'Girl on Girl' explores pop culture's impact on women

Transcript

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John Yang: After decades of political and social progress, women’s rights are now the subject of renewed political debate and policy change amid a seemingly broader backlash against the goals of modern feminism. Ali Rogin spoke with Atlantic staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert about her new book, “Girl on Girl,” which argues that pop culture of the 90s and early 2000s may have set back a generation of women.

Ali Rogin: So, Sophie, obviously these days, women’s rights are a huge part of the political conversation in the United States. So with everything that’s going on right now, why look back at this period in the recent history of pop culture?

Sophie Gilbert, Author, “Girl on Girl”: I think because to me, it felt like it might all be connected, particularly after Roe v. Wade was overturned. I just felt like I couldn’t understand what had happened, certainly to feminism, but also to women in culture during my lifetime. And there were people who were passing the politics at that moment. But it felt like it might make sense to me as a critic to go back and look at the culture of the moment that shaped my generation and also the generation that came after.

Ali Rogin: And the term feminism, of course, through the decades, has meant different things to different people. But I’d like you to tell us about how the word and the idea of feminism evolved during this particular period.

Sophie Gilbert: I’ve always understood feminism personally just to mean, do you believe that women are equal human beings, and do you believe that they should have equal rights to and society under the law? And that seems kind of simple to me, but I’ve understood through my research, it’s not, you know, it’s not always been so simple.

One of the questions I wanted to understand in my book was how I think music is a useful example, how in the music of the 1990s, went from this really kind of ferocious activist moment of the early 90s, so many women in rock and roll making really impassioned music about, you know, about womanhood, about subjects like sexual assault, really political music in lots of ways, how went from that energy to pop stars of the 2000s who were sort of very highly sexualized, didn’t really speak up for themselves, weren’t allowed to in many ways, and who then were really targeted by media across the course of the 2000s, sort of wanting to understand how that shift happened.

It also came to tell me a little bit about what happened in feminism during the 90s as well. And this shift from third wave feminism at the beginning of the 90s and things like the Year of the Woman and Anita Hill’s Senate testimony towards post feminism, which was less an ideology, I would say, than a kind of trend in media that told women that they’d achieved everything they ever needed to, that there was no longer any point in protesting or in activism. They should just go out and celebrate all the freedoms that they’d achieved.

And often that meant spending money, which is why I think it was appealing to lots of people. But that shift from third wave feminism to post feminism seemed to really play out in the culture of the 90s in ways that profoundly impacted what happened after.

Ali Rogin: There seems to be a certain pattern throughout the book that you identify where you start in the earlier part of this era with these very powerful expressions of female self-actualization. You have the riot girl movement, who came up with girl power, which then got kind of appropriated by the commercial forces behind the Spice Girls. And then in the fashion world, you had these Amazonian supermodels who exuded presence, who later got replaced by these very waifish young models. Is that a pattern?

Sophie Gilbert: It was 100 percent a pattern. I think throughout the culture of the 90s, the shift away from women, and certainly strong, powerful women who were really a presence in media at the beginning of the decade towards girls. I think you can see it in music, as he said, but in fashion as well, you had this shift away from the supermodels, the Cindy Crawfords and the Naomi Campbells, who worked very much as a unit, and they fought for each other and they were paid very well.

And I think because of that, the designers got frustrate and they felt that the models were overshadowing the clothes. And so you can see this very intentional shift in fashion towards the more waifish models that came later in the 90s, the Kate Mosses, you know, the rise of heroin chic, and this shift towards younger women who sort of didn’t have the same energy and couldn’t quite stand up for themselves in the same way.

Ali Rogin: Reading this book, you kind of want to come to the end of it and think, oh, thank God, that’s over. But it doesn’t really feel like it’s over, does it?

Sophie Gilbert: Yeah, there is so much that unfortunately reminds me of the 2000s now. And obviously there’s a real element of outrageous and cruel and dehumanizing misogyny in a lot of the internet now. And that part, I think, is very gloomy to think about.

But at the same time, when I look at the culture that’s being made now, when I look at the movies and the television and the books being written and the art and the voices throughout media, there is so much more about women than there was back then. There are so many more women making art, certainly full stop. And so, yes, these elements of misogyny are still present, but they’re not being reiterated by the culture at large. And so that’s the thing that I think I cling to.

Ali Rogin: The book is “Girl on Girl.” Sophie Gilbert, thank you so much.

Sophie Gilbert: Thank you so much for having me.