Culture Study Podcast - How 2000s Culture Messed Us Up

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00:00:45.560 the show. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:00:55.900 I'm Sophie Gilbert. I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic, and I'm the author of Girl on Girl,

00:01:00.160 How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves.

00:01:03.280 In the introduction to Girl on Girl, you talk about three cultural events that happened in 1999,

00:01:08.540 when you were 16 and I was, I think, 17, so right around the same time, that seemed to define what

00:01:16.200 it meant to be a woman, especially where we were growing up. Can you talk about those events and

00:01:21.500 what you remember from them yeah there's um the first one is obviously Britney Spears on the cover

00:01:28.900 of Rolling Stone I think she was 17 at the time in a photo shot by David LaChapelle everyone will

00:01:34.240 know it when they see it but it's the photo where she's in a pink and black polka dot bra she one

00:01:39.220 hand she's holding a phone she's talking the phone the other hand she's clutching a Teletubby doll

00:01:42.860 um just very rich rich image in so many ways yeah um a lot of people have since told me that

00:01:50.160 the moment baby one more time came out was the moment they saw their childhood as ending so i've

00:01:54.840 sort of come to see this this picture is fraught in in lots of ways um but that's one another was

00:02:01.860 the release of the movie american beauty which um i saw in theaters at the time thought was this

00:02:07.320 incredibly artistic and like oh me too achievement yeah oh my gosh art cinema yeah the roses the

00:02:15.120 the bag the bag floating in the wind um so but i realize now now i'm in my 40s that it's a movie

00:02:22.280 about a middle-aged man's obsessive sexual fixation on his teenage daughter's best friend

00:02:26.020 which the movie it does dress up as this like very opulent kind of like i said very aesthetic

00:02:31.080 the rose petals it really like presents mini savari i think in the book i describe it as an

00:02:35.780 eroticized floral centerpiece um but yeah like weird weird film and also i've come to think 0.97

00:02:42.580 recently about annette benning's character and how much uh lester hates his wife who's this like

00:02:47.320 ambitious careerist woman who's really doing her best in so many ways right and how i think the

00:02:54.060 viewer is taught to think about annette benning's character as well right like the the incredible

00:03:00.300 scene of her cleaning the apartment that she's showing the condo whatever um and how like it's

00:03:06.300 monstrous right when really it's i'm doing the best that i can to sell this house no absolutely

00:03:12.180 She's presented as this kind of like very hysterical, to use a loaded word, like very high strung, very sort of careerist monster who's endlessly ambitious and grasping and like really toxic to her husband who just wants to sell burgers and smoke weed and have a nice life and lust on this 16 year old.

00:03:30.100 I know you're like, chill out. 0.69

00:03:31.900 Wow. 1.00

00:03:32.960 What a bitch. 1.00

00:03:35.140 But it won five Oscars, including Best Picture. 0.99

00:03:37.680 So, yeah, it was very much accepted at the time as a great work of cinematic art.

00:03:44.880 And then there are two different versions.

00:03:47.760 One ran in the magazine and one ran in the book.

00:03:50.300 So are you thinking maybe of like the women on the Houses of Parliament or are you thinking of the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog?

00:03:57.700 So the version I read was in the book.

00:04:00.440 So that's so interesting. 0.98

00:04:02.520 That was too British. 1.00

00:04:03.760 Yeah, they had you change it.

00:04:05.000 Well, and that is interesting, too, because I think it's an important touchstone, cultural touchstone for you.

00:04:12.180 I had never heard of it, which that's stupid that I hadn't never heard of that.

00:04:16.300 But it's part of this larger like phalanx of things that are going on at the moment. 0.76

00:04:21.640 Yeah. So I grew up in the UK and I grew up watching children's television as children are what to do.

00:04:27.020 And there was a presenter called Gail Porter, who I think was a few years older than me, who was like very bubbly, very sweet Scottish.

00:04:34.240 I'd kind of grown up watching her. And she, I think, was trying to make the transition into a grown up career, as lots of Disney stars do in the US.

00:04:43.260 And one of the things that she did to kind of facilitate this transition was to pose naked for a men's magazine.

00:04:49.020 It was called For Him magazine in the UK. And it wasn't like it wasn't a very graphic picture.

00:04:54.700 I think she was turned away from the camera. You could see her butt. You couldn't see much else. 0.98

00:04:59.660 but it was clear that she was naked and the magazine without her knowledge or consent

00:05:04.860 projected a 50 foot version of the picture onto the houses of parliament which is obviously where

00:05:09.460 our government sits in London and it was seen as this like very hilarious stunt I think in the

00:05:15.420 media she I think was devastated by it and it's only really again more recently that I've come to

00:05:21.160 see sort of the symbolism of projecting it onto the houses of parliament where fewer than one in

00:05:26.080 three members of parliament were women at the time and really like asserting to us as women

00:05:30.500 and girls at the time like you belong in soft focus photo shoots not inside this building making

00:05:35.080 laws yeah and then the version in the excerpt that ran for in it ran in the atlantic right yeah 0.99

00:05:42.060 yeah um no that's what that's one of the perks of writing a book and working at a magazine is

00:05:50.200 Your excerpt gets to run there.

00:05:52.300 That's true.

00:05:52.980 But that included an Abercrombie & Fitch ad or just like the general – what was it in there?

00:06:00.320 So I have since gotten my hands on the catalog.

00:06:04.120 I ordered a $50 like very archival copy of it.

00:06:08.420 But it was the Abercrombie & Fitch holiday catalog that came out at the end of 1999.

00:06:14.080 And it was called Naughty or Nice.

00:06:15.360 and it uh was targeting i think abercrombie's customer base which is 13 to 18 year olds

00:06:21.700 and it featured but it was it is among the porniest things i've ever seen like it features

00:06:26.380 an interview with jenna jameson where uh the man interviewing her just harangues her to let him

00:06:32.720 touch her sexually throughout the interview it's really gross poor jenna um there's also an

00:06:38.080 interview with 17 year old lily savaisky who i think was um just coming out of eyes wide shut 0.83

00:06:43.160 at the time but it's it it describes her as a lolita like there's all this very sort of quest

00:06:48.800 leading questions about whether or not she's a bad girl it's just this really I kind of want to

00:06:53.460 write an essay just about this one yes like catalog Abercrombie catalog because it's just

00:06:57.860 such a rich text and you know I think these work so effectively because they're such vivid like

00:07:04.980 things that stick in your head especially for people our age but I think also if you were older

00:07:09.960 and you're witnessing this and you're like hmm what is going on here or if you're younger and

00:07:15.120 you see it from that remove of like oh I'm 11 and this is like what teens are interested in

00:07:21.440 then I should be interested in it but you do such a great job in the book of positioning this moment

00:07:29.320 and like the you know that the transition into the 2000s as reaping the wages of a lot of

00:07:35.500 complicated negotiations of feminism that were happening in the 90s we're going to get into all

00:07:43.240 of that and we have questions that specifically deal with that but I would love how did you become

00:07:46.980 convinced that you wanted to write a book about these issues a lot of things happened kind of all

00:07:52.900 in a row and my stories that I was writing for the Atlantic just ended up circling very similar

00:07:57.560 themes um I think obviously Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that felt really

00:08:03.360 shocking um to me at the time and me too happened a not a year later not quite a year later and it

