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A review by lindseylitlivres
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
3.0
A millennial manifesto.
As the description promises, every essay focuses on major cultural points for (primarily) millennial women, how those areas shape our feelings and behaviors, and asks us to take critical look at memory and context.
The author is vulnerable, talking about how she applies much of her own life, risking coming off as vapid (which I should stop using this word since I mostly hear it applied to women and girls) and how her ideas of feminism have evolved, resulting in her personal growth. Not many of us can do that.
I had a lot of cyclical, stressful thinking throughout each essay. I was reminded that so much of what I know is shaped by celebrity and a patriarchal standard, then “who is Jia to decide what is real in my tastes or feeling and what is manufactured?” and then I have to think about if I’m that person to decide. It is so hard to distinguish the collective from the self, and in that, claiming your identity can feel exhausting.
I like that she doesn’t dismiss superficial things like celebrity gossip as social media as ineffectual to our growth when we are bombarded with the horrors of reality - both ours and of those not as privileged as ourselves. We can’t escape this duality and it’s so hard to do the morality math when we try to care about both the world and ourselves.
Honestly, I found this stressful but mostly because I had to analyze myself and my follies and wrongs in a way that is, frankly, not fun. It is a thoughtful piece that made me have to sit with my existential discomfort.
As the description promises, every essay focuses on major cultural points for (primarily) millennial women, how those areas shape our feelings and behaviors, and asks us to take critical look at memory and context.
The author is vulnerable, talking about how she applies much of her own life, risking coming off as vapid (which I should stop using this word since I mostly hear it applied to women and girls) and how her ideas of feminism have evolved, resulting in her personal growth. Not many of us can do that.
I had a lot of cyclical, stressful thinking throughout each essay. I was reminded that so much of what I know is shaped by celebrity and a patriarchal standard, then “who is Jia to decide what is real in my tastes or feeling and what is manufactured?” and then I have to think about if I’m that person to decide. It is so hard to distinguish the collective from the self, and in that, claiming your identity can feel exhausting.
I like that she doesn’t dismiss superficial things like celebrity gossip as social media as ineffectual to our growth when we are bombarded with the horrors of reality - both ours and of those not as privileged as ourselves. We can’t escape this duality and it’s so hard to do the morality math when we try to care about both the world and ourselves.
Honestly, I found this stressful but mostly because I had to analyze myself and my follies and wrongs in a way that is, frankly, not fun. It is a thoughtful piece that made me have to sit with my existential discomfort.