Update: I think the things that were bothering me about this book are it is:

1) slightly out of touch with the millennial generation and beyond, in terms of what pop references are most relevant and how people feel about them now. I didn't recognize every single film or tv show she talks about which felt telling.
2) Like others have mentioned in their reviews, there was not a lot of analysis from the perspective of race. Most (all?) the characters and personalities she discusses are white and that doesn't feel like it should be left alone. An essay on how women of color are presented or excluded from media would have been the bare minimum.
2) I am tired of hearing about how Disney princesses are bullshit. We already know that but we also know that shaming girls for liking princesses is the opposite of feminism and like, just enjoy or hate princesses on your own at this point.
3) the author frames this all through a reading of Alice In Wonderland that somehow ignores that the real-life Alice was a child being groomed and preyed upon by a pedophile and that just doesn't feel like it is doing the female empowering move that it should be doing...

I think ultimately I was not the audience for this (despite being interested in all the topics it covers) and through no fault of its own, it misses the tone because it was published a mere two months before the #metoo movement reached its height and gave us a whole new perspective on all these topics. (It was bothering me why Harvey Weinstein came up without any commentary on him and publication dates don't tell lies)


I didn't actually finish but the tone was bumming me out so I am going to save this to finish later. The essays are interesting (some more than others, but that's always the case) and worth reading just not...during a government coup/pandemic combo ( )

Reading this book was a very interesting experience. I don’t disagree with anything she says in this book, in fact I agree with most of it, and yet I found I had a hard time relating to her experiences and examples, mine were just so radically different at times even though I believe we are the same age.
One example I can give is how the movie Flashdance affected her, I can’t relate to what she described because I never saw that movie and never wanted to, but the description of her experiences felt valid from what I remember of the 80’s. It was this way throughout most of the book. And I actually feel this made this book even more relevant and valuable to me, I feel it is very important to recognize that no one experiences culture in the same was as anyone else and yet we are all shaped by it for both good or ill.
Overall this was a very quick read, very accessible and engaging and it made me think and reevaluate the culture and times I grew up in be seeing someone else’s experiences. ( )

Chocano's collection of essays takes a critical look at various elements of popular culture and dissects just what they have to say about women and our place in society. Or at least they do some of the time. Unfortunately, this collection was more miss than hit for me. There were some essays where Chocano would start exploring a film or tv show but I never could figure out her central thesis. There were a couple essays where Chocano was a presence but I never really felt like I connected with her. And I have to admit that any essay that cites Foucault always leaves me leery (I blame an hour-long class in undergrad spent dissecting the meaning of a single Foucault sentence for my dislike). The essays aren't bad, just not quite what I was expecting and more on the academic end of the spectrum than I'd expect of a book that had been marketed at a general audience. ( )

Carina Chocano is the essay writer I wish I was. She examines how pop culture treats women and girls- and how it affects us. From Katherine Hepburn and how her image had to be toned down for people to accept her movies; ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ and ‘Bewitched’ (how two insanely powerful women constantly deferred to men); to the huge Disney princess phenomena wherein a princess is someone to be saved by a man or presented to a man. ‘Desperate Housewives’, ‘Real Housewives’, ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, ‘Flashdance’, the misogyny in ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved’- in a women’s magazine, no less, ‘Thelma and Louise’, ‘Pretty Woman’, Disney, ‘Mad Men’ and a lot more all come under her feminist microscope. And while you can tell she’s very frustrated by the way the media presents women, she is always entertaining and easy to read. I’d love to read what she thinks about ‘Wonder Woman’ and the new Dr. Who! Five stars out of five. ( )