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The History of Misogyny in Pop Culture: Our Thoughts on Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert

Episode Notes

This week, Elizabeth Rose Quinn and I discuss revelations we had while reading Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Each Other by Sophie Gilbert.

Listen to hear about:

• How Sophie Gilbert's Girl on Girl traces a throughline from the 1990s to today, revealing how pop culture, celebrity media, and entertainment industries shaped modern misogyny and women's relationships with each other.
• A discussion of the "post-privacy era," from Pamela Anderson's stolen sex tape to social media, influencer culture, and the normalization of treating women's lives and bodies as public property.
• Why movements that begin as authentic expressions of female empowerment—like Riot Grrrl and "girl power"—often get repackaged, commercialized, and stripped of their original political meaning.
• An exploration of reality TV, celebrity culture, diet culture, and the male gaze—and how they continue to influence the way women are expected to look, behave, and present themselves.
• Misogyny as a cultural system: why women are often disbelieved, how abuse tactics show up in institutions and media, and what happens when we stop viewing these incidents as isolated events and start seeing the larger pattern.