
Women's Studies
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Hayes, Kelly
Kaba, Mariame
Paperback
Come as You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life
Nagoski, Emily
Paperback
Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All
Bates, Laura
Paperback
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola
Paperback
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola
Paperback
The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better
Winthrop, Rebecca
Anderson, Jenny
Hardcover
Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A Sister's Search for Justice
Rivera Garza, Cristina
Paperback
Ditch the Ditty: Doing What Matters Instead of Doing It All
Novotny, Miriam
Godwin, Lindsey
McGuigan, Molly
Paperback
It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know about Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)
Tang, Karen
Hardcover
Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us about the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
Doucleff, Michaeleen
Paperback
I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
MacNicol, Glynnis
Hardcover
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
Serano, Julia
Paperback
Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us
Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, Prisca
Hardcover
In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial
Chollet, Mona
Paperback
The Woman They Could Not Silence: The Shocking Story of a Woman Who Dared to Fight Back
Moore, Kate
Paperback
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet
Thomas, Leah
Hardcover
All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us about Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
Comen, Elizabeth
Hardcover
The Women's History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years
Miles, Rosalind
Paperback
Pcos SOS: A Gynecologist's Lifeline To Naturally Restore Your Rhythms, Hormones, and Happiness
Perella, Alexis
Gersh, Felice
Paperback
Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
Krefft, Vanda
Hardcover
If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-Changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging
Blackie, Sharon
Paperback
Selling Sexy: Victoria's Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon
Sherman, Lauren
Fernandez, Chantal
Hardcover
I'll Never Call Him Dad Again: Turning Our Family Trauma of Sexual Assault and Chemical Submission Into a Collective Fight
Darian, Caroline
Paperback
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity
Burke Harris, Nadine
Paperback
No Human Involved: The Serial Murder of Black Women and Girls and the Deadly Cost of Police Indifference
Neely, Cheryl L.
Hardcover
On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
Loehnen, Elise
Hardcover
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color
Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, Prisca
Paperback
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
Serano, Julia
Paperback
Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life
Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan
Paperback
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials
Roach, Marilynne K.
Paperback
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence
Ghodsee, Kristen R.
Paperback
White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How to Do Better
Rao, Saira
Jackson, Regina
Paperback
Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation
Brown, Adrienne Maree
Paperback
The Six: The Extraordinary Story of the Grit and Daring of America's First Women Astronauts
Grush, Loren
Paperback
Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education
Hau, Isabelle C.
Hardcover
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
Sisson, Gretchen
Hardcover
White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change
Gross, Amanda K.
Paperback
A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting
Johnston, Casey
Hardcover
I'm Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America
Little, Rebecca
Long, Colleen
Hardcover
Reproductive Rites: The Real-Life Witches and Witch Hunts in the Centuries-Long Fight for Abortion
Saint Thomas, Sophie
Paperback
Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts
Thornton, Sarah
Hardcover
Mujeres Que Corren Con los Lobos: Mitos y Cuentos del Arquetipo de la Mujer Salvaje = Women Who Run with the Wolves
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola
Paperback
Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
Page, Cara
Woodland, Erica
Paperback
The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence
Hakim, Jamie
The Care Collective
Chatzidakis, Andreas
Paperback
I'm Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America
Long, Colleen
Little, Rebecca
Paperback
Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior
Kamath, Ambika
Packer, Melina
Paperback
Dear White Woman, Dear Black Woman: A Tapestry of Letters for Hope and Healing
T. Hampton Smith, Bonita
Paperback
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola
Hardcover