00:08:11.440 made clear that despite the fact that we were I think constantly being told as women that we'd

00:08:16.440 made so much progress in the workplace and that we were doing so well and making great strides

00:08:19.700 it actually work was fairly awful still for lots of lots of women um COVID happened I had twins

00:08:27.500 in New York during COVID and like went through a profound identity crisis because I was really

00:08:35.260 like sleeping two hours a night and you lose your sanity I think when that happens and I couldn't

00:08:40.280 watch TV I couldn't read I couldn't sit through a movie I couldn't do anything I could like stare

00:08:45.700 at my phone for seconds at a time but that was it and I realized in the process when I went back to

00:08:50.400 work and I started like trying to put myself back together again like how much I'd constructed my

00:08:55.400 identity out of cultural works like which seems simple but it really kind of hit it home for me

00:09:00.960 I think and then after Roe was overturned I just realized that the progress that I had assumed

00:09:06.360 would be inevitable throughout my life was not inevitable in fact and for some reason everything

00:09:10.900 kept coming back to the 2000s for me and I wondered if I could go back and look at that era whether I

00:09:15.120 could make any of our recent history make sense. Yeah I think that the overturning of Roe was a

00:09:21.560 very startling point for a lot of people who thought okay well Trump happened and then we

00:09:26.900 had Me Too and then you know the the overturning of Roe also coincided with a lot of people who

00:09:33.160 were Me Too'd re-entering the marketplace right like like this idea that pushing back in that way

00:09:39.700 like pissed off a bunch of men and there's this attempt to re-inscribe patriarchy in really

00:09:43.480 like gross ways. Yeah 100% the backlash to Me Too was really instructive I think on that front

00:09:49.580 like the idea that women had gone too far by telling the truth of what had happened to them

00:09:53.380 was really like, well, no one think of the man. It was, yeah, it was very striking.

00:09:59.080 Yeah. And okay, I'm going to save this because I want to get into the questions because there's

00:10:02.580 going to, we're going to talk a lot about it. So we got, I told you this before we started

00:10:06.340 recording, we got spectacular questions. We always do, but we got particularly spectacular ones

00:10:12.160 because there are a lot of women who are approximately our age who listen to this show.

00:10:16.220 and I think a lot of us are grappling in the same way that you do in the book and in a way that I

00:10:22.640 think listeners you're going to find this book really compelling um I know a way that's difficult

00:10:30.420 to reconcile like how we participated in it right like it's not so easy as like looking back and be

00:10:38.880 like that was gross and at the time I also thought it was gross it was like no that was gross and at

00:10:43.880 the time i was kind of like huh fine this is how it is no that was the central question of the book

00:10:49.660 for me like i remembered i was working in restaurants when britney shaved her head and

00:10:53.140 my manager kept coming to get me to give me updates and like to bring me back to the office

00:10:56.300 so i could look at the computer and be like and it was like it was like entertainment it was it

00:11:00.280 was like this rolling soap opera with like the tiktok of updates and no part of me i think seemed

00:11:05.480 to see it as cruel that i was enjoying this woman's crisis yeah no i just like manically

00:11:10.820 refreshing Perez Hilton to see what was happening like I was studying it in quotes right like because

00:11:16.980 at that time I wasn't doing my master's and writing my thesis on celebrity gossip but at the same time

00:11:22.420 I was like this was a person and I think grappling with that participation is is important but also

00:11:28.400 difficult yeah so let's start with our first question this comes from Leah and it will help

00:11:34.640 us do a little bit of historical scene setting so maybe it's because I'm a little old for this time

00:11:39.980 period. I am the very eldest of millennials here. But for me, it's hard to separate the

00:11:44.820 representation of women in the pop culture of the 2000s from the gender politics of the 1990s.

00:11:50.360 As a woman who turned 18 in 1999, I spent my teenage years watching women and feminism

00:11:55.880 become a punchline again and again. Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, it's a very long list.

00:12:02.080 So at the turn of the millennium, I wasn't yet radicalized, that came later, 0.52

00:12:05.860 and I was pretty bought in on the message that women had it pretty good,

00:12:08.780 and that we should be glad for what we had and just be chill. 0.88

00:12:11.780 And it's hard not to think that that kind of attitude

00:12:14.080 set the stage for a lot of what followed

00:12:16.100 in terms of the representation of women in pop culture.

00:12:19.860 So I guess my question is,

00:12:21.300 what is the through line between the gender politics of the 1990s

00:12:24.820 and all its failings,

00:12:26.540 and the portrayals of and attitudes towards women

00:12:29.000 in the pop culture of the 2000s?

00:12:31.120 I think that Leah just set the prompt for your book.

00:12:35.920 It's literally like this is everything.

00:12:38.600 this is all of it i mean i i was in it was supposed to be a book about the 2000s and then

00:12:42.680 in all the research i did everything that was crucial to the period happened in the 90s like it

00:12:46.860 exactly it was just the decade that made it all made sense to me um first of all because

00:12:52.120 we were dealing with like the cultural anxiety about sex i think that came from aids from this

00:12:57.140 real health crisis this very like real like profound crisis that i think made people feel

00:13:03.960 very strange about sex and sexuality in lots of different ways and um but also because the 90s 0.69

00:13:09.380 were the decade where you had the shift from third wave feminism that was manifesting in the

00:13:14.120 beginning and the you know the riot girl movement and the activism of Anita Hill as Leah said and

00:13:19.240 the year of the women and like women running for office in record numbers and like lots of feminist

00:13:25.020 sitcoms I remember from growing up because I was raised by a single mother and I remember watching

00:13:29.020 like grace under fire and all these great sitcoms about like tough single single women raising their 0.76

00:13:34.420 kids kate and ali was another one or even like roseanne right like roseanne is a show that is

00:13:38.920 fun like it is a show about not taking shit from other people totally um but then by the end of

00:13:46.000 the decade you had this shift towards britney and christina and like super hyper sexualized 0.91

00:13:51.200 like teenage girls and i i wanted to know the three line really from like raya girl to that

00:13:56.760 movement and um so what was interesting and it was kind of devastating to me personally because

00:14:02.600 i was a huge fan was the gateway i think was the spice girls um because they really embodied

00:14:08.460 post-feminism um in so many ways post-feminism is a little bit tricky to understand because there

00:14:13.720 wasn't really anyone waving the flag for it i don't think it has totally like that's what i

00:14:17.440 used to always tell my students it's not like people were like i'm a post-feminist yeah but

00:14:22.880 we should define it because i think that it is one of those words that gets thrown around and is not

00:14:27.700 always well understood but like you said that's in part because it is difficult to define

00:14:33.380 yeah i mean i've come to see it sort of less as an ideology than as a trend in media to sell

00:14:40.820 things to people and what it did was to tell women over and over like feminism is no longer

00:14:45.580 necessary it's achieved everything it ever will women are free now they're doing great you're 0.75

00:14:50.220 making money go out and buy anything you want sleep with anyone you want wear anything you want 0.91

00:14:53.720 like we won't be scolding like those boring second waivers like do basically girls go live it up um 1.00

00:14:59.600 like i think a good post-feminist tv show is sex in the city a bridget jones alie mott beale or

00:15:04.420 you know post-feminist icons i yeah i think that they are like to me they are quintessentially

00:15:08.860 post-feminist the the first time i became acquainted with the term was my first semester

