Books
Recent reads & thoughts about them
Books
(It’s arguable that we could understand the institution of celebrity itself as similarly suspicious: despite the prevailing liberalism of Hollywood, the values of celebrity—visibility, performance, aspiration, extreme physical beauty—promote an approach to womanhood that relies on individual exceptionalism in an inherently conservative way.)
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Analyzing sexism through female celebrities is a catnip pedagogical method: it takes a beloved cultural pastime (calculating the exact worth of a woman) and lends it progressive political import.
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert
“how pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves”
1990s new decade of sexual liberation- where looking was sanctioned as it was so much safer than touching (aids epidemic influence on culture, music etc).
But act of looking requires object & that object was women
Riot girl v spice girls (woman making their
Earth, Fire, Water & Air by John Boyne
Irish novelist and writer
rich ex-wife of bureaucrat (who was found guilty of sexually assaulting young women in the Swimming Federation he chaired)
she goes to an island off the mainland of Ireland, stays in a cottage with no technology to get away from the story
two daughters - one committed suicide due
Earth: reminds me of Fiona Mallet - boys joke that they wish it was them, but in fact just because it is a women does not mean it is not traumatising. Many victims of Fiona were scarred for life. Similarly, in this book, one of the boys she assaults tries to commit suicide. Interesting take on side of story not often told.
Ideas related to this collection