Girl on Girl

Reviews

“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 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 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

“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