00:15:15.140 of graduate school when i was trying to figure out the star image of julia roberts and i encountered

00:15:20.800 all of this feminist like actual feminist second wave and third wave feminist scholarship

00:15:26.700 on pretty woman specifically which became this like within academic scholarship at the time

00:15:32.580 became this like how do we define post-feminism it's by talking about pretty woman and like none

00:15:39.160 of the capitalist norms have quite yet crystallized in the way that you see in say sex in the city

00:15:44.480 but you do have like the shopping scene which everyone remembers right and it's just like

00:15:50.520 sex is good as long as you're honest about it right um and and shopping is intertwined with

00:15:58.460 this understanding shopping and wealth and like and in consumption just broadly like

00:16:02.580 helps you become a princess who gets a fairy tale at the end yeah and it's very individualist i

00:16:08.500 think individualistic compared with say the more collective energy of like third wave feminism but

00:16:13.260 i think if you look at the slogan girl power and the way it was used by bikini kill who were using

00:16:18.720 it very intentionally to put two words together that people wouldn't normally associate girl and

00:16:22.620 power two words that no one would put together naturally and doing so in a way that was like

00:16:27.260 intentionally activist and really make like demanding change for women and girls in the

00:16:31.380 punk scene but also in their in their own lives like demanding ends to sexual assault

00:16:34.920 was this very creative very energetic very activist movement and then the spice girls

00:16:39.620 came along and they sort of appropriated the slogan girl power but the ways in which they

00:16:44.300 used it it didn't really mean anything anymore it was like very celebratory it was like woohoo

00:16:47.820 girl power um and the the energy of it i think in the intention was lost and that to me really

00:16:54.660 seemed to symbolize like the shift from third wave feminism to post-feminism and this shift from this

00:16:59.220 like intentional movement to a much more sort of celebratory and passive one and also i think

00:17:05.680 a lot of things that are happening with post-feminism share resemblance with post-modernism

00:17:11.360 in that it's this obsession with surfaces like there's a hollowing out of of any sort of like

00:17:18.060 larger meaning underneath so like you said like Spice Girls is about girl power but it's actually

00:17:23.940 about a set of outfits and people like having names for which one that they are right yeah like

00:17:30.020 identifying with one of the characters like sporty spice because she wears warm-up pants like that to

00:17:36.480 me and that that is somehow empowering um or just like equating visibility with power as well

00:17:44.560 yeah that was that was the thing that the rest of the 2000s would really be about like the

00:17:49.240 the power of what visibility could mean for women um and money of course was really important because

00:17:54.820 what i found out in my research was that the spice girls in their first year and a half as a band

00:17:58.820 made 500 million dollars worth of branding and marketing deals um and people realized like how

00:18:06.980 much money teenage girls had as a demographic like because they had babysitting jobs and they didn't

00:18:11.200 have mortgages so it's like they had all this money to spend at them all and once uh people 1.00

00:18:16.960 in charge of brands figured that out it was really the death knell i think for the angry women of rock 1.00

00:18:21.740 uh and it was the beginning of this shift towards pop stars who would do the pepsi commercials and

00:18:26.740 who could sell lipstick to 16 year olds like that was that was such a significant shift

00:18:30.900 I also I have such a curious relationship with Brittany or Christina or Mandy Moore Jessica

00:18:36.540 Simpson all of those women from that period because I at the time I appreciated that they

00:18:42.560 were what popular was right but I didn't particularly like them I didn't feel affinity

00:18:50.940 with them and I think that that like created this interesting relationship where there is

00:18:59.460 a norm that you aspire to but you also kind of have resentment for totally yeah they felt so

00:19:07.280 much like the popular girls who I would never be right or be accepted as part of their clique

00:19:12.400 like so shiny so like so charismatic in lots of ways and so thrilling but so not the kind of

00:19:17.700 person you really empathize with or can imagine yourself being in there in their outfits even

00:19:22.980 but that's such an interesting point too like the way that immediately the dynamic sets up like an

00:19:27.620 element of resentment and envy yeah that also reminds me of one of my favorite scholars of

00:19:34.800 post-feminism Angela McRobbie introduced me to the concept of romantic individualism which you see in

00:19:41.460 a lot of the post-feminist films of like the 90s and the 2000s which is that like women in these

00:19:46.540 films they have to compete against one another for a guy right like that you are always competing 1.00

00:19:51.360 with other women and this also reminds me of general feminist writing about like how this 1.00

00:19:56.680 obsession with talking shit about other women not just gossip but like always comparing yourself 1.00

00:20:03.220 always competing that that distracts us from larger feminist goals right that it's like very 1.00

00:20:08.480 clever on the part of the patriarchy to obsess us with this a hundred percent i mean if we're 0.95

00:20:14.400 constantly thinking about all the ways in which we ourselves do not measure up to this impossible

00:20:19.220 goal and then like comparing other women to ourselves in the process like we're thinking

00:20:24.460 we get so drawn in inward that we're not looking outward to think about what we actually need what

00:20:29.700 we actually want to change no i think about like the movie bride wars where it's like yes they're

00:20:33.740 not even competing for a man they're competing for i don't know like a wedding venue i don't

00:20:37.040 remember it's yes and they hate each other right they're best friends i know it's it's it's it's

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00:25:00.980 for sponsoring this episode. Okay, let's talk about sex now because I think this is such a key 1.00

00:25:09.700 component of all of this. So this next question comes from Molly. I'm interested in the ways in

00:25:14.500 which women's sexual liberation in the early 2000s seemed so revolutionary at the time think 0.87

00:25:20.540 sex in the city samantha entire cosmo magazine editions dedicated to blowjob tips girls gone 0.99

00:25:26.380 wild but ended up being largely a repackaged form of misogyny that did not move women anywhere 0.69

00:25:32.480 closer to having a fulfilling sex life or embracing their bodies what ways is this still impacting us

00:25:38.420 today what is the current version of this i'm thinking about one of the women on secret lives

00:25:43.740 of Mormon wives getting a labiaplasty for her own confidence, when one of the risks of that 0.91

00:25:49.300 surgery could impact future ability to orgasm or enjoy sexual pleasure. How do we move beyond this 0.99

00:25:54.980 and begin to call it out? I also just want to mention another question, which we didn't choose

00:25:59.600 because it was so broad, but so important. And that this person asked, like, I feel like all

00:26:06.480 we talked about was virginity in these pop stars in the late 90s in particular. And then we stopped

00:26:12.460 talking about that and I think that it's almost like it just feeds into this very classic 0.98

00:26:17.980 virgin whore dichotomy right where it's either like you are you either should be a virgin or 1.00

00:26:23.040 like you should be obsessed with giving blowjobs yeah or both I think the trap that pop stars fell 1.00

00:26:29.080 into was like they were expected to look like porn stars but wear purity rings on their fingers and 0.99

00:26:32.980 like perform sex but not actually have sex like be sexy but not not be sexual and that I think is 0.94

00:26:40.060 exactly the the trap of this dynamic for all of us it it was so culture was so sexualized but it

00:26:46.940 was for women I think so much more of a performance of sex like it I think the influence of porn was

00:26:52.840 really important too because it was suddenly this medium that was huge thanks to the internet um

00:26:57.760 and and we were all so aware of the ways in which people might see us like as sexual objects and the

