Girl on Girl

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What to expect

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025
A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2025

'Essential reading' Irish Independent

'Fascinating and powerfully argued' Daily Telegraph

'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

Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and TikTok trad-wives are on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong?

Despite decades of progress, the gains of the feminist movement feel more fragile than ever. But as Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert points out, this is not a unique moment. Feminism felt just as fragmented in the early 2000s, when the momentum of third-wave feminists and riot grrrls was squashed by lad culture and the commodification of Girl Power.

Casting her eye across pop culture of the past thirty years - from Madonna, the Spice Girls and the Kardashians, to MySpace, #GirlBoss and Real Housewives - Sophie Gilbert reveals a toxic pattern of progress and misogynistic backlash. Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has shaped and warped women's relationships with themselves and other women.

We cannot move forward without fully reckoning with the ways pop culture has defined us - this book shows us how.

'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' HARPER'S BAZAAR

'A book that will make you think, and want to discuss' GLAMOUR

'Blistering' NEW YORK TIMES

Critics Review

Landmark feminist non-fiction
Stylist
A sharp, insightful analysis of how media and pop culture have shaped how women view themselves and each other
Marie Claire
Gilbert unmasks the collective regression that continues to influence our views on misogyny, feminism and womanhood today
Harper's Bazaar
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
A carefully buttressed and sharply written analysis that takes into account a dizzying number of cultural products and characters . . . 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
Kirkus
With panache, wit, and brilliance, Sophie Gilbert's GIRL ON GIRL offers compelling analyses of how mass culture has diluted and tainted feminism, even managing to turn women against each other and ourselves. 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
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 Body Work and Girlhood
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
Triumphant . . . a tour de force of cultural criticism
Publishers Weekly
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 Internet Princess
Important . . . A detailed analysis on why the feminist movement, through the gaze of pop culture, feels more fragile than ever . . . Gilbert is excellent on the way porn has seeped its way into today's culture
Irish Independent
Smart and riveting . . . [Gilbert is] a kind of Lionel Trilling for the TikTok generation
Vogue
Gilbert's book has pried open a feminist door that felt long slammed shut
Slate
Wide-ranging and incisive
Spectator
Incredibly informed and totally fascinating
Citizen Femme

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