Girls®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

The insecurities of Gen-Z girls have become increasingly commodified, particularly online, according to this troubling yet rocky debut treatise from India, author of the Girls newsletter. Partly drawing on her own experiences as a Gen-Z kid growing up online—“My worth was made public, measured in likes and followers”—India argues that, in addition to the “age-old anxieties” of adolescence, Gen Z encountered the added pressure of corporations, particularly tech companies, monetizing their struggles, rendering teen girls “both the consumers and the consumed” and leaving them alienated and detached as adults. Examples include dating apps that required girls to “become a better object” to get the most swipes, plastic surgery framed as “a path to... self-actualization,” and a TikTokker supporting Mental Health Awareness Month pausing to promote an ad for a skincare product that can “strip away the stigma of anxiety.” Yet the book is derailed by the author’s tendency to reach for well-trod conservative talking points, from pearl clutching over Miley Cyrus’s 2013 VMA performance (a sign of “how far things have gone”) to labeling gender dysphoria “a form of social contagion.” 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. (May)