00:27:04.040 ways in which like we might be watched having sex even even if like we're not really being filmed

00:27:08.400 right right and sex tapes too which were everywhere at that time um yeah and you talk in the book a

00:27:14.320 little bit about like how voyeurism and showed up all over the place like in all of these music

00:27:19.780 videos when you started listing them i was like oh my god it's so real and one from 1999 or maybe

00:27:26.280 98 that i remember so vividly is um jennifer lopez's if you had my love where the whole premise

00:27:33.120 is like someone's videotaping her like in a in a weird house i don't know yeah no that music video

00:27:39.980 is really when i watched it i was like oh my god because it seemed to predict so much it seemed to

00:27:44.440 like only fans in a way but it also predicted reality television um because i think that that

00:27:50.500 video came out like a year before the survivor finale was watched by 50 million people but it

00:27:56.080 very much seemed to anticipate like this new media landscape where we could watch our celebrities

00:28:01.480 all the time we could even like interact with them we could sort of in some ways pay them to

00:28:05.420 do things it was this like very very prescient video in lots of ways but I think the thing that

00:28:11.580 struck me so much about like the performance of sex during this era was it was all for men it was

00:28:16.240 all right serving male gratification male desire male pleasure and there was so much of this

00:28:22.040 element of it that I think really alienated us from the question of what we as women wanted what

00:28:26.380 we desired like because none of that mattered it was all about performance it was all about

00:28:30.040 surface level like looking the right way and doing the right moves and dancing the right way and

00:28:34.760 it was just very I think divorced from the question of what what sex should actually be for

00:28:40.960 it's so easy to teach the male gaze when you're looking at media from this period and like that

00:28:48.400 the classic phrase that like men watch and women watch themselves being watched yeah like it's just

00:28:54.200 all over the place but I don't think that like you can theoretically understand oh this is how

00:29:03.060 it works but not necessarily grapple with like if you when that happens you understand yourself as

00:29:08.780 a subject of that gaze at all times and you're always performing for it instead of understanding

00:29:14.000 like what do I like right what do I like looking like what do I like dressing like

00:29:19.280 and I think a lot of women around our age are currently grappling with

00:29:25.200 figuring that out right like letting go of some of those norms even though it's been 20 years

00:29:31.440 since we've internalized them they don't go away a hundred percent or even like the question of what

00:29:35.860 do I actually enjoy during sex there was all this anxiety about like what if I don't do this or what

00:29:40.160 if I don't like please him by doing this or like what if like he thinks this about this or and and

00:29:44.800 so little of it was actually like what do i want what do i need what what turns me on it was just

00:29:50.020 this very kind of almost disassociation i think yes yes yeah no and even like i think about those

00:29:56.720 what was always on the cover of cosmo was always about like how to please your man eight tips for

00:30:02.600 this like it wasn't like how to figure out this on your own body like how to experiment like

00:30:09.160 do you even like dudes like those sorts of questions yeah no 100 it was it was like such

00:30:18.200 a sexualized environment but none of it was really about pleasure i think was certainly

00:30:23.240 not for women and it was interesting to me when in the later chapters i was able to see

00:30:29.160 like something like the tv show girls how much it was grappling with that tension in interesting

00:30:33.420 ways that i hadn't been able to process at the time right and like podine i think part of the

00:30:37.920 reason people were sometimes troubled by that show is that it showed a much darker reality of

00:30:46.660 what happens right yeah i i uh i gosh i'm just remembering this now at that time i was not yet

00:30:55.200 writing publicly like for the internet yet i was just kind of blogging i wrote about girls and

00:31:01.320 a couple other shows under this rubric of like post-feminist dystopia where all of these shows

00:31:09.660 are depicting what it means to actually like live out post-feminism that's exactly right 0.60

00:31:15.440 that's like exactly what it does that it is so it unlike sex in the city where it's like it's 0.97

00:31:21.700 glamorous these shows were like oh like this sucks new york is horrifying like you might eat 0.97

00:31:29.240 the pizza pizza that's been on the ground 1.00

00:31:30.860 and this guy will probably try to choke you during sex.

00:31:33.800 But I also think like another example of the shows 0.67

00:31:36.360 that do that really well is Fleabag

00:31:37.880 because she knows she's supposed to be this like 1.00

00:31:41.080 lingerie wearing girl boss running a corporation,

00:31:44.040 but she just, she does not, 0.99

00:31:46.160 like it does not fit her at all.

00:31:47.560 And I think she struggles so much

00:31:49.160 with like the mandates of post-feminism.

00:31:51.640 Okay, we're going to talk about something

00:31:53.020 I love to talk about, which is the cool girl.

00:31:55.460 This next question comes from Maren.

00:31:58.160 The image that sticks with me is Cameron Diaz dancing in her underwear and headgear at the

00:32:02.800 beginning of Charlie's Angels. She was hot but relatable. She was hot and talked about farting

00:32:10.380 in interviews. As someone who worked in the TRL building at 22 years old, I felt successful

00:32:17.080 feminism was being able to take it and wear bras as shirts. How do we speak to our younger selves 1.00

00:32:24.460 who took so much shit from gross men 1.00

00:32:26.780 and pretended we could handle it. 1.00

00:32:30.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:32.800 I just reread your piece on Jennifer Lawrence

00:32:35.020 and the cool girl this morning, actually.

00:32:36.960 It was really, it was such a good trip down memory lane.

00:32:40.100 And I know, well, and it's like, that was a decade ago.

00:32:44.520 And, you know, thinking about Jennifer Lawrence

00:32:47.140 who became the kind of the apotheosis of the cool girl

00:32:51.000 who now really doesn't have much of a career,

00:32:53.380 Cameron Diaz also not in the spotlight like that that trope there are new cool girls of course but 1.00

00:33:00.580 like I do think that that understanding of hot femininity was very much of the aughts and early

00:33:08.440 to mid 2010s yeah what do you think's going on there I mean again I think it speaks to the same

00:33:15.620 impulse of the most important thing in media in the 2000s being gratifying what men want and

00:33:21.020 everyone internalizing that um and it was interesting to me that the gone girl speech

00:33:26.800 about cool girls although not speech but the narrative um the monologue that i think gone

00:33:32.240 girl was published in 2012 maybe so it seemed very much like it was coming at the end of this

00:33:37.360 decade of like real profound misogyny but also like internalized misogyny among women in media

00:33:43.800 um like i remember i moved to new york to go to journalism school in 2007 i had this cousin who

00:33:50.000 was working in finance who would like go out with all his clients to strip clubs and I would go

00:33:54.440 along and I would you know think it was just a cool fun time and in some ways it was but um but

00:34:01.200 it was just also very much the thing that people did then and it never occurred to me to be like

00:34:05.720 no I don't want to do that right can we just go to a bar yeah and I think you know you quote this

00:34:11.380 review of Bridget Jones the reviewer describes the general vibe as like trying to be incredibly

00:34:19.800 independent while also trying to be all things to all men yeah a hundred percent and that to me like

00:34:28.200 that's like at the heart of cool girlness too yeah just really trying and again being so alienated

00:34:35.820 from the idea of what you might actually want or enjoy that you can be like no i would love to eat

00:34:39.940 10 slim gyms and watch like five hours of baseball with you that sounds great um yeah it's it's just

00:34:46.180 like this real pandering almost to the idea of what men want which i don't even know if it is

00:34:50.620 authentic even it was just this like idea disseminated across well and also like this

00:34:56.320 this real erasure of the actual work to achieve feminine ideals this incredible impossible

00:35:06.700 contradiction of always consuming but looking like you never consume yeah hillary mantel had a quote

00:35:15.500 that I used in the book about the ideal physique of womanhood in the 2010s being someone with like 1.00

00:35:21.460 very large breasts a very tiny waist like a perfect buttocks and no pubic hair and it's 0.99

00:35:27.140 it's very much this sort of childlike figure in lots of ways with like inflated breasts that that

00:35:32.220 is not authentic in nature like it has to be purchased yeah and the purchasing it like was

00:35:37.460 so much of a theme throughout media too but the there was something I was thinking about recently

00:35:41.500 because part of the project for me was thinking about why I couldn't fight back

00:35:46.680 or, like, why I didn't protest more during this decade

00:35:49.560 or why it didn't even occur to me to.

