Geeeeeez. Am I ever going to need something utterly frivolous and upbeat after this read. Toxic is a look at how conventions around women (embodied by certain celebrity women) were treated in the last decade of the noughties.

And what really hit me was in the conclusion, where the author (Sarah Ditum) stated that researching and writing the book that “I haven’t felt like i was revisiting familiar territory: I have felt as though I were entering an entirely alien landscape.” This is how precisely how I felt reading it. I knew most of the celebrities names, and some details more than others, but it did feel like a completely different world than the one we inhabit now.

It was just relentlessly sad, because some of the people die in sad circumstances (like Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse and Chyna) but just because of the utterly bleak treatment of these women. Yes, they were celebrities and yes, some of them desperately wanted fame, but it was still very grim. I didn’t know some of the other details, but the whole Aaliyah / R Kelly thing probably had some of the bleakest details of the whole book.

It’s still a very excellent read, but I had to take it a chapter at a time because each women represented another horrible manifestation of how the noughties were awful to women. The treatment of Janet Jackson for Nipplegate seems utterly bizarre now. But out of all the people involved front the networks, to Justin Timberlake, to the FCC – everyone comes out looking like an utter asshole.

I do have a solid line of anger here too, but it is struggling under the ocean of how sad it all is. And how unfair and sexist it all was.

Anyway, going to go read something relentlessly upbeat and happy now so I can recover .