Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert: A Review That Will Make You Furious

Read time: 5 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio | 📢 Narrated by Sophie Gilbert
⏱ Duration: 9 hours | Genre: Non Fiction
🏷️ Publisher: Books on Tape / Penguin Press

Book Blurb:

Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert traces how the energy of third-wave feminism collapsed, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, into a period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization of women and girls. Moving across music, film, television, fashion, and tabloid journalism, she examines the era’s most revealing cultural artifacts, from Victoria’s Secret ads to explicit music videos to an internet culture that turned vicious toward women in the spotlight. Gilbert traces much of it back to the explosion of internet porn and its lasting grip on our collective consciousness. The result is a blistering account of a misogyny we’re still living inside of.

Let’s talk about the book:

This was one disturbingly real book. Kudos to Sophie Gilbert for writing it. None of what’s mentioned here is news to me, nor should it be for any of us. But the way our mind works, we conveniently ignore these topics and move on to ensure our lives are comfortable. Sophie Gilbert ensures we are not comfortable with a facade of truth. She ensures we are faced with the reality and are forced to think and ponder about it.

Right from the way clothes on girls, as young as toddlers, are sexualized, to the way comments are made in joke but always about a woman’s or girl’s body, or about women or girls in general, it’s all there. Consent is still a topic women have to fight for, and not a right, even after all these years of talking about it. It is insane that this is the world we live in, where education and science have reached the moon but the female species of mankind is still struggling for a right to exist.

From the porn industry to corporate culture, women are still fighting for equal rights. And if, by some grace, women do reach some new heights, there are comments and questions she has to endure that a man in the same position would never have to. Be it a boss or a mother, there’s always some right a woman has to ask for apologetically, while a man would demand or just get it, no questions asked.

Sophie Gilbert calls out patriarchy bluntly. When will we be rid of this system, where the only reason women are suppressed is because of male ego and their love for power?

Would I recommend it?

Without hesitation, yes. This book made me uncomfortable in the best way possible, the way a good gut-punch does when you know you needed it. Gilbert doesn’t let anyone off easy… not the industries, not the culture, not us for looking away. If you’ve ever wondered how we got HERE, this is essential reading. Read it. Sit with it. Then get angry.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

5 Book Recommendations

• Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why by Sady Doyle — If Gilbert’s chapters on tabloid culture hit hard, this one goes deeper into exactly how the media builds up famous women just to tear them apart, from Britney to Amy Winehouse to Hillary Clinton.

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• Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis — A great companion piece if you want the longer historical arc behind the collapse Gilbert describes, told through the “difficult,” inconvenient women feminism tends to forget.

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• The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf — The book that laid the groundwork for a lot of what Gilbert examines. Read this if you want to understand where the unattainable beauty standards she writes about actually came from.

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• Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi — For the reader who wants to understand the reactionary current Gilbert keeps circling back to, this is the definitive book on how progress for women gets quietly undone.

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• Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher — Pairs well with Gilbert’s chapters on the infantilization and sexualization of young girls specifically, looking at what all of this does to girls’ psychology as they grow up inside it.

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When did you stop looking away?

Was there a moment growing up when you noticed the double standard and just… accepted it as normal? Tell me in the comments, I want to know I’m not alone in this.

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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