00:35:52.320 And I think I was thinking about the response to Katherine Heigl

00:35:55.180 when she gave a Vanity Fair interview

00:35:57.740 in which she very lightly critiqued Knocked Up the movie

00:36:01.680 for being a little bit sexist, which I think is very gentle.

00:36:05.400 It's certainly more gentle than the critique I would give Knocked Up at this point. 0.69

00:36:08.520 But she was pilloried for it.

00:36:11.240 She was torn apart by the director, Judd Apatow, by the star, Seth Rogen.

00:36:16.040 They seem to see her, again, very light critique as being some huge betrayal of the code of, I don't know, like brotherhood that they had all established on the movie or something.

00:36:26.160 It just, it seemed like her career suffered as a result of this very mild criticism.

00:36:31.940 And I think things like that happened all the time throughout the decade.

00:36:35.240 And they made it clear to us, I think, over and over again, that in many cases, it was just not worth protesting.

00:36:39.860 Like the cost would be too great.

00:36:41.240 she became a difficult woman no and I remember too like there was something

00:36:44.440 she really became known as almost like a shrew right yeah um and which was also the character

00:36:52.640 that she was playing I think in most of her movies so I mean it doesn't really help that

00:36:57.260 that was how she was typecast right it became her star image in a way and like there there's

00:37:01.760 difficulty with Anne Hathaway too right because she she wasn't complaining but she was like too 0.81

00:37:07.240 earnest she wasn't like and she was always held up against especially at this time against

00:37:11.960 jennifer lawrence as like she's trying too hard she wants things too much yeah whereas the cool

00:37:18.660 girl gets things but doesn't want them or doesn't look like she wants them or doesn't look like

00:37:23.640 she's trying yeah yes exhausting i know um okay let's talk about dudes this next question comes

00:37:31.080 from susan and melody's gonna read it is it just me or was comedy and rom-com male culture

00:37:36.620 especially toxic in the mid to late aughts. Every movie I can think of, Wedding Crashers,

00:37:41.880 He's Just Not That Into You, The Breakup, Step Brothers, The Hangover Movies, all of those

00:37:46.340 Matthew McConaughey movies, The Apatow Invasion. They are all about immature men and the boys will

00:37:51.860 be boys narrative that the female counterparts were expected to not only tolerate and work 0.97

00:37:56.240 around, but appreciate. While we have retroactively judged the movies of the 80s and 90s for terrible

00:38:02.320 behavior i think the odds are technically worse given how recent they were all right so how do

00:38:08.200 you think of this sort of like the inverse of what's happening with femininity and feminism

00:38:14.380 in the the 90s and 2000s oh god the odds were so much worse like so so much worse yeah they were

00:38:20.600 yeah because you had like really the death the long protracted death of the one form of movies

00:38:26.940 that had taken women seriously and treated them as like worthy of pleasure and gratification which

00:38:31.540 was the rom-com like you had this long slow death of the rom-com um but it I have a chapter about

00:38:38.360 this in the book and I I sort of trace it back I think to American Pie in 1999 and there's like

00:38:43.340 huge success of this movie about like I think they call it the teen sex comedy which sounds

00:38:49.880 so dubious to me now as a genre but um the how it revived the teen sex comedy for want of a better

00:38:55.800 term and and created this wave of imitators that was so much worse each one worse and worse and

00:39:02.880 I think it if you think sort of movie by movie you can really see this extended period of adolescence

00:39:10.500 for men being presented throughout film like the idea that teenagehood is not something now that

00:39:15.360 needs to end at 18 it can go on until 20 or 25 or even 30 like if you're having a really hard time

00:39:20.060 It's just this celebration of like really juvenile, male bonding, fraternal like adventures and also the real cementing of sex and the loss of virginity is the thing that secures adulthood for men, this kind of heroic rite of passage that enshrines men as men.

00:39:42.180 And yeah, there were some really ugly imitators of American Pie.

00:39:45.840 I think the one that I hate the most is called Date Movie.

00:39:49.020 I don't know if you've seen it, but it's Alison Hannigan from obviously the American Pie franchise from Buffy plays.

00:39:56.140 It's the most fat phobic movie I've ever seen in my life. 0.99

00:40:00.360 She plays a sort of Bridget Jones knockoff who in the movie is depicted, I think, as being 389 pounds in the beginning. 1.00

00:40:06.360 She wears a fat suit. And the whole joke of the entire first scene is that she is disgusting because she is fat. 1.00

00:40:12.720 Like she dances down the street. She's very joyful. I think she's dancing to like Khalisa's milkshake. 1.00

00:40:16.600 It's this really fun scene in lots of ways. 0.99

00:40:19.020 But people are so disgusted by the spectacle of her dancing. 0.99

00:40:21.440 Like one construction worker after she flashes him 0.97

00:40:23.760 shoots himself in the head with a nail gun. 0.99

00:40:25.240 Like it's this real ugly, ugly expression of misogyny 1.00

00:40:31.460 and disgust towards women that was present in so many of those movies.

00:40:35.240 Like I'm thinking about the scary movie scene 0.94

00:40:36.740 where Anna Faris's character before this guy can have sex with her 0.98

00:40:41.660 he has to like get a hedge trimmer to get rid of her pubic hair. 1.00

00:40:45.100 Oh my God.

00:40:46.040 It's just, it's so bad.

