This was fantastic! Toxic chronicles 9 celebrities and their treatment by the media in the aughts (the author calls the 2000s "The Upskirt Decade;" I've been calling them the "Van Wilder Years" lol). Each chapter is a deep dive into society/media's mistreatment of a specific, iconic woman: Britney Spears, Aaliyah, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Janet Jackson, Chyna Doll, and Jennifer Aniston.

And damn. Those women went through the ringer. I remember almost everything to an extent, even 20 years later, but reading it compiled is so impactful. It was a shockingly unhinged time. After everything, it's incredible that most of them made it out alive (grim, I know, sorry).

I think this a great, and timely book. I think its only now that we can begin to understand how profoundly bizarre and messed up those years are, while still appreciating and being sort of nostalgic for how much we all cared about the same thing at the same time.

This is a juicy, readable, and smart collection of essays and I'm so lucky that I got to read it early!! Thank you netgalley, Sarah Ditum, and Abrams Press. <3

"Alexa, play Toxic by Brittney Spears." What a great and informative book. I normally am not a fan of nonfiction, but this book was great and I actually enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this to my patrons for sure.

This was absolutely fascinating. I learned so much about these women and I really thought I had the full story on most. Will definitely find a way to use this text for a class at some point and really excited to do so.

In this book Ditum takes us back to the early 2000’s to what she refers to as the “upskirt decade” because apparently there was a court case that said upskirt photos were ok because women couldn’t expect privacy in a public place (WTH?!?). And that just set the tone for celebrity coverage in the early days of widespread internet. This book is about different women’s treatment in the media and how that treatment reflected societal norms. It was interesting to me to read this book about a time that I remember living through and to be reminded of how some things have changed and how others have not. Fame requires media coverage but at the end of the day there are actual human beings at the other end of the camera/gossip site/etc and norms change about what is considered ok and what is over the line. Mainly I appreciated this book for making me think about questions of fame vs. privacy and how society views women’s bodies.

I was truly impressed by this book. Sarah Ditum does a really great job of being evenhanded in her criticisms of the 2000's Gawker/TMZ/Perez Hilton media landscape. I was disgusted reliving how these woman were mistreated, but Ditum is quick to not point fingers. Case in point, the author points out that Justin Timberlake, the man we are all supposed to hate now, was stuck in the same machine that almost destroyed Janet and Britney. This isn't to say he isn't culpable at all, but it was refreshing to see a writer not do the lazy, "he's terrible, F-him" hand waving that doesn't point the finger at the real enemies here. I recommend this for readers interested in media and pop culture.

“Toxic” is an examination of nine famous women from the 90s-00s and the ways the cultural climate thwarted their attempts to control their own narratives. I learned a lot about these women and the media landscape at the turn of the century, and while “Toxic” has moments of salient cultural analysis, I can’t help but feel like it’s not as strong of a book as it could be.
For one, there’s an uneven application of sources; there’s a lot of theory in some chapters where others are mostly supported by news articles. I also wonder how this book could have benefited from primary source interviews rather than just research. This book is as much a history of gossip blogs and sites like Gawker as it is about these women, and each chapter (which are all ostensibly centered around one of them) goes so far off topic that it’s easy to forget who the focus is on. Every chapter is annoyingly redundant, bringing up the same facts instead of allowing the reader to use their power of memory or replacing that recursiveness with something new.
I did enjoy the first few chapters, but after that this book lost steam and any sense of order, so I think it would have been more effective with less example women, or if it centered each chapter around an aspect of being a famous women in the aughts rather than a particular person. The order of the chapters didn’t really make sense to me, either; the Kim chapter seemed to be the strongest end point to me given her fame timeline.
Thank you NetGalley and Abrams Press for the digital review copy.

After living in New York with dreams of working in the film industry for six or so years, I left the States for Europe in 2005 and never looked back. I’d always told myself it was mostly due to George W. Bush’s frightening, authoritarian ways, but I also had this constant icky feeling about the pop culture surrounding me. It felt increasingly toxic and at times intolerably cruel and this book puts it all into perspective in such a precise way, I couldn’t help but weep a few times. Not for myself, but for the way we failed so many talented women with our creepy focus on their bodies and personal lives…the way we allowed blogs like Perez Hilton and Gawker to set such a vicious tone…the way we sat back and watched women get abused and objectified while treating it all as entertainment...never questioning our own complicity, and never truly caring about the human being inside.

I’m so grateful that Sarah Ditum wrote this stunning excavation of a shockingly ugly and unbearable moment in pop culture history. Younger readers who weren’t alive at the time or too young to know what was going on will be disgusted at some of the stories, while those who lived through it will find so much clarity and perhaps even therapy in this book, especially in the excellent conclusion chapter.. It’s a tough but impeccably researched and endlessly informative read and I can’t wait for it to come out. Thanks so much for hooking up an early copy.

Toxic by Sarah Ditum provides an in-depth and insightful analysis on pop culture, specifically the media's consumption and treatment of nine iconic women: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian, and Chyna. Sarah Ditum is diligent in giving context for those who may not be familiar with these women. I grew up in this era so it was interesting to read about the events I witnessed on the internet and magazines firsthand and looking back on them in a more critical lens. This book discusses the toxic and harmful nature of being a part of the entertainment industry and how the 90s and 2000s were a particularly hostile time to be a woman in media. It was very insightful to read these essays and it encouraged me to be more reflective of my own media consumption and how I perceive women involved in it. I thoroughly enjoy reading works that cover this era of the industry and pop-culture so this was totally up my alley!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

As a pop culture junkie, I cannot express how much I loved this book. As a frequent reader of the OG Perez Hilton, watching the way "troubled" celebs were stalked and dissected paired with the progression and growth of social media. I devoured this book. Well-written, thoughtful, and perfect for fans of Deuxmoi.

4.5/5 : What a great read. I appreciate how each chapter really dissected what each celeb had to go through in the limelight. This was well written and very thorough in research and quotes. I could see this book being discussed in a Women’s Gender & Sexuality Course.

Well written. I am the same age as Britney Spears, so I watched her grow up. This book did a great job explains the time period.