WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM.

In this smart, funny, impassioned call to arms, a pop culture critic merges memoir and commentary to explore how our culture shapes ideas about who women are, what they are meant to be, and where they belong.

As a kid in the 1970s and '80s, Carina Chocano was confused by the mixed messages all around her: messages that told her who she could be—and who she couldn’t. She grappled with sexed-up sidekicks, princesses waiting to be saved, and morally infallible angels who seemed to have no opinions of their own.

Chocano learned that "the girl" is not a person, but a man's idea of what a woman should be—she’s whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. Drawing from her years as a movie critic, Chocano unveils how stories in popular culture too often limits girls' lives and shapes their destinies. She resolved to rewrite her own story.

In You Play the Girl, Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. Moving from Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive ’70s through the backlash ’80s, the glib ’90s, and the pornified aughts—and at stops in between—she explains how growing up in the shadow of “the girl” taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections.

In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than we think, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.

"If Hollywood's treatment of women leaves you wanting, you'll find good, heady company in You Play the Girl."—Elle