00:40:48.720 there was just so much disgust for women women first of all weren't around very much when they 1.00

00:40:53.200 were they were very hyper sexualized as as objects or they were scolds or they were shrews you know 0.52

00:40:58.320 they were like why are you going to las vegas without me like right right no and this is like

00:41:02.560 it's interesting too in terms of like instead of the male gaze on the body it's more like on

00:41:08.500 female behavior so women watch themselves being shrews and then like internalize a way of behavior 0.94

00:41:15.680 that is repulsive yeah and also like just this incredible misogyny like internalized misogyny

00:41:23.180 towards other women yeah and the tolerance to like that oh if this is how men are then like

00:41:28.260 the ideal woman has to be a woman who tolerates that sort of man yeah and in these movies she

00:41:33.900 always is like there's always this kind of schlubby or like unsuccessful or like really

00:41:39.640 unprepossessing hero who is redeemed by the love of a woman who is way out of his league like that

00:41:44.860 is the thing throughout every basically every movie in the 2000s um and and it really i think

00:41:51.100 it was a really sticky idea it was really contagious the idea that like

00:41:55.180 all men needed to grow up to become the best versions of themselves was the love of a really

00:41:59.500 hot woman what's that movie oh long shot with um charlie saran and seth rogan which i actually

00:42:11.080 think is like this almost like a redemption of that trope because Seth Rogen is a good guy

00:42:18.420 yeah it's also like Seth Rogen it's been so funny to see him in the studio lately because I think

00:42:24.440 he's actually doing the best work of his life playing just like a normal nice guy who's kind 0.92

00:42:29.020 of old and dresses well and isn't this like immature idiot um but there was a Seth Rogen 0.91

00:42:34.760 movie with Anna Farris um I can't remember the name uh but there was a scene I think it was from 0.99

00:42:41.940 2012 maybe there was a scene in which his character is having sex with Anna Farris's character while

00:42:46.960 she is blacked out and at some point the scene is I think supposed to be redeemed by the fact that

00:42:52.360 he stops because she's blacked out and she briefly wakes up to chide him for stopping

00:42:56.080 but it's it's like to me it's quite clearly now a rape scene that was played for comedy and it's

00:43:01.540 right it's it's really this was just kind of the the vibe i think of a lot of movies in the 2010s

00:43:08.480 and one thing that was interesting to me too is like the career of todd phillips throughout the

00:43:12.280 decade because he started i think by writing old school and then went on to obviously do the

00:43:17.840 hangover franchise and then like wrote joker which was extremely like critically favorably

00:43:25.660 responded to and a very interesting movie but also has this real profound kind of incel ideology

00:43:30.740 throughout it that if you look back you can sort of find elements of in his earlier comedies

00:43:35.340 right it's I mean that's like our whatever word we have for the masculinity of the 2000s like

00:43:41.060 that's that dystopia right instead of the post-feminist dystopia it's like the 2000s dude

00:43:46.760 dystopia today's episode is sponsored by ZocDoc have you ever gone to the dentist and they're

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00:45:41.020 okay next question comes from aaron big pivot as a closeted queer girl in the early 2000s i'm still

00:45:50.620 struck by the what seemed to me as someone growing up in a liberal yet also socially conservative

00:45:55.560 city the total dearth of queer women in pop culture politics or ideology this absence along

00:46:02.560 with the era's really horrible and very vocal homophobia against queer men is such a strange

00:46:07.720 combination when I look back on it was this just my experience or was there a secret place for

00:46:13.100 queer women's culture I was missing out on because I didn't even know where to start looking

00:46:17.140 yeah this was a struggle for me because I did not want my book to be as heteronormative as it

00:46:23.980 ended up being but there just was not there was not really any visibility for queer culture during

00:46:30.160 this period for women it was I've sort of I went when I I've been thinking back about this a lot

00:46:35.600 I mean, obviously, The L Word was, I think, the one show that was dealing with lesbianism.

00:46:41.900 You had, I think, the Willow and Tara arc on Buffy, which was quite well done, I think, compared with some other products, shall we say?

00:46:49.780 I feel like there was more visibility in some ways in the 90s.

00:46:53.200 Yeah.

00:46:53.800 And part of that, too, was the prominence and public presence of Lilith Fair oriented women just broadly or like, I don't know.

00:47:04.860 like katie lang was on the cover of entertainment weekly the very first issue of get of entertainment

00:47:10.220 weekly like melissa etheridge was everywhere yeah and but then also there was this real like this 0.80

00:47:16.360 was part of post-feminism was this idea that like oh you like those artists then you're a lesbian 1.00

00:47:21.220 right like using it as a way of disciplining women for any sort of like different way of being that 0.99

00:47:28.240 wasn't smoothly hetero in some way yeah but then also reclaiming lesbianism for men like for the 1.00

00:47:35.080 male gaze to turn men like i'm thinking about shot of love with tila tequila where she had to perform

00:47:40.980 like she was a straight woman but she had to perform being bisexual for this v8 like i think 1.00

00:47:46.060 it was mtv or vh1 anyway one one of the shows reality show in which she was supposed to be

00:47:51.460 making out with men and women um and also like but yes the shift that really struck me in in

00:47:57.520 the music chapter of the book was the shift from the energy of lilith fair and like the collective

00:48:01.800 force and the creative potential of like showcasing other women and working together

00:48:06.740 the shift from that to tattoo where suddenly you have two russian teenagers who also by

00:48:12.360 both by the way straight um making out behind a wire fence while like these old creepy men watch

00:48:18.120 watch them i mean tattoo the band i think was was manufactured by a russian psychologist who

00:48:24.920 had a porn addiction so it in some ways makes a lot of sense but like the sort of shift in terms

00:48:31.880 of women loving women and sexuality the shift from like lilith fair to tattoo was was just

00:48:38.000 so instructive to me or like katie perry too right and like i kissed a girl which is like

00:48:42.740 just so overt in the way that it wields that like like i'm gonna i i liked it i hope my boyfriend

00:48:51.620 don't mind in it like we're doing a katie perry episode so hopefully we'll unpack that stuff

00:48:56.400 yeah but in terms of visibility and representation i remembered i was thinking about the oc do you

00:49:02.560 remember the art marissa cooper had an affair with alex who was played by olivia wild yeah yeah

00:49:09.000 like i think olivia world's first one of her first tv appearances um and i went back and i found this

00:49:14.860 interview with josh schwartz where he was like desperate to have more scenes of them kissing but

00:49:19.220 Fox would not let him have any because it was such a conservative media environment after, I guess, Janet Jackson, the Super Bowl and Nipplegate.

00:49:27.580 I think suddenly everyone was very skittish about what the conservative response would be to certain kinds of things in media.

00:49:35.720 And so he wrote an episode, I think, where he had like a dozen scenes of them kissing, knowing that 11 of them would get taken out and could just at least keep one.

00:49:42.860 um but again I mean not the most authentic portrayal of women being attracted to each 0.54

00:49:49.800 and an understanding of like queer women as always being like homonormative in some way 0.65

00:49:57.080 like always being very femme like you still have to be hot enough for guys to think that you're 0.84

00:50:02.500 hot and then for it to be surprised when you like ladies you know like right right right there was

00:50:07.540 this really interesting thread too that I was reading about earlier today about how Lindsay

00:50:11.940 lohan's relationship with samantha ronson during this period was portrayed i think in media so

00:50:18.060 much as like part of her downfall right it wasn't like she was in love with a woman or dating a

00:50:22.860 woman or having genuine feelings it was very much like part of her bad girl arc which i think was

00:50:27.880 how like tv shows and and movies treated treated like queer romance and queer love during during

00:50:34.500 this time as well like part of her downfall so i guess what we tell aaron is that like no you

00:50:40.860 weren't missing anything it was there was nothing out there it was slant uh our next question comes

00:50:47.660 from denali and it's about a seemingly lighter size effect of this culture but i think it's

00:50:51.700 actually huge um can't wait to talk about this one that's why i said seemingly

00:50:56.180 how did fashion in the 2000s prime an entire cohort of women to not really understand the

00:51:03.680 basic parts of their bodies with regard to clothing so i have this theory that women who

00:51:08.400 came of age in this general timeframe, including me, have no idea where on their bodies to wear 1.00

00:51:13.120 their pants. There has just been so much pants fluctuation in our lifetime, and it took me a

00:51:18.120 really long time to figure out how to comfortably wear clothes, even though it's something I have

