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Eileen G’Sell

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Eileen G’Sell is a poet and culture critic with recent contributions to Poetry, Reverse Shot, The Baffler, Hyperallergic, and Jacobin. In 2026, her first book of nonfiction, "Lipstick," will come out with Bloomsbury Academic. A 2023 Rabkin Prize winner for arts journalism, she teaches writing and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Courtney Love (Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty Images)

How lipstick became music’s most versatile symbol

Eileen G'Sell
Sunny Suljic and Na-kel Smith in "Mid90s" (Tobin Yelland)

“Mid90s” exposes the violence of boyhood: Teen trauma is a masculine rite of passage, too

Eileen G'Sell
Ilona at home with her daughter, Michelle, 4, Moscow, 2012 (Courtesy of Amazon Studios/Lauren Greenfield)

Lessons of “Generation Wealth”: In an age of excess, it’s women who lose

Eileen G'Sell
Fred Rogers; Robert Kennedy (Gett/Family Communications Inc./Harry Benson)

Robert F. Kennedy and Mister Rogers: Two icons of masculine empathy sorely missed today

Eileen G'Sell
Betty Gilpin and Alison Brie in "Glow" (Netflix/Erica Parise)

Man up, ladies! How “GLOW” exposes “manliness” as an elaborate, fragile front

Eileen G'Sell
"Unwanted Advances" by Laura Kipnis; "Free Women, Free Men" by Camille Paglia (Harper Collins; Pieter M. van Hattem; Penguin; Michael Lionstar)

Feminist flamethrowers: Laura Kipnis, Camille Paglia and the modern sex wars

Eileen G'Sell
(Getty/Anthony Harvey/Win McNamee)

Posh taste, poor timing: Does Victoria Beckham’s Target fashion democratize luxury or glorify gratuitous wealth?

Eileen G'Sell
New York Public Library (Getty/Theo Wargo)

A canon round for democracy: The literati’s power in a populist era is limited, but vital

Eileen G'Sell
Amanda Nunes, right, connects with Ronda Rousey (AP/John Locher)

Lessons from Ronda Rousey vs. Amanda Nunes: What 48 seconds of fighting can teach us about gender, sexuality and race in UFC

Eileen G'Sell
Poster art of "Triumph of the Will," 1935. (Wikimedia)

“Dapper” and dangerous: The ugly history of glamorizing white nationalism

Eileen G'Sell
(HBO/Craig Blankenhorn/Getty/Mike Coppola/Amazon Studios)

The pop-culture progress myth

Eileen G'Sell
Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio in "Before the Flood" (National Geographic Channel)

The new “Inconvenient Truth”: Leonardo DiCaprio’s new documentary wants to challenge climate change skeptics

Eileen G'Sell
Emily Blunt in "The Girl on the Train;" Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction"

Rise of the sane and angry woman: “Girl on the Train” is the 2016 rejoinder to “Fatal Attraction”

Eileen G'Sell
Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender in "The Light Between Oceans" (Dreamworks)

The motherhood cure-all: “The Light Between Oceans” illuminates a reckless romance with adoption fallacies

Eileen G'Sell
Matt Damon in "Jason Bourne" (Universal Pictures)

The Bourne Masculinity: Matt Damon’s hyper-aggressive, emotionally fragile “good guy with a gun”

Eileen G'Sell
Chloe Sevigny, Greta Gerwig (Reuters/Regis Duvignau/Hannibal Hanschke/Photo montage by Salon)

A tale of two It Girls: Chloë Sevigny, Greta Gerwig and the generational likability divide

Eileen G'Sell
Colin Farrell and John C. Reilly in "The Lobster" (A24)

Your wedding season anxiety antidote: The weird, wild, unlikely romance of “The Lobster”

Eileen G'Sell
"Zootopia" (Disney)

“Zootopia” in the Year of Trump: The parallels between a Disney cartoon and the 2016 election continue to surprise

Eileen G'Sell
Anya Taylor-Joy in "The Witch" (A24)

A “final girl” who gets to get off: “The Witch” proves nothing’s scarier than an unapologetically liberated young woman

Eileen G'Sell
Saoirse Ronan in "Cherry Wine" (Vevo/YouTube)

The sinister seduction of “Cherry Wine”: Domestic violence, filtered through a soft Instagram gloss

Eileen G'Sell
Leonardo DiCaprio in "Titanic," "The Departed," "The Revenant"

The evolution of Leo: His punishing, paternal “Revenant” is the penance that will erase his party-boy past

Eileen G'Sell
(Focus Features)

“The Danish Girl’s” ersatz Oscar bait: Academy can pat self on back for Eddie Redmayne’s undeserved nomination

Eileen G'Sell
(Twentieth Century Fox)

“Joy,” the neoliberal fairy tale: Not even populist princess Jennifer Lawrence could redeem the movie’s toxic brand of lone-wolf feminism

Eileen G'Sell

Cate Blanchett’s cocky elegance: As Queen Elizabeth, Bob Dylan or a closeted ’50s housewife, her on-screen seductions are anything but sweet

Eileen G'Sell
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