Feminist Ryan Gosling: Feminist Theory (as Imagined) from Your Favorite Sensitive Movie Dude by Danielle Henderson

 

Fun fact: Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor and one of his breakout roles was in the Goosebumps TV series, which was mostly filmed in Canada, specifically the "Say Cheese and Die" episode. His career sure has blown up since then. I know he's been involved with a lot of really famous movies and his bedroom eyes and approachable face have made him quite popular with the ladies. Even-- dare I say, especially-- the feminist ladies.

And because of that, he has become a meme.

I actually knew about the feminist Ryan Gosling memes. They became so popular, they even spawned merch. At one point, Target was selling "Hey Girl" notebooks with his face on them (I actually own some of them). But I didn't know that they were being created by a specific lady on her website, inspired by her work in Gender Studies. What surprised me even more is that I actually already owned two other books by this author, THE UGLY CRY and SELFISH, SHALLOW, AND SELF-ABSORBED (to which she was a contributing essayist).

Some of these blog-to-book novelty publications don't always pan out. The way that this was formatted was a little iffy but it wasn't too bad in ebook and I thought that the jokes paired with the photos were fun. The author said in the foreword that her website has actually gotten people interested in feminism and feminist theory who were hooked in by the jokes, and I love that. In terms of what it offers on an intellectual level, I'd say it's a lot like MEN TO AVOID IN ART AND LIFE. It's a novelty book with intellectual aspirations but it's also not meant to be taken too seriously, either.

4 out of 5 stars