Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert review – how pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves
The Pulitzer-nominated journalist recounts how modern misogyny has been shaped by a mass culture attuned to male desire and all-pervasive pornographyIn 2021, JD Vance told Fox News that senior Democrat women were just “childless cat ladies”, lacking cultural or social value compared with their married and procreating counterparts. When Taylor Swift looked down the barrel of this insult with a post on Instagram showing her posing with beloved feline Benjamin Button (from Time magazine’s photoshoot naming her 2023’s person of the year), she embraced the role of killjoy, rejecting Vance’s attempt to divide women. But even this gesture of defiance and solidarity was not enough to push back the red tide of misogyny and corruption: Trump was elected to a second term, the US was denied a female leader, and millions of women held their breath.When Sophie Gilbert, a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and critic at the Atlantic, was writing Girl on Girl, the 2025 Trump administration was just a worrying possibility. But Gilbert’s account of women’s degradation since the early 90s through pop culture sounds a crescendo of doom towards this present moment. With what she calls a “wry nod” to lesbian porn, you’d be forgiven for concluding from her title that Gilbert thinks women are the problem. But it’s the patriarchy, stupid. Continue reading...
