The Near Distant Schlamperei: a 20th Anniversary

I’m trying to remember the rough dates that the transition took place, but it was fairly rapid as far as “social change goes”. The shift was gross and ultimately sweeping, and while it looked like nothing at first, before we knew it, femininity was undercut and popular culture wanted girls to be boys.

It took another ten years, but the popular culture in the form of the lowbrow fashion press reinstated womanhood as a way of constructing attention-seeking irony: it was more or less hitched to the concept of being a happy slut.