More on teen girl fiction

Rebecca Traister takes a look at teen-girl culture for Salon (some ad-watching necessary to read the full article). And, guess what? Traister, like Leila at Bookshelves of Doom and Gail Gauthier at Original Content, does not discover the end of the world in teen-girl books.

Traister finds: "As far as mindlessness goes, I Like it Like That (Gossip Girl) was far less aggressively anti-intellectual than what Wolf had prepared me for. Sure, the basic literary conceit and style are dopey, but since the books are about rich kids in Manhattan, the characters have expensive educations and highly developed senses of irony."

Traister also doesn't see much problem with teen-girl magazines. Rather, the worst of teen-girl culture is seen in the worship of brain-dead celebrities under the age of thirty and in the "celebratory excesses" lauded on shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" and "Tiara Girls" on MTV.