This week’s guest is Vanessa Grigoriadis, whose first book, “Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus,” was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in early September. The book reveals a new sexual revolution taking place across the country, one in which college students are on the front lines.
Her reporting shows women who are using savvy methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality. She also shows male students who are more sensitive to women’s concerns, and other men who perpetrate the most cruel misogyny.
Grigoriadis was on the podcast three years ago. In Episode 30, we talked primarily about her celebrity profiles. Toward the end of that episode, though, we talked briefly about a story she had done for New York Magazine that focused on Emma Sulkowicz, the
young woman at Columbia University who had been carrying a mattress around everywhere she went to bring light to the fact she had been sexually assaulted, and the university had done little or nothing about it.
Sulkowicz ends up kicking off Blurred Lines. The first chapter is titled Mattress Girl
Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, specializing in pop culture, youth movements, and crime reporting. She has won a National Magazine Award, and been anthologized regularly, including in Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.