GIRL ON GIRL

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 of Roe v. Wade and the reelection of Donald Trump. If we can see what went wrong, the Atlantic 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, from American Pie to Awkward 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 of Shallow Hal and Knocked 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 called Hostel, 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.