In today’s edition of the Los Angeles Review of Books, we’ve  assembled three articles that in their own way trace the feminist / anti-feminist ideal, as it circulates through history, literature and modern culture.  They strike a related but tense conversation with one another about the status of feminism  today: with Megan  Abbott’s gum-snapping, finger-popping, boy destroying adolescent girls staring down Tiqqun and its theory of the “Young-Girl,” a metaphor for the relentless idealization of youth and femininity in an age of commodity capitalism.  Refereeing the contest is Lois Leveen, who, writing about historical fiction and feminist history, observes “the lesson at the heart of feminist criticism: how we read is as important as what we read.” It’s a call to action for anyone looking to do more than just digest the ideals of femininity popularized in contemporary culture.  

Leveen’s “The Paradox of Pluck” surveys historical fiction for an answer to how it came to supplant new feminist history. In “Sticky Fingers,” Natasha Post Rosow examines Megan Abbott’s girl-on-girl noir fiction and its labyrinthine geography of hormonal adolescent girls. In “Drone Warfare,” Adam Morris considers how the underground revolutionary movement Tiqqun uses the concept of the “Young-Girl” as a lens into the commodification of social life and the “imperialism of the trivial.”  

While unique in subject matter and methodology, each article encourages us to rethink how we read the feminist ideal, and to reread that ideal back into history, and into the present day.