Unpacking the "Slut" Narratives of Britney, Monica, Paris, Pamela & Others with Jessica Bennett (NYT)

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Jessica Bennett has spent her award-winning journalism career focusing a gender lens on social issues and culture — from the persistence of workplace inequality, to cultural trends like Playboy magazine to rebrand and the evolution of Miss America, to the ripple effects of #MeToo. She was the first-ever gender editor of The New York Times and is the author of two bestselling books, Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace (HarperCollins) and This Is 18: Girls’ Lives Through Girls’ Eyes (Abrams). She is an adjunct professor of journalism at NYU. Fun fact: She once wrote a viral piece about her Resting Bitch Face.

In 2021 Jessica wrote a piece that I have been thinking about since then. It was title, Speaking of Britney … What About All Those Other Women? Monica Lewinsky. Janet Jackson. Lindsay Lohan. Whitney Houston. We are living in an era of reappraisals. It questioned if we were rethinking how we treated the the “wild" girls of the 90’s and 2000’s—Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Monica Lewinsky. We break it down and discuss how we are treating women in the media today and what that means for how we see ourselves and each other.

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Listen to Jessica’s new podcast: inretropod.com