Description

Look past what you’re being TOLDAnd see what you’re being SOLD’Anyone who cares about the girls and young women in their lives should read GIRLS (R)’ JONATHAN HAIDT

‘Freya India is one of our sharpest, smartest young writers’ HELEN LEWIS

GIRLS (R): Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything is a passionate, provocative and deeply personal journey into the pressures shaping young lives today. Freya India shows that age-old anxieties of girlhood are now being amplified by modern life and exploited like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, we have become the product. We display our lives on Instagram, advertise ourselves on dating apps and package ourselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. We have transformed from girls into GIRLS (R), from people into products.

Each chapter of GIRLS (R) focuses on a common anxiety in adolescent girls’ lives, from insecurities about our faces and bodies, to our reputation and social status, to our friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.

This isn’t just a book for girls. For young women, it offers a nostalgic, if unsettling, reflection on the world they’ve grown up in and reassurance that they’re not alone in their struggles. For younger girls, it provides context for where these challenges began and warns where they might be headed. And, for parents, teachers and older generations, it serves as a reminder that these issues have never been so intense.

GIRLS (R) concludes with a message of hope, reminding readers how to reclaim their privacy, defend their dignity, and, above all, return to being people instead of products.

Publisher Review

‘Freya India’s writing is compassionate, gripping, and deeply psychological’ – Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation ‘Freya India is an essential voice on Gen Z’ – Scott Galloway, bestselling author and podcast host ‘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 the psychological crisis, India argues, we have to understand the economics behind it. She’s absolutely right.’ Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance ‘Freya India is one of our sharpest, smartest young writers. A superstar in the making, her writing is the opposite of an Instagram filter — suddenly, you can see everything more clearly’ Helen Lewis