00:51:21.980 to do every day. Anyway, maybe it's just me, but I do think it could be generational. I also feel

00:51:27.900 like there's a tie-in about the rise of Victoria's Secret culture and the glorification of a bra

00:51:32.300 store that doesn't sell a very wide range of bra sizes yeah i ascribe to this theory 100 i think

00:51:39.480 all millennial women have uh low-rise jeans trauma um and that's part of the reason why the reaction

00:51:48.080 to low-rise jeans coming back into fashion is so incredibly strong it's not about young people

00:51:52.980 wearing like returning to a type of fashion it's about that trauma yeah i think clothing during

00:51:58.920 the aughts was not clothing in the sense that we understand it to be now it was not about what it

00:52:03.780 covered it was not about like how it fit the female body it was about what it could expose

00:52:08.500 with like maximum deniability i think yes like yes like the whale tail the like your thong 1.00

00:52:15.320 peeking out from the top of your low-rise jeans like oh oops that's just showing right yeah or

00:52:22.440 like i remember wearing handkerchief tops which were like these tiny triangles of fabric that

00:52:25.880 you would tie at the back with a with a loop and um yeah and they would obviously like fall down

00:52:30.980 all the time it was it was just it was sort of a moment of clothing not as garments that you

00:52:37.980 actually might wear in real life but as things that you could go out without getting arrested

00:52:42.460 but that would still expose as much of your body as possible yeah and I think that that

00:52:47.200 like what did that teach us about what sort of clothing makes you look hot what sort of clothing

00:52:53.840 makes you look desirable how you should feel in your body when you are attempting to look hot 0.97

00:52:59.000 like the way that we like normalized a string of fabric going up your butt like that that is just

00:53:07.940 how you should feel all the time like it really like I remember someone being like you get used

00:53:13.040 to the thong no I never never never people told me that too and then just keep wearing it right

00:53:20.280 you're just like oh they're still just like underwear bunched in my butt crack it's just

00:53:24.260 there always and why so that you don't have panty lines right so that you have this illusion of 0.83

00:53:30.800 smoothness that we decided that like the appearance of underwear should somehow be effaced in all ways

00:53:36.900 or even worse so that people could see the top of your thong underneath your very low-rise jeans

00:53:41.020 and be like oh she's wearing a thong exactly exactly well in the bra too I think that that's 0.99

00:53:45.540 such a great point bringing that in um the idea that your bra should be uncomfortable right and 0.94

00:53:51.080 that also that because these bras often were so poorly fit like that your brush should be overflowing

00:53:57.540 the bra in some way yeah like the the wonder bra i think was a really interesting garment in terms 0.81

00:54:03.920 of changing changing bras forever because it had it again was this post-feminist moment where 0.99

00:54:09.740 when people lightly critique the ads of like eva hutzig over on these huge billboards that 1.00

00:54:13.980 apparently cause like traffic accidents because her boobs were so big um the makers of wonder 1.00

00:54:18.680 bra were like these are impaired this is an empowering garment women feel powerful when 0.99

00:54:22.800 they wear wonder bras and i'm like they might feel powerful but this is not giving any woman

00:54:26.540 anywhere any power like it's well and this gets to something that we haven't talked about explicitly

00:54:30.760 yet right is that like owning one's own sexuality or owning one's own sexual objectification like

00:54:37.140 how does that work is that the same as power how does race intersect with that because that's

00:54:41.840 always been part of the complicated conversation right is like as a black woman and you've never

00:54:46.880 had control of your sexuality or how it has been represented like if you get to own how you 0.63

00:54:51.260 represent it is that empowering and do white women like us get to decide that like that that's a 0.72

00:54:57.660 difficult place for me to to figure out it's a real tension for sure and also like wanting every

00:55:04.600 woman to have absolutely like the control to dress in any way that she wants knowing that that is

00:55:09.560 actually a crucial part of like allowing women the choice like not dictate not dictating as the

00:55:15.560 people at the Cannes Film Festival are doing at the moment like what women should wear to be

00:55:18.660 accepted in public like right the freedom to dress any way you please I think is really important

00:55:23.940 um but also so much of the book for me was not about indicting individual people or individual

00:55:29.660 choices it was more about identifying patterns and trying to figure out what those patterns were

00:55:33.720 telling me and telling us at this time and so much of the pattern of empowering garments I think

00:55:40.040 during this time was about pleasing men. Yeah I was reading Maris Kreisman's review of your book

00:55:46.000 or write-up of your book in her newsletter and she was like I kept waiting for the moment that

00:55:50.240 this would feel like so many other books in this vein which is like scolding and it never arrives 0.99

00:55:58.240 there and I really agree with that like there isn't this tone of like oh my god you suck that 0.96

00:56:03.420 you've participated in this or like we or we all suck you know what I mean like it's not that like 0.96

00:56:08.300 it doesn't make it it doesn't make me feel like that and it's a it's a real high praise I think 0.61

00:56:14.300 thank you I really yeah I mean I was there I was there through all of this I was wearing the tops

00:56:19.080 I had the low-rise jeans I'm sure my tongue was sticking out my uncomfortable uncomfortable

00:56:22.720 thought um and like we were all of us being groomed I think to participate in this environment

00:56:33.500 in so many different ways and the ways were so insidious and every form of media was telling

00:56:38.880 girls the same thing that sex was their form of power it was the only form of power they would

00:56:42.520 ever need it was the most important one it was the only thing they should ever aspire to

00:56:46.680 um and it just of course we absorbed it like there was it was very very hard I think for me

00:56:54.400 in this moment to find counter narratives and some eventually I did and they were really really

00:56:58.760 powerful but when you're being told over and over and over again that there is really only one

00:57:05.080 acceptable way for a woman in public to behave like of course it's very very hard to to critique 1.00

00:57:09.900 that yeah okay this last question is going to count as our bonus segment that would normally 0.99

00:57:15.200 only be for paid subscribers. Everyone's getting it today, so if you want to be sure to always get

00:57:20.340 the full episode and an ad-free experience, head to culturestudypod.substack.com and become a paid

00:57:26.760 subscriber. This question is going to take everything that we've talked about today

00:57:30.680 and have us look forward, like, what now? Love it. This comes from Charlie. I want to preface

00:57:36.920 everything by just making it really clear. I do not want this to sound misogynistic or anti-bimbo.

00:57:42.740 I am a huge fan of the bimbos. As a millennial, kind of in the square in the middle of the 1.00

00:57:48.020 demographic, I found my formative definitions of femininity to be very influenced by the

00:57:56.100 Britney Paris Lindsay photo, the aesthetics of MTV's Next and Room Raiders and early

00:58:02.620 ANTM and even Girls Gone Wild a little bit. It all fits into an archetype that I think

00:58:08.220 of as the hot virgin baby slut and if I'm not careful it kind of pushes me into this again 0.99

00:58:15.100 early aughts very not like other girls type of thinking that I don't love um but the hot virgin 0.99

00:58:20.920 baby slut got me really early and it infected a lot of the ways that I perform femininity in 0.99

00:58:26.700 public uh even after decades of reading too much gender theory and realizing slowly that not only 0.97

00:58:33.480 am I a person that the early aughts would not think is a hot girl but that also that's pretty 0.98

00:58:39.200 cool I'm I'm fine with that but the hot virgin baby slut persists it comes out in gendered 0.99

00:58:47.900 context obviously so like how do we perform being a hot virgin baby slut for the male gaze but also 1.00

00:58:53.920 how I perform having fun struggling having a hard time being drunk for example um being 0.99

00:59:03.380 in public, period. Any type of really heightened emotion gets filtered through the hot slutty 0.97

00:59:09.800 virgin baby prism if I'm not really careful about it. And as a mid-30s chick, I kind of would love 0.96

00:59:17.580 to unlearn that. So what do y'all have to advise me about that? Charlie, I love your question.

