Girl on Girl

1. Pop Culture Defined Female Power as Sexual and Commodifiable

What was obvious to me was that power, for women, was sexual in nature.

Early signals. By 1999, pop culture events like Britney Spears's Rolling Stone cover, a naked image of Gail Porter projected onto Parliament, and the film American Beauty suggested that power for young women was primarily sexual, fleeting, and tied to attention. This wasn't power accrued through education or experience, but through youth and a willingness to be in on the joke, even as the punchline.

Sexual currency. This era fetishized a specific kind of female power rooted in sexuality, implying there was no other kind worth having. Popular culture on the cusp of the 21st century seemed suffused with a winking irony, yet the underlying message was clear: women's value and influence were inextricably linked to their sexual presentation and desirability. This set a tone for how a generation of women would perceive themselves and each other.

Internalized message. Growing up in this environment, millennial women internalized the idea that sex was their primary currency and objectification was somehow empowering. This cultural conditioning colored ambitions, self-perception, relationships, and even bodies, leading to a belief in inadequacy and a questioning of who was setting this agenda.

2. Postfeminism Co-opted Liberation to Sell a Narrow Femininity

Postfeminism was vague; it seemed to define itself mostly in opposition to a boogeyman version of feminism, encouraging women to embrace casual sex, spend with abandon, and be as stereotypically girly or overtly sexy as they desired.

Reaction to activism. Emerging in the 1980s and 90s, postfeminism wasn't a clear ideology but a media-driven mechanism reacting against feminist activism. It fostered a sense that earlier feminist waves inhibited freedom, leading younger women to disavow feminism while benefiting from its achievements.

Selling empowerment. This movement insisted that individual choices, like embracing casual sex or hyper-feminine styles, were inherently empowering. This co-option of words like "liberation" and "choice" was used to sell women a narrow, sexualized vision of femininity, often embodied by figures like Carrie Bradshaw or the Spice Girls, whose "Girl Power" slogan became a commercialized, apolitical brand.

Blunting progress. Mass culture efficiently blunted the energy of third-wave feminism, which aimed for inclusivity and social change. Instead of collective struggle, postfeminism promoted selective upward mobility and rampant consumerism, redefining feminism as an individual pursuit focused on presenting oneself correctly and hustling.

3. Pornographic Aesthetics Pervaded Mainstream Media and Fashion

Porn’s dominance in popular culture came much like Ernest Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy: first gradually, then suddenly.

From taboo to trend. Following the AIDS crisis, explicit representations of sex became less taboo, embraced as a spectator sport. Fashion photography, in particular, began experimenting with transgression, leading to the "porno chic" aesthetic of the early 2000s, where elements of porn were recontextualized in art, fashion, and advertising.

Pervasive influence. By the aughts, pornographic imagery and tropes were absorbed into mainstream culture, from music videos (Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty") to fashion (visible G-strings, Abercrombie & Fitch marketing) and art (Terry Richardson's Terryworld). This wasn't just about showing sex, but adopting porn's flat lighting, affectless subjects, and focus on objectification.

Reclaiming old dynamics. While presented as liberating, this trend often repackaged old power dynamics. The same people who controlled images of women commodified porn's aesthetics, reinforcing the idea that women were objects for male desire. This intensified the pressure on women to conform to narrow, sexualized standards, often with detrimental effects.

4. Reality TV Normalized Surveillance and Sexual Objectification of Women

Visibility is a trap.

Human zoo. Early reality TV, like Jennicam and Big Brother, presented itself as a sociological experiment, a "virtual human zoo" where people's lives were constantly monitored. This gratified voyeuristic impulses, blurring the lines between public and private life and preparing audiences for an era of constant self-exposure.

Conflicting impulses. Reality TV was defined by the collision of voyeurism and traditionalism. While women were encouraged to be passive housewives, they were also expected to perform sexuality for ratings. Shows like Real Sex and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? commodified women, presenting their value as tied to their desirability and willingness to compete for male attention.

Reinforcing stereotypes. The genre often reinforced harmful stereotypes, portraying women as hysterical, gold-digging, or untrustworthy. Women of color faced additional typecasting and fetishization. Visibility on reality TV presented a paradox: being seen often meant conforming to narrow, objectifying roles, yet not being seen meant invisibility in a burgeoning media landscape.

5. Beauty Standards Became Homogenized, Plasticized, and Linked to Value

Only one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl.

Makeover culture. Makeover reality shows like The Swan promoted cosmetic surgery as a path to self-improvement and happiness. These shows relentlessly emphasized that there was only one way for women to look: intensely feminine, straight, sexy, and often White, with any signs of difference erased.

Purchasable perfection. The aughts saw a boom in cosmetic procedures, presenting physical transformation as a status symbol and an emblem of consumption. Beauty was understood not just as reflecting inner identity, but as the predominant source of a woman's social and economic value, reinforcing the idea that looking beautiful was how you made money.

