90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality

“Allison Yarrow takes you back to the era of Anita Hill and Monica Lewinsky and Tonya Harding and examines how the media fueled America’s sexism.”—Bustle

To understand how we got here, we have to rewind the VHS tape. 90s Bitch tells the real story of women and girls in the 1990s, exploring how they were maligned by the media, vilified by popular culture, and objectified in the marketplace.

Trailblazing women like Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, Madeleine Albright, Janet Reno, and Marcia Clark were undermined. Newsmakers like Britney Spears, Monica Lewinsky, Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt were shamed and misunderstood. The advent of the twenty-four-hour news cycle reinforced society's deeply entrenched misogyny. Meanwhile, marketers hijacked feminism, sold “Girl Power,” and poisoned a generation.

Today echoes of 90s “bitchification” still exist everywhere. To understand why, we must revisit and interrogate the 1990s—a decade in which empowerment was twisted into objectification, exploitation, and subjugation.

Award–winning journalist Allison Yarrow’s timely examination is a must-read for anyone trying to understand twenty-first century sexism and end it for the next generation.

“Yarrow’s biting autopsy of the decade scrutinizes the way society reduced—or “bitchified”—women . . . Direct quotes from politicians, journalists and comedians about the women provide the most jarring, oh-my-god-that-really-happened portions of Yarrow’s decade excavation.” —Pittsburg Post-Gazette

“Allison Yarrow is a feminist and a muckraker in the tradition of Betty Friedan, Naomi Klein, and bell hooks.” —Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country

“Yarrow is a skillful scene setter.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books

“‘Essential reading for every feminist.” Anne Helen Petersen, author of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

© 2023 Harper Perennial (Ebook): 9780062412355

Release date

Ebook: 21 November 2023