Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

The ideologies of third-wave feminism provide the foundation for the arguments Gilbert presents in Girl on Girl. Third-wave feminism, a movement that began in the 1990s in which “women’s rights activists longed for a movement that continued the work of their predecessors” in the first and second wave feminist movements, but expanded their focus to be “inclusive of the various challenges women from different races, classes, and gender identities were facing” (Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Feminism: The Third Wave.” National Women’s History Museum, 2020). Scholars attribute the start of the movement, led by notable feminist activists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Kathleen Hanna, Judith Butler, and Rebecca Walker, to the Anita Hill hearings in 1991, in which a lawyer named Anita Hill testified against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, accusing him of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual advances in the workplace. Despite Hill’s three-day testimony, Thomas was still confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. This issue launched a significant uproar from Black women and feminist groups. Rebecca Walker, daughter of notable second-wave feminist Alice Walker, is believed to have coined the term in her 1992 article for Ms. Magazine titled, “Becoming the Third Wave.” (Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms., Jan.-Feb. 1992, pp. 39-41). 

The concurrent riot grrrl era of the 1990s, which combined elements of punk culture, “politics, feminism, and style,” also remains emblematic of third-wave feminism. The riot grrrl movement was motivated by the work of the punk band Bikini Kill and its lead singer, Kathleen Hanna. It began as a reaction to sexism in the music industry and spread because of its intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw “to show how someone’s various identities […] overlap to influence how they are treated” (Alexander). Discussions of intersectionality pervaded third-wave feminist writing, music, art, and theory. The work of riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill inspired riot grrrl zines, which promoted similar third-wave feminist activism. For example, Bikini Kill coined the Girl Power slogan to empower young women. Girl Power encapsulated the movement’s political focus on fighting for women who rebelled against discriminatory stereotypes and objectifying pop cultural representations.

Some historians and scholars assert that third-wave feminism ended as the 1990s shifted into the 2000s, while others assert that the third wave is ongoing. In Girl on Girl, Gilbert explores how third-wave feminism evolved into and immediately begot postfeminism. Postfeminism, a term explored in Susan Faludi’s 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women, refers to the assumption that feminism’s goals have now been largely accomplished—and that women can now do, think, speak, and behave however they want without judgment. Postfeminism lacks the activist and social justice bent of third-wave feminism. In Girl on Girl, Gilbert examines postfeminism’s dilution of essential third-wave ideas—for example, the ways popular culture diluted the Girl Power slogan and other riot grrrl ideals for monetary gain. Gilbert’s text actively interrogates the progression from the third-wave feminist activism of the 1990s to what she sees as abject cruelty toward women in the 2000s.

Gilbert also incorporates allusions to many notable third-wave thinkers, figures, and artists throughout her text. Such references reinforce the disparity between 1990s feminist culture and 2000s postfeminist culture. Gilbert creates space for analyzing the third wave and tracing its influence throughout the decades to follow. Girl on Girl is in conversation with other feminist works and contemporary analyses of third-wave feminism, including Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Faludi’s Backlash.