Articles
How BookTok undermines the literary merit of women’s fictionBookTok has turned the private pleasure of reading into a crowded public performance. A reader opens a book, records a reaction, lists tropes and waits for…
The dead wife trope in streaming murder documentariesAcross streaming murder documentaries, a pattern turns a woman’s death into the beginning of someone else’s story. A wife is found dead, a husband attracts…
Why The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Gives Hollywood a Feminist AlibiNetflix’s adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel follows Evelyn Hugo as she reveals seven marriages, sexual coercion and a life rebuilt around wealth and…
When Romantasy makes consent dangerousRomantasy has made the impossible-suitor bargain one of modern publishing’s most potent fantasies. How A Court of Thorns and Roses and Romantasy Rethink…
The class bias hiding inside the motherhood debateThe debate about mothers in publishing is often framed as a choice between a career and caregiving. The invisible class bias of the mothers in publishing…
What the Women’s Fiction Label Really MeansIn an Australian bookshop, online catalogue or library search, the label can appear before the story does. Women’s fiction, romantic fiction and the informal…
When bad girls escape accountabilityThe problem with biopics about bad girls that avoid consequences is not their fascination with violence. It is the way they turn a woman’s harm into a…
How the sad girl indie trend turned pain into brand identityIn the late 2010s, a particular kind of female singer-songwriter seemed to arrive everywhere: soft-spoken, achingly intimate and dressed in carefully arranged…
The cover girl paradoxAn album cover is often the first thing we encounter before a song announces itself. A square image can do the work of a press tour. For a woman musician, it…
Why Women's Sports Media Still Frames Female Athletes as Mothers FirstFemale athletes are praised for power, speed and skill, yet their public identities often shrink to a domestic role. Performance becomes secondary to…