trick mirror (jia tolentino)

Trick Mirror is a collection of 9 essays. Many of these essays address the issue of feminism, or being a woman in today’s (post?) feminist western world. Others dovetail and overlap with this theme as they explore notions of identity in the age of the internet and social media, and the construction of the self. There are essays on university life and marriage, but also the way in which the USA has always been a huckster’s paradise (which lead to Trump) and another on the link between religion and ecstasy, that being ecstasy the drug. The essays which most struck this reader were the ones that dealt with the relationship with the internet and another titled Always be Optimising.

The latter again interrogates feminism: “Today’s ideal woman is of a type that coexists easily with feminism in its current market-friendly and mainstream form.” Tolentino then goes on to question to what extent feminism has been sublimated by capitalism, and the cult of the spectacle, and how far this has truly made for the liberation of women. It’s a thesis that seeks to ruffle feathers, and is all the better for it. “The default assumption tends to be that it is politically important to designate everyone as beautiful, that it is a meaningful project to make sure that everyone can become, and feel, increasingly beautiful. We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite - de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter less.” It is also one that perhaps, as we live in a world where the commodification of the image is ever more prevalent, goes beyond the gender divide.

Tolentino’s article on the internet is one of the sharpest critiques of a thematic that has erupted in the 21st century and is only destined to become more problematic. “The internet was dramatically increasing our ability to know about things, while our ability to change things stayed the same, or possibly shrank right in front of us”, she writes. The way in which knowledge has been neutered by being located in the virtual world, whilst the real world goes about its process of removing rights and restricting education is something that requires writers like Tolentino to shout about as vociferously as possible.

However, in contrast to reading, say, Virilio, who might be said to explore similar cybernetic territory, Tolentino writes with a relaxed, intimacy. She is willing to add her own autobiographical experiences and put them to the test, holding the reader’s hand as she talks through the complexities of being a woman in the internet age. It’s no doubt this capacity for the candid that has helped to build a solid base of readers, and gives her leeway to move from a specific, personal to a more general, philosophical viewpoint. Whether you agree with what she’s saying or not, she is always readable and engaging. The fact that she is also skewering some of the biggest problematics of capitalism, feminism and modernity, is a bonus.