As someone who enjoys reading about feminism from an academic point of view, this book made me question and reevaluate the content on this subject that circulates and that "sells" the most. It added to the ideas that I have been constructing about feminism, both based on research, my experience, and my own deconstruction processes. However, I do not think this would be a good starting point for someone who know nothing or very little about feminism.

The concept builds on White Feminism, drawing on archetypes like Karen which are already in our consciousness.
It points out that some forms of activism might overlap with ways that white women are able to perform such as being sassy or sarcastic, which women of colour might not have the freedom to engage in.
A really important point is that this aggressive feminism does not leave space for vulnerability and difference, showing that for truly intersectional feminism to flourish, we need to challenge this mean girl feminism.

I have been trying to articulate what exactly mean girl feminism is since Roe was overturned, and this book has nailed it. It’s a simple idea on the surface: of course white women have colonized and appropriated gender. Because being able to open a checking account and become a CEO aren’t enough. Because it was never about equality to a mean girl feminist, it has always been about competition. Men were the sole competitors for the longest time and now it is their fellow women. Yes, the text is dense. This certainly isn’t narrative non-fiction and I had to look up many terms and do some supplemental reading to fully grasp some new ideas, but I appreciate Mean Girl Feminism for what it is.

very interesting. it's far more dense and scholarly than the cover and zippy title implies, but i was still able to take something from it. we simply must dismantle white supremacy

Mean Girl Feminism is a book I liked the idea of but the execution was a bit drier than expected. There were times (especially within the first couple chapters) where I felt like I needed to reread sections multiple times. I found the section about conservative feminism/Laura Bush/the war on terror the most fascinating.

This was very dense and read like a thesis or dissertation. This isn't a bad thing, it was just unexpected and meant that I really needed to be in a certain frame of mind to enjoy it
Which I did!
I found this to be really interesting and raised a lot of thought provoking questions
I was really, really getting into this book and then realised I was at the end and the last 20% was notes
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Interesting premise. I appreciate the authors trying to bring in the intersectionality of feminism, and the tile white feminism plays into it.
It is very academically written. It does feels like reading a university paper, which makes it a bit harder to keep focus.

I haven't had a graduate course in feminism, so this all went way over my head due to all the jargon. Definitely not written for an everyday audience.

Mean Girl Feminism is the book on Feminism that I've been waiting for. It's clever, clear, and talks about things I've long wished would be discussed in the form of long-form essays.
I appreciated the author's insights and commentary. They framed topics in ways I found mostly easy to understand, and anything I didn't understand kind of just highlighted for me a lack of my own knowledge of different systems of power such as racism.
I hope this author continue to writes about this or other related topics and there is still so much to be said!

This dense, scholarly work from the University of Illinois Press really packs a punch, exploring the intricacies of white feminism and the ways in which it works alongside both white supremacy and cis-heteropatriarchy. The last two chapters really stood out to me with their explorations of power couple feminism and global mother feminism. I appreciated the blended use of both well known American political figures and popular television and movie characters to highlight the ways in which mean girl feminism helps to uphold our current power structures.

Thank you to Netgalley and the University of Illinois Press for this eARC

Mean Girl Feminism is an interesting analysis of white women with respect to intersectional feminism through the lens of pop culture.

This was an interesting book on feminism has changed in its presentation, especially for white women and especially online. I enjoyed reading this but it was kind of hard and a bit muddled and too academic at times. 2.5/5

In this scholarly work from the University of Illinois Press’ Feminist Media Studies book series, Kim Hong Nguyen examines the idea of ‘mean girl feminism’, in which white women take on particular roles that appear to be feminist, but upon further examination these roles do little but further the individual woman’s status in a particular in-group while failing to address systemic issues affecting their communities.

