GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

by Freya India

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

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 age-old anxieties of girlhood are now being amplified by modern life and exploited like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, we have become the product. We display our lives on Instagram, advertise ourselves on dating apps, and package ourselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. We 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 our faces and bodies, to our reputation and social status, to our friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.

This isn’t just a book for girls. For young women, it 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 younger 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.

GIRLS concludes with a message of hope, reminding readers how to reclaim their privacy, defend their dignity, and, above all, return to being people instead of products.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism

384 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication May 5, 2026

Reviews

[Maria Marmanides · Rating 4 out of 5]

GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything is sharp, timely, and often unsettling in the best way. Freya India does an excellent job diagnosing the pressures facing Gen Z girls in a world where selfhood itself has become a product—where anxiety, beauty, relationships, and even authenticity are optimized, branded, and monetized. It’s a book that makes you pause and think, yes, this is exactly what it feels like—and more than that, this is how we got here, to this particular cultural mess we find ourselves in by 2026. The analysis is clear and persuasive, and many chapters land with real emotional force as they trace familiar girlhood insecurities through the accelerant of social media and surveillance capitalism.

That said, while I found her diagnosis compelling, I wasn’t always convinced by the solutions. In particular, the book’s skepticism around SSRIs and medication felt overly broad; this framing doesn’t fully account for how genuinely life-saving these tools can be for many people. There is an interesting point here—about how medication has become a form of identity, akin to a Myers-Briggs type or astrological sign—but that nuance sometimes gets lost. I also wished for more attention to millennial women, who are largely skipped over despite being deeply shaped by the same forces, and for a deeper exploration of Gen Z’s use of irony and self-aware humor—how the joke often collapses inward when the self itself is the brand. Still, these gaps don’t outweigh the book’s strengths. GIRLS diagnoses the problem with clarity and urgency, even if the answers feel less fully formed. Thought-provoking, validating, and well worth reading.

[abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you to net galley for the ARC of this book

as a 28 yr old woman of gen z, i read this book to better understand how technologies, trends and platforms have impacted and hurt us – shaping who we are and continuing to influence the generation that follows behind

this is a powerful novel that everyone should read