Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays

Jill Gutowitz writes her autobiography in the form of pop culture essays, intertwining childhood anecdotes, teenage angst, and twentysomething soul searching with ruminations on the significance of Lindsay Lohan and Orange Is the New Black to the lesbian community. There is some heavy stuff -- homophobia and sexual assault -- but the overall effect is an amusing ride that touches on a dozen or so movies and alludes to the ubiquitousness of Cara Delevingne and the simultaneous trailblazing and dead weight nature of Ellen DeGeneres.

Highlights include a run-in with the FBI and the magical thinking displayed in an essay condemning Perez Hilton for outing gay people while discussing her own career looking for LGBTQIA+ Easter eggs in the show more lyrics and life of Taylor Swift. show less

3.5 stars

As a queer millennial who grew up chronically online, obsessed with pop culture, music, horror movies, and experienced a lot of the same coming of age type of events that Jill Gutowitz writes about in this collection of essays.. I really enjoyed this. A lot of the lower reviews seem to be coming from Gen Z readers who were not familiar with many of the references or found Jill's writing to be a little "too millennial" but I don't entirely feel like Gen Z was the intended audience of these essays anyway. This book isn't perfect, but I found many of the essay to be deeply relatable, entertaining, and nostalgic. I don't typically read a lot of comedic books, but this worked for me and was a lot of fun.

If you are a millennial pop culture fanatic you NEED to mark Jill Gutowitz's amazing essay collection GIRLS CAN KISS NOW as a TBR for it's release date in March.. Written through the lens of a coming of age memoir, Jill explores how her queerness and her love of pop culture has collided through her journey of self discovery. This collection is hilarious, thoughtful, insightful and a joy to read. I wish I could gift copies to every lesbian I know!

Thank you so much to netgalley and publishers for providing an advanced e-copy for me to read and rate honestly. I couldn't be happier to announce just how perfect I found this collection, nor can I stress the fact that I highly recommend this book to everyone enough.

“Isn't it... kinda cool? How dumb and fragile we are, able be wholly destabilized by the likes of ... Katy Perry?” not everybody likes to admit the impact that pop culture has on us, but jill gutowitz is ALL about pop culture. this was a fun read and i truly enjoyed every essay in this book

This is full of pop and celebrity culture.
When the author brought up Perez Hilton who used to try to out celebrities ( a vile thing to do) she then proceeds to mention she also was paid by a magazine to try to out female celebrities. It was at the point that I DNFd this - trying to out other human beings is gross to me. We all come out on our own time or we don’t - respect others choices regarding the communication of their sexual identities.