Dead Girls
by Alice Bolin

When I read the description of this essay collection, I got pretty excited. The blurb describes it as an analysis of America’s cultural obsession with dead girls, which promised to be very fertile ground. Really my main criticism of this book is that it doesn’t just stick to this topic.

Alice Bolin starts out strong, with a piece on “dead girl” TV shows, from Twin Peaks to Pretty Little Liars and many others in between (it was inspired by her watching True Detective). I have watched a lot of these dramas and I agree with Bolin that the mere fact of their popularity, not to mention some of the specific tropes they all repeat, is a worrying facet of our culture. In these shows the victim is rarely given much of a character, and the leads are usually men who project their own ideas onto the dead girl. It’s an excellent essay.

Continue reading “Our complicated feelings about the privileged status of white women”