GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

A bold and timely investigation into how it feels to grow up in a world where every anxiety of girlhood has been commodified

GIRLS: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything is a passionate, provocative, and deeply personal journey into the pressures shaping young lives today. Freya India shows that modern life is amplifying and exploiting age-old anxieties of girlhood like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, Gen Z girls and women have become the product. They display their lives on Instagram, advertise themselves on dating apps, and package themselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. They have transformed from girls into GIRLS, from people into products.

Each chapter of GIRLS focuses on a common anxiety in adolescent girls’ lives, from insecurities about their looks, to their reputation and social status, to their friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.

For Gen Z women, GIRLS offers a nostalgic, if unsettling, reflection on the world they’ve grown up in and reassurance that they’re not alone in their struggles. For Gen Z girls, it provides context for where these challenges began and warns where they might be headed. And for parents, teachers, and older generations, it serves as a reminder that these issues have never been so intense.