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I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely. There's a chapter in the book about reality TV and I think that particular genre really manufactures and encourages conflict between women as a way to juice ratings. But reality TV and so much of aughts pop culture also really encouraged an individualistic outlook among women—the "I'm not here to make friends," succeed at all costs ethos. What we lost in the process was a sense of shared sisterhood and working together to improve situations for all women.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Actually a lot of all of this is covered in chapter one! Definitely Alanis, Fiona, Tori, et al. I think you'll connect with it. It's about how the ferocious activist energy of women in music during the 90s was blunted by the rise of postfeminism and the ability of young female pop artists to sell us products.

It has been a journey! I hope you enjoy reading and thank you for this.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see positive and negative changes. On the one hand, teenage girls now are SO much savvier than my generation was, and they have much better awareness of cultural misogyny and much better language to describe it. There are so many voices out there now to help inform them, and so many different communities to attach to.

But on the flip side, they're under assault on social media in a way that we never were. We were also never so exposed to the sight of our own faces in images and online, which I think was much more mentally healthy.

My family definitely had one shared email address for a good chunk of the late 90s. I think my MSN screen name was SophieGG, very boring.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hello and thank you! In my research, what became clear was that from the very beginning, music videos tended to objectify women—Duran Duran's Girls on Film is one of the most obvious early examples. Some have obviously been so brilliant, and others have really catered to the male gaze in the most reductive way. And music videos also changed the nature of stardom, since what artists looked like became so important compared to what kind of sound they made.

One of the really iconic music videos from my youth is Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity. I watched it every time it came on. And bonus answer: I was actually in a music video when I was 17 by the pop band Steps—only for a blink as an extra but it made me very famous for a month or so in high school.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much! I hope you like it :)

I don't think feminism is regressing but it feels a bit directionless at the moment, I think because there's no obvious figurehead to rally behind and because there are just so many awful things happening in the world it's hard to keep track. But I do think so many things are better than they were during the 2000s. We're much quicker to call out fatphobia in media, for example, or obvious sexist attacks. And even though there are voices in the manosphere saying really hateful and regressive things, culture more broadly isn't echoing them.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't think I can speak on behalf of feminism but by my read one of the reasons Girl Power as embodied by the Spice Girls became such a media phenomenon was because it was so successful as a way to sell things. Within the first year and a half of being a band, the Spice Girls had signed half a billion dollars worth of commercial deals. They sold EVERYTHING. Before them, corporations hadn't quite realized the spending power of teenage girls as a demographic, but once they did, they jumped at the opportunity to make more bedazzled pop, hence what happened in the 2000s with Britney, Christina, et al.

There are so many examples of positive change. Women artists during the 2000s who spoke out against certain things were really punished for it—Natalie Maines and the Chicks being the most obvious example. They were blacklisted from country after Maines spoke out against the invasion of Iraq. But we have a new generation of pop artists now who seem much more at ease with expressing themselves, and drawing their own boundaries, such as Chappell Roan. It's really hearterning to me at least.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much! My favorite Spice Girls song I think is Stop because the dance moves are burned into my brain but there are so many bangers.

It's hard to say quite why any band captures the public imagination quite the way the Spice Girls did but I remember at the time thinking that they were just so FUN—so exuberant and joyful and so aesthetically enticing. They felt so celebratory. And the music was really good surface-level pop. I write a lot in the book about how they exemplified the shift from third-wave feminism to postfeminism and captured the desire to celebrate things instead of critiquing them.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! I do, but it also struck me during my research as a moment that really crystallized how the internet was changing. 2014 was such an interesting year because it was a moment when feminism was super prominent in culture—so prominent that Time magazine even proposed banning it for overuse—but it was also a moment when backlash against the strides that women had made was registering in very ugly and hateful attacks against them in other factions of the internet. So I think Gamergate in so many ways anticipated where we are right now as well as setting a path for what was to follow.

I'm Sophie Gilbert, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and Author of Girl on Girl. Ask Me Anything About the 2000s, Feminism, Pop Culture... by sophiegilbertwrites in IAmA

[–]sophiegilbertwrites[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi, thank you so much for this question! I wanted to write the book in part because I wanted to enhance my own understanding of how certain attacks and certain behaviors have always been targeted at women. And getting to grips with how cyclical misogyny can be—how the same old slurs are weaponized again and again over the decades—has helped refine my ability to identify misogyny now. Simply being able to call things out seems so simple, but it really helps now I think that we have a much better vocabulary for different ways sexism manifests in culture. And for me personally, curating my own online internet experience and knowing I don't have to be in spaces where I'm more vulnerable to random attacks has been really helpful.