Review by Booklist Review
Kennedy was enchanted with girlhood: Limited Too fashions, AOL Instant Messenger, religious summer camps. She thrived at sleepovers, with gel pens, and with words. Millennial girlhood was marked by a commitment to fitting in and a fascinating, cultlike consumerism. Carrying her old-soul spirit to college was more difficult for Kennedy, who couldn't understand why she didn't feel happy doing what everyone else was doing (rushing sororities and drinking heavily). Thankfully, her bubbly spirit was renewed in the workforce, where a job in corporate market research further fueled her identity as a consumer observer. Kennedy left that gig when she accidentally invented a doormat that reminds you to turn off your curling iron--an entrepreneurial success story. Now, Kennedy's podcast, Be There in Five, has a solid following of fellow millennials who enjoy deep dives into the early 2000s zeitgeist. As Kennedy is always quick to point out, this is just one millennial's story, and the myriad of millennial experiences is what makes the generation a group of 72 million strong.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Be There in Five podcaster Kennedy debuts with a perceptive personal meditation on the late 1990s and early 2000s pop culture that shaped her childhood. Looking back on her "homogenous suburban Virginia" upbringing, she discusses feeling uneasy about conforming to consumerist visions of femininity during her preteen years, when she sought "self-improvement through consumption" by shopping at Limited Too and played such board games as Pretty Pretty Princess, "where you're taught success means simply just collecting more jewelry." Concerns about authenticity pop up in Kennedy's account of repressing her personal style to adopt the posh, preppy aesthetics of her high school's popular girls (she recounts buying and tailoring Ralph Lauren polos, whose logo was a vaunted status symbol, from the "little boys' husky section" because the shirts were cheaper than those made for women). Elsewhere, she expounds on the pleasure of "pregaming" with friends before a night out (her "favorite mid-aughts bonding ritual" in college), the unrealistic romantic expectations she imbibed from NSYNC songs, and the misogynistic portrayal of Saved by the Bell character Jessie Spano. Kennedy provides memoir by way of cultural commentary, cleverly using her hybrid approach to highlight the ways in which trends and media popular during one's formative years profoundly influence one's identity. Told with wit and candor, this will strike a chord with Gen Yers. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A deep dive into the psyches of American girls and their shared cultural experiences over the past two decades. Kennedy, host of the Be There in Five podcast, created her first online profile at the age of 10. "In the early days of AOL and MySpace," she writes, "having visibility into the personal lives of popular girls after school hours was an ideal way to perform some light discovery on how to infuse my personal brand with more desirable attributes." She identifies this intense pressure to conform as the defining feature of her generation, "whether you're a younger millennial who did so with Troy Bolton and the other Wildcats or an older one who got their start at the Peach Pit or The Max." If those proper names mean nothing to you--or if you've never had a personal brand--you are not Kennedy's target reader. Like the author's podcast, this collection of essays revolves around nostalgia, regret, and reevaluation of the formative references she shares with other women her age. Among the topics considered are popular-girl handwriting, a hand game called Quack Diddly Oso, Christian purity culture, and the malign effects of the hidden misogyny on Saved by the Bell. Kennedy reminds us that her generation did not actually come out of the womb texting; they had their own version of the pre-digital olden days. "It's like, yeah, I bet walking miles to school in the snow was hard," she writes, "but have you ever had to navigate an empty new-release VHS shelf at Blockbuster with a sleepover crew in tow that will never achieve rental consensus?" The author first entered the public eye as the entrepreneur behind a doormat for college girls that reminded them to turn off their curling irons: The skinny on that episode is here, too. Witty, earnest reading for fellow millennials. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
