Until recently, Jia Tolentino and Abigail Rine Favale had a lot in common. Both well-educated women identified as pro-choice. As progressives, they felt at ease in the political and cultural left. One is still immersed in that world: she writes for the New Yorker, and her recent book of cultural criticism is among President Obama’s 2019 favorites. The other, however, has undergone quite a transformation.
Both women have written books diagnosing similar cultural, economic, and psychological defects in our society, but they offer very different prescriptions for these troubles. For example, both Tolentino and Favale have scathing words for consumerism’s outsized influence on public life. Social media, Tolentino explains, transforms our very selves into commodities, exploiting our natural desire for attention by making explicit and quantifying our popularity levels (followers, likes, ratios). Those who spend a copious amount of time online subject themselves to the frivolous demands of popular culture. Lifestyle corporations sell products and services like barre and athleisure (think Outdoor Voices) that whisper to every woman that she must exude an Instagram-worthy, casually perfect, carefree aura. Favale also critiques capitalism’s messaging, observing that “Our entire economic engine runs on the fuel of unquenchable human desire. . . . Keeping us wanting, rather than content, is the goal. Humans are creatures of desire, so it goes, and to deny or suppress our desires cripples our True Self.”
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