Shame and conformity. This era was marked by intense fat-shaming and body scrutiny in media, using shame to encourage conformity to unattainable ideals. Celebrities were constantly judged on their appearance, and ordinary women internalized these standards, leading to disordered eating and a focus on self-maintenance as a primary project.

6. Misogyny and Sexual Violence Were Increasingly Normalized in Media

Porn does not inform, or debate, or persuade. Porn trains.

Training culture. As porn became more accessible and its aesthetics permeated mainstream media, it trained culture to see women as objects. This contributed to the normalization of misogynistic and sexually violent content in music, film, and other forms of entertainment.

Extreme content. The post-9/11 era saw the rise of genres like "torture porn" in film, reflecting anxieties through gratuitous violence and degradation. Simultaneously, the porn industry itself shifted towards more extreme content (gonzo porn), pushing boundaries to maintain its transgressive status as mainstream culture adopted its earlier tropes.

Real-world impact. This cultural shift had real-world consequences. Studies linked exposure to misogynistic lyrics to negative attitudes towards women. The language and scenarios from extreme porn filtered into mainstream discourse and even allegedly into acts of violence and abuse, demonstrating how cultural representations can shape behavior and perceptions of power.

7. Gossip Culture Fueled Public Disdain and Dehumanization of Famous Women

How do we not see that the treatment of It Girls translates to the treatment of all girls in our culture?

Feverish scrutiny. Post-9/11, celebrity media exploded, offering distraction but also unprecedented scrutiny of famous women. Tabloids and blogs like Perez Hilton and TMZ fueled a nonstop cycle of updates, often focusing on stars' breakdowns, addictions, and personal struggles.

Cruelty and dehumanization. This constant, often aggressive coverage, including upskirt photos and public shaming, had a dehumanizing effect. Women were treated less like human beings and more like characters in a soap opera, symbols of decadent decline available for public dissection and ridicule.

Disgust as a weapon. Disgust, a powerful human response, was weaponized against women in the public eye, from politicians to pop stars. This mirrored historical patterns of associating women and their bodies with impurity, making it easier to dismiss, condemn, and dehumanize them.

8. Female Artists Used Confessional Narratives to Reclaim Agency

If I tell the story, I control the version.

Reclaiming narrative. In the early 2010s, a new wave of female artists and writers used confessional narratives and autofiction (like Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture and Girls, Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be?, Issa Rae's Awkward Black Girl) to reclaim agency over their own stories. After a decade of women's lives being appropriated and distorted by media, telling their own versions became an act of self-preservation.

Challenging norms. These works often explored themes of sexual humiliation, arrested development, and the absurdity of postfeminist expectations with frankness and dark humor. They pushed back against idealized portrayals of womanhood and challenged the male gaze by presenting female bodies and experiences in unglamorous, often uncomfortable ways.

Facing backlash. This new wave of female-centered art faced significant backlash, often dismissed as narcissistic or overly personal. However, by centering female experience and grappling with the complexities of sex, power, and identity in a media-saturated world, these artists paved the way for more diverse and honest storytelling.

9. The "Girlboss" Era Prioritized Individual Ambition and Consumption

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Hustle culture. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession and the rise of Instagram, hustle culture became necessary. Instagram rewarded self-presentation and consumption, enabling women to turn personal branding into lucrative side hustles or even careers, often through influencer marketing and selling products.

Individual ascension. The "girlboss" phenomenon embodied this era, promoting young, mediagenic female entrepreneurs as symbols of success. This ideology, echoing postfeminism and Lean In, focused on individual women climbing the corporate ladder or building business empires, often through beauty or fashion brands, rather than advocating for systemic change.

Capitalism over feminism. This movement often co-opted feminist language ("empowerment," "hustle") to sell products and lifestyles, capitalizing on women's desire for success and self-improvement. However, it largely ignored structural inequalities and often relied on exploitative practices, ultimately serving capitalist ends more than collective feminist progress.

10. Cultural Narratives Reduced Women Seeking Power to Caricatures

Ever since, women running for office have tended to fall into the same traps that Clinton and Palin stumbled into.

Limited archetypes. Western culture has a deep-seated separation between women and power, reflected in narratives that silence or diminish women in positions of authority. When women do seek power, they are often reduced to limited archetypes or sexual caricatures.

Political objectification. The ascent of women like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the aughts was met with immediate sexualization and dehumanizing attacks in media and politics. Despite their differing ideologies, both faced scrutiny of their bodies, personal lives, and perceived femininity, reinforcing the idea that a woman's value is primarily sexual, even in the political sphere.

Enduring traps. This pattern continues, with women in politics facing similar attacks that question their competence, morality, and dignity based on gendered stereotypes. The cultural conditioning of decades, which presented women as objects or "trainwrecks," makes it harder for voters to see them as capable leaders, demonstrating how cultural narratives can hinder real-world progress.

11. Understanding This History Is Crucial for Rewriting Narratives of Female Power

Re-vision—the act of looking back, of
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Last updated: May 18, 2025