Girls, Interrupted: How Pop Culture Is Failing Women

The past decade has seen a rise in documentaries, memoirs and podcasts that revisit the legacies of women wronged by pop culture. With movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, challenging long-standing narratives around female celebrities, it’s no surprise so many believe the representation of women in the media has improved. In her scathingly witty collection of essays, Girls, Interrupted, Lisa Whittington-Hill argues otherwise. Pop culture’s treatment of women, writes Whittington-Hill, is still marked by misogyny and misunderstanding. From the gender bias in celebrity memoir coverage to problematic pop culture portrayals of middle-aged women and the sexist pressure on female pop stars to constantly reinvent themselves, Girls, Interrupted critically examines how mainstream media keeps failing women and explores what we can do to fix it. A work of searing relevance, this candid and often cathartic debut marks Whittington-Hill as a cultural critic of the first rank.

Lisa Whittington-Hill is a writer based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Longreads, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Catapult, and more. She is also the publisher of This Magazine and teaches in the publishing program at Centennial College.