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Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything
by Freya India
A bold and timely investigation into how it feels to grow up in a world where every anxiety of girlhood has been commodified.
GIRLS® is what girls have become in the modern world. We are ornaments on display, filtered and Facetuned. We are objects, shopped for on dating apps. We are brands, managed and monetized. We package up our lives and perform them for an audience. We measure our worth by public reviews and ratings. We have been transformed from people into products.
Freya India's GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything is a passionate, provocative, and deeply personal journey into the pressures shaping young lives today.
"Her solutions to Gen Z's crisis are equally unsatisfying, leaning toward individualism rather than demanding larger systemic change. It's a disappointing attempt to grapple with the runaway exploitation endured by a generation." —Publishers Weekly
"An exploration of the ills of modern girlhood that will likely appeal to more conservative readers." —Kirkus Reviews
"Quite suddenly, in the early 2010s, the mental health of girls collapsed. Researchers scour datasets and argue over what caused it, but Freya India has given us an explanation from the inside, one that is far more compelling and compassionate than a thousand studies. Anyone who cares about the girls and young women in their lives should read GIRLS®. The book is disturbing but the writing is gorgeous. India is the most powerful voice of Gen Z yet to emerge." ―Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation
"Freya India has written the definitive analysis of a generation of young women. With terrific reporting, sharp analysis, and some unforgettable sentences, she explains how female insecurity has been captured, branded, and sold for profit by companies and social media platforms. If you want to understand America's psychological crisis, India argues, we have to understand the economics behind it. She's absolutely right." ―Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance
This information about GIRLS® was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Freya India is the author of the Substack GIRLS, where she writes about the challenges girls and young women face in the modern world, and a staff writer for Jonathan Haidt's newsletter, After Babel. She has also contributed to publications including The New Statesman, The Spectator, and The Free Press.
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