Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse

Essayist Bolin (Dead Girls) probes the intersection of technology, culture, and feminism in this ferociously smart collection. In “Enumerated Woman,” she argues that using Fitbits or other devices to track steps, calorie intake, and other data is a manifestation of a “postfeminist” ideal that uses notions of bodily autonomy to uphold traditional standards of beauty while fueling capitalist consumption. She returns to the bankruptcy of “a feminism that does nothing but prop up privileged women’s choices” in essays about Nxivm, a sex cult that recruited women using the language of “empowerment,” and the politically apathetic characters of Sex and the City. The Obama era comes in for reexamination in “Foundering,” where Bolin contends that the veneration of “boy geniuses” in such hits as Hamilton and The Social Network laid the groundwork for the billionaire class’s takeover of American politics. Elsewhere, she reflects with unease on spending her adolescence obsessively reading Teen Vogue and Seventeen, suggesting that the magazines shaped her desires in insidious ways while distracting her from the abuses of the George W. Bush administration. Bolin’s sharp analysis draws unintuitive connections between a variety of political and cultural targets, offering a caustic take on the vicissitudes of modern life. This solidifies Bolin’s status as a vital chronicler of millennial ennui. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House Literary. (June)