bunceyyy's review against another edition
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
Extremely readable and enjoyable, especially for someone of a similar age to the author, as I am. I went to the book launch and Ditum was interesting and lovely too. Very much recommended!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism, Violence, Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, Eating disorder, Racism, Fatphobia, and Suicide
abbylw's review
informative
medium-paced
3.25
“Toxic” is an examination of nine famous women from the 90s-00s and the ways the cultural climate thwarted their attempts to control their own narratives. I learned a lot about these women and the media landscape at the turn of the century, and while “Toxic” has moments of salient cultural analysis, I can’t help but feel like it’s not as strong of a book as it could be.
For one, there’s an uneven application of sources; there’s a lot of theory in some chapters where others are mostly supported by news articles. I also wonder how this book could have benefited from primary source interviews rather than just research. This book is as much a history of gossip blogs and sites like Gawker as it is about these women, and each chapter (which are all ostensibly centered around one of them) goes so far off topic that it’s easy to forget who the focus is on. Every chapter is annoyingly redundant, bringing up the same facts instead of allowing the reader to use their power of memory and replacing that recursiveness with something new.
I did enjoy the first few chapters, but after that it lost steam and any sense of order, so I think it would have been more effective with less example women, or if it centered each chapter around an aspect of being a famous women in the aughts rather than a particular woman. The order of the chapters didn’t really make sense to me, either; the Kim chapter seemed to be the strongest end point to me given her fame timeline.
Thank you NetGalley and Abrams Press for the digital review copy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Eating disorder, Alcoholism, Sexual content, Pedophilia, Misogyny, Drug abuse, and Self harm
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