Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Misogyny of the 2000s

Toxic insightfully presents how some of the greatest female figures of the time were persecuted and vilified by the media in the 2000s.

Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Aaliyah, Janet, Amy, Kim, Chyna, Jennifer. In Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Misogyny of the 2000s , journalist Sarah Ditum describes how each of them suffered from being a celebrity in one of the most hostile times to be a woman.

Covering the period between 1998 and 2013, Ditum's book shows how celebrity culture considered it acceptable to defame women, turning their lives upside down because, after all, being "famous" meant having no privacy. Everything was tabloid fodder, from Britney Spears' virginity, Jennifer Aniston's divorce and fertility, the consequences of Amy Winehouse's addiction, to Janet Jackson's fateful Super Bowl performance... The limits of what we consider tolerable today were constantly exceeded in every case discussed.

With sharp writing, Toxic unravels the misogyny that graced headlines and drove sales and clicks. Still a teenager at the time portrayed in this book, the author raises the question: we've made progress in the last twenty years, such as laws against cybercrime and a more empathetic way of seeing others, but perhaps, with cancel culture, have things really changed that much?

“A necessary and illuminating account of a period of the 21st century that becomes increasingly disconcerting the further we get from it.” — The Guardian

“Readers will rethink what they thought they knew about some stories published in the media of the 2000s.” — Publishers Weekly

"A necessary and incisive feminist reckoning. Insightful, captivating, and frightening. What were we thinking back then?" — Caroline Criado-Perez, author of Invisible Women