00:59:24.880 I'm doing it every day. How do you feel about this, Sophie? Well, I think it really helps

00:59:30.900 getting older because i'm like do you know what makes me feel sexy now a low heel like a low heel

00:59:36.320 and a wide leg trouser i'm like oh yes like you just find all these modes of dressing that are

00:59:41.380 like i'm aging into my 40s like my my 40s power dressing um no i'm being glib i i found it really

00:59:49.500 interesting lately to see the ways in which pop stars of our current generation are like

00:59:54.140 subverting i think the performance of the hot virgin baby select like chapel rhone i think

00:59:58.800 is doing it really really well because her music is so sexual it's so explicit it's so

01:00:03.360 thrilling but it's not about men at all it's entirely it reminds me of kind of madonna and

01:00:08.900 the ways in which it's all about her desires the ways in which she wants to self-present the

01:00:13.380 the almost absurdity of it i think is really interesting um sabrina carpenter has come up a

01:00:19.480 lot while i was on book tour there are a lot of questions about sabrina carpenter and the writer

01:00:24.600 Amanda Hess made this really good point about her during a panel we did which is that she is

01:00:29.500 performing a kind of stereotypical feminine sexuality but it's it's almost like the kind 0.99

01:00:34.340 that a middle-aged divorcee would do because it's like very like Dolly Parton sex kitten 0.91

01:00:39.480 old-fashioned sexuality in a way like very winking right yeah like old-fashioned bombshell it's sort 0.50

01:00:45.380 of kind of alien alienated from like our contemporary ideas of of what a like sexy 0.99

01:00:51.560 woman is so i i think the more that women can play with these real absurd versions or these like 0.91

01:01:00.400 extensions of sexiness and find what feels good for them and find what feels most akin with their

01:01:07.160 own identities and with their own ideas about sex and power and pleasure like the more the more fun

01:01:12.440 we'll have i think to treat it as something that is not a requirement for us to be out in public

01:01:17.760 to be accepted to not like induce disgust like like date movie um but to to just have fun for

01:01:24.080 ourselves what do you think i think also that like charlie like this question to me is part of the

01:01:29.960 unlearning right like calling attention to the the moments when you you're like oh man there's 0.92

01:01:36.640 hot slutty virgin baby coming out like like even having knowledge you know and like you said your 0.61

01:01:43.020 book is a lot about acknowledging patterns and it seems like even in this question charlie is 0.96

01:01:47.200 acknowledging patterns in their own life yeah i think like that is very that's doing the work 0.91

01:01:53.520 and right it's like unlearning this shit it takes so much longer than learning it but the moment 0.96

01:02:00.560 that you see it as something that a that exists and b that can be unlearned you're most of the 0.99

01:02:06.060 way there i think like the the real danger of this era was just how much we absorbed and didn't think

01:02:11.040 to question so thinking to question it is like such a it's such a momentous step yeah and i can't say

01:02:16.200 enough about aging and also I think like as you also um kind of veer off of like the desirability

01:02:23.420 the the like even being able to achieve that ideal it becomes liberating in a different way

01:02:31.760 and I have a memory of being what I assume is around Charlie's age mid-30s and someone who

01:02:38.260 is several years older than me talking about like how they were moving into their like vintage

01:02:43.820 eileen fisher era so that they were just obsessed with shopping eileen fisher separates on ebay like

01:02:51.080 finding just boxy shit and i was like huh like am that that's so foreign to me at that moment

01:02:58.720 and now and only like five six seven years later like i'm so much more like you said like 0.97

01:03:03.880 oh a flowy trouser with the low heel or i'm like oh my sneakers with this cuffed jean like

01:03:10.560 it just uh or even like i the other day i was taping an episode with um jason diamond about

01:03:17.740 men's fashion and he was talking about how moving into his dad era he has become so much more like

01:03:23.820 comfortable with adopting like everything from schlubbiness to like slutty dad with jorts like

01:03:31.940 just in so many different ways as he's aged and taken on different identities and so i think that

01:03:36.860 that that is just part of the the work um yeah but I think of that line from the Walton Goggins

01:03:43.160 SNL skit where he's like mature queens dripping in tall boots like yes that could be me because

01:03:50.200 it's it's like it's a joke yes but it is reverent it's very reverent mature queens like yeah and

01:03:54.840 yeah aging into my mature queen dripping in tall boots era and the only other thing that I'd add

01:03:59.400 is that like there were so few public ways of being back in like as you know the late 90s the

01:04:05.920 early 2000s especially growing up in smaller places like I just did not see different ways

01:04:11.600 of being in the world yeah and now even though I think that there are a lot of like hegemonic

01:04:20.100 norms that keep getting re-inscribed like there also are all of these different ways of like

01:04:24.520 understanding different ways of being in the world like even like the appreciation of like

01:04:29.920 mother right like it is incredible to be venerated in this way as an older woman right if that person

01:04:36.260 is mother or um yeah just like the multiplicity the and unending options that also are available

01:04:42.880 on something like tiktok yeah there's a there's a quote in my book that from susan sontag where she

01:04:49.400 from an essay she writes on aging where she says like something like there's only only one standard

01:04:54.220 of female beauty is sanctioned the girl and i think for a long time we went along with that

01:05:01.620 the idea that you had to be girlish to be beautiful but we i think people are experimenting

01:05:06.380 more and more now like letting their hair go gray not getting botox like just exploring what it

01:05:12.000 means to be beautiful and to be visibly aging like i'm very i think not always very comfortable but

01:05:17.540 I am enjoying I think finding ways to sort of try and imagine that in my in my own life in my own

01:05:24.520 mirror um but once we are willing to move away from girlishness as like the only way that you're 1.00

01:05:31.500 allowed to be beautiful or powerful as a woman which is absurd because girls as again like not

01:05:36.100 a world that goes with power um it opens up all these new avenues for exploration which can be 1.00

01:05:40.940 really fun low heel I'm telling you I think that's a perfect place to end it where can people find

01:05:47.280 more of you if they want to read more of you on the internet i am at the atlantic that's my home

01:05:52.800 and i'm on instagram i'm sophie gilbert writes and i'm on blue sky and do you have a preferred

01:05:58.680 place for people to buy your book wherever they would like to buy books or even if they would

01:06:02.680 like to go to the library and check it out from there that would be lovely there's an excerpt

01:06:06.900 at theatlantic.com if you want to get a sense of it we'll put a gift link in there thank you

01:06:12.200 so much for joining me this has been a horrendous delight and pleasure

01:06:16.820 it has been awful and wonderful for me too

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01:06:51.160 And Cara Meredith has a new book out about this very subject.

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01:06:57.520 which is going to be all about accents and variations in American English

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Culture Study Podcast - June 04, 2025

How 2000s Culture Messed Us Up

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