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

The term Girl Power was coined by Tobi Vail, the drummer of the 1990s punk band Bikini Kill. The band’s lead singer, Kathleen Hanna, was at the forefront of the riot grrrl scene and wanted to use her work to promote feminist psychologies like those of Carol Gilligan. With Vail’s help, she sought to promote a version of femininity and womanhood that subverted cultural expectations; the result was Girl Power. Initially, Girl Power culture was an “intensely, intentionally political” (6) ideology that embodied “punk’s rage through lived experience, demanding more space and respect for women” (6-7). Over time, however, the ideology was diluted by postfeminist ideals. The Spice Girls, Gilbert argues, co-opted the term and used it to rationalize their exhibitionist bent. The more celebrities or brands who exploited the Girl Power terminology in the 2000s, Gilbert holds, the less substance the 1990s punk idea had.

The male gaze is a phenomenon coined by the feminist theorist Laura Mulvey. The term first appeared in Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” published in 1975. Mulvey defined the male gaze as the act of representing women in the arts from the point of view of the white, heterosexual male viewer. Mulvey’s original idea was supported by research and study beginning with representations of women in Renaissance art and continuing to the modern era. The term is a crucial facet of feminist thought, but has become embedded in the contemporary zeitgeist, too. In Girl on Girl, Gilbert explores how women have been culturally conditioned to conduct themselves, make art, and tailor their sexual preferences and self-expression according to the male gaze.

New Traditionalism is an ideology that originated from a cultural anxiety surrounding the fear of sex. This school of thought both believed that sex was physically dangerous and “preached a revival of old-fashioned family values, where women went home and stayed there” (3). Gilbert references how New Traditionalist ideas filtered through the predominant culture throughout the aughts—ultimately leading to the emergence of tradwives on social media. New Traditionalists across the media tout food writer and journalist Nigella Lawson’s notions that women “don’t want to feel like a postmodern, post-feminist overstretched woman […] but a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeg fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake” (95). New Traditionalism promotes a more glamorous version of marriage, maternity, and domesticity to market and sell traditional values to young women. This ideology is a reaction to more experimental and rebellious strides toward feminist progress, Gilbert holds.