What do Britney Spears, American Pie, Girls Gone Wild, and the rise of trad wives on TikTok all have in common? More than you think.

In this episode, we dive into the cultural stew of the late ’90s and early 2000s with Atlantic critic Sophie Gilbert, author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. From foam fingers to foam parties, we unpack how the sparkly, bedazzled, and disturbingly sexist pop culture of that era shaped millennial womanhood—and how it's all come back in a new package labeled "soft girl aesthetic."

We talk Britney, the Spice Girls as proto-influencers, and what it means that the same culture that objectified Monica Lewinsky now celebrates trad wives on TikTok. This is a conversation about memory, marketing, media—and what happens when we mistake sexualization for empowerment.

Read Sophie's great piece in The Atlantic here.

You can grab her book Girl on Girl here.

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