These ‘mean girl’ roles also fail to consider intersectionality and thus do nothing to aid women of color, transgender women, or anyone else who isn’t part of that specific white in-group. By gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girl bossing (to quote a popular phrase from the social media site Tumblr), many white women use ideas of feminism to make themselves into the victim and make it appear as though their apparent victories against patriarchy serve the greater good, when in fact these victories often serve instead to uphold patriarchal norms. Thanks to gatekeeping, white women often use their status as both a persecuted group (under patriarchy) and a privileged group (white, in a racist system) to keep people of color- particularly women- from gaining an advantage that might help further the cause of equality for all. White women have done this so often by doing things like calling the police on Black men who were out birdwatching or barbecuing in their own backyards, and then acting as though they, the white women, were somehow under attack from a threatening person, the Black person minding their own business. These are just a few of the examples that Nguyen examines in her work. The list continues, citing real-world situations and drawing upon pop culture to illustrate the points.

Divided into four sections, Mean Girl Feminism provides a clear-eyed look at the ways that modern white feminism has taken ideas from feminists of color in the past- often without properly crediting them- and then fails to address the genuine challenges women of color and transgender women face. White feminism also often fails to draw upon community values and seeks instead to promote the individual women who succeed at appearing to win at feminism without really challenging the patriarchal norms that plague all of us. Mean Girl Feminism is not a comfortable read, nor is it an easy one, but if we wish to advance the rights and well-being of all women, it is necessary to face the discomfort and accept that the work of advancing equality is uncomfortable and difficult, but worth it in the end.

"Mean Girl Feminism" was an interesting read and a different take on present day feminism. Modern day with online and different types of “mean girls” was informative.

Author, Kim Hong Nguyen broke down the mean girl feminist into categories. Bitch feminism, Mean Girl feminism, the Power Couple feminism, and Global Mother feminism. Interesting dynamic and a glimpse into current feminism.

i found this to be pretty thin overall - lots of stuff about white feminism repackaged as mean girl feminism, but i've read more expansively about white feminism and the connections felt superfluous overall. the pop culture-y stuff was slightly gimmicky as well. there are more productive takes to read i think!

While the content of Mean Girl Feminism is so important and informative, however the writing was a bit muddled. Its not an easy read but I still enjoyed it.

This book offers a sharp critique of specific feminist tropes in popular culture, arguing they exploit and distort experiences of marginalized groups for personal gain. Through the lens of "mean girl feminism," Nguyen offers that these performances ultimately reinforce existing power structures, hindering genuine progress towards intersectional liberation.

This was such an interesting title, I had to pick it up! It was an interesting and thought provoking look into what it means to be a white feminist in today's world, and the unconscious biases that need to be worked on within the feminist movement.

The book does read a bit more scholarly than others, which may make it somewhat harder to read.

Thanks to University of Illinois Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Readers should be warned that this is an academic book coming from an academic publisher. It is a bit challenging to parse, as this area of theory is something I'm hardly familiar with, but it is well worth pushing through the challenge. Kim Hong Nguyen has a lot of great ideas here, and I loved not only learning a lot but also recognizing some ideas I'm familiar with written in a much more eloquent way than I've ever been able to put them.

dnf chapter 2
So this might be on me, but when I requested this book I was kind of under the impression that this would be a lighthearted satire/comedy poking fun at white feminism, but this turned out to be a legit thesis paper kind of thing??? And there's nothing wrong with that, its just that the bright pink cover and the title made me think otherwise, so I went into this expecting witty take-downs of girlboss feminists, and got this instead. Anyway, for the rest of this review keep in mind that I don't read serious research papers ever, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
This book is full of citations, which may be normal for a research paper, but was just tedious to read. I feel like this book contained more citations than the author's own thoughts, which had to backed up with citations too. And the introduction was incredibly long, it introduces the main concept of this book, which is the different categories of "mean girl feminists", then immediately begins dissecting each category, and this is all in the introduction chapter. Which is a pity, because I agree with a lot of the points of this book, but I just couldn't get through this.
Moving on to the contents, I think the author makes excellent points about the pitfalls of white feminism, from the way white feminists weaponise white femininity against POC, to the "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss" mentality white feminists embody. However, something I have to question is who this book is even for? I don't see white feminists being interested in picking this up, and the concepts introduced in this book aren't new to women of colour. Not to mention that this text is pretty dense, which creates an additional barrier of inaccessibility.