Latest news with #SophieGilbert
Spectator
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
What was millennial girl power really about?
The 1990s and the following decade were, it is widely agreed, a bad time to be a girl. Which is strange, because a girl seemed like the best thing you could be then. Certainly better than being a woman. Not as good as being a boy or a man, of course, but since those were out of the question (gender fluidity was still a nascent proposition), you might as well lean into girlhood. For millennial girls like me and Sophie Gilbert (a Pulitzer-nominated staff writer on the Atlantic), this was a confusing period. On the one hand, girls were everywhere. We became teenagers to chants of 'girl power!', and later we got our vision of young adulthood from the Lena Dunham series Girls. 'Girl' was an identity with potential. On the other hand, it's hard to avoid just how porny a lot of the uses of 'girl' were. The Girls Gone Wild softcore DVD series turned young women's drunken lapses into permanent, purchasable shame. The phrase 'girl on girl' comes from pornography, where it denoted lesbian scenes. Gilbert uses it here to refer to the self-loathing and anti-sisterhood this period inculcated. 'Empowerment' was the watchword of the millennial girl, but what exactly was she empowered to be? Primarily to be sexy – as Gilbert lays out in this comprehensive analysis of the era's pop culture. A girl could be anything as long as she was pleasing to a man. And God forbid she do anything so crass as grow up. Good girls stayed young. Gilbert acknowledges that this isn't a simple story of backlash. The teen comedies of the period, for example, really were a step up from the 1980s versions, when even the sainted John Hughes played rape as a punchline. American Pie (1999) was crude but charming, and its makers by their own account were trying to write girls with 'more depth'. But that could still mean 'as shallow as a teaspoon'. The female characters of American Pie are all, as Gilbert points out, porn archetypes: sexy cheerleader, hot nerd, horny exchange student (who ends up a victim of revenge porn before revenge porn had a name, something the film treats as a joke). The girls act as the obstacles between the fratty heroes and their objective: sex. They are the gatekeepers of virginity, 'the ultimate prize for any man worthy of claiming it'. In fashion, statuesque supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford were dislodged by the often underage and always underfed waifs. 'Fashion designers grew tired of dealing with the top models, who knew what they were worth and whose fame often overshadowed the clothes. Designers preferred girls.' So did photographers like Terry Richardson, who brought porno chic to high fashion and liked to photograph himself in flagrante with the models. His aesthetic – 'not quite art or porn or fashion photography but a hybrid of all three that kept insisting it was also a big joke' – defined the look (and the moral tone) of the era. Meanwhile, the advances that women had made in the music industry in the early 1990s were abruptly reversed. The punky, confrontational Riot Grrrl movement collapsed under hostile media coverage but lived on when their 'girl power!' slogan was hijacked by the male-svengali-manufactured Spice Girls 'in such a way as to neutralise feminism'. It's worth noting that the Spices ditched their management to successfully and profitably control their own careers, which sounds powerful to me. Nonetheless, Gilbert is right that they represented the renewed dominance of producer-led pop (meaning male-led, because most producers were male). Music channels became a 'gateway to porn. The more sexualised female artists were, the better'. All of which makes it rather surprising that when writing about the porn industry itself in this period, Gilbert steps away from her argument to reassure the reader: 'I'm not interested in kinkshaming, and I'm not remotely opposed to porn.' To which, given all the evidence she arrays in this book, a reasonable person might respond: why not? There's a similar moment of liberal etiquette overwhelming political nous in a chapter on reality TV. Gilbert astutely notes that in these shows, 'exterior womanhood is work' – something constructed through clothes and procedures. But then she argues that this made the genre welcoming to trans women, as though this is an entirely positive feature rather than a vivid illustration of gender identity's misogyny. It's depressing that even now a critic as wide-ranging and incisive as Gilbert can be seen flinching at the acceptable limits of the discourse. In a book that argues convincingly that millennial pop culture conditioned women to 'meticulously present themselves for mass approval', it's a shame to find the author still occasionally contorting herself to avoid upsetting men.
Winnipeg Free Press
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Girl on Girl' explores how Internet pornography's rise helped normalize misogyny
Girl on Girl, the treatise on the seismic shift in pop culture of the late 1990s/early 2000s by Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert, opens with one of the most enduring images of that time: the 1999 Rolling Stone cover featuring Britney Spears. The then-teenage pop star is reclining on magenta satin sheets, clutching a Teletubby doll — the purple one, another lightning rod for controversy — her shirt open, revealing a satin push-up bra in bad-girl black. In many ways, that image was a cultural bellwether of all that was to come: the objectification, infantilization and hyper-sexualization of girls and women by popular culture. With Girl On Girl, Gilbert, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, offers a clear-eyed survey of an era when feminist 'Riot Grrrl' women were replaced by girls — pliable, exploitable, profitable girls. The book is chronological, divided up into sections with 'girl' in the title — Girl Power, Girl Fight, Gossip Girls, Girl Boss — to examine, in dizzying, harrowing detail, all the ways in which the late '90s and the early aughts were no friend to women. From teen sex comedies such as American Pie casting women as the gatekeepers of sex to reality TV's meat-market appraisal of women, Gilbert takes a sharp critic's view of the culture of the era, and how it normalized misogyny. She treats her subject matter seriously because it is serious. Sometimes people dismiss pop culture as frivolous when it actually has the power to shape social mores. We are what we eat, the adage goes; it follows that we are what we consume in other spheres as well. As Gilbert discovered through her research, all roads lead back to the advent of internet pornography. The aesthetics of porn had a far-reaching — and sometimes insidious — influence, including into IRL bedrooms. The chapter Final Girl, which explores the rise of violence in porn and other media, is particularly terrifying in its lurid detail. (If you're looking for a feel-good read, this is not it.) A lot is packed into these chapters — each individual cultural example on its own could likely merit a full-length book treatment — but taken all together, the effect is like looking at a completed jigsaw puzzle; we knew each individual piece was bad, but the whole is devastating. Gilbert mentions that publishers wanted her to insert more of herself into the book; save for a few instances, she mostly does not. Girl On Girl could have benefitted from more of a personal touch; the writing sometimes feels distant and anthropological. If the whole point is to understand how this culture made women feel, and the lasting scars it left, it could have been helpful to have a millennial guide in Gilbert, who was 16 in 1999. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. Lately, culture's been feeling very Y2K. The alarming rise of Skinnytok — the pro-anorexia, 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' messaging of the early aughts repackaged for the TikTok generation — and Ozempic bringing back impossible Hollywood body standards. Girlbosses, Girl Dinners, Tradwives, Instagram Face and cosmetic surgery, skin-care obsessed Sephora tweens. A reality TV star in the White House. Gilbert draws a straight line between then and now, but manages to end on a hopeful note. We have the language now, she notes. We can name the misogyny, the objectification. We can understand, clearly, the harms of the culture we consumed back then — the culture we might even find ourselves nostalgic for now. To wit: on Instagram there was a trend of millennial women making videos critically addressing and reflecting on the era at the heart of Girl On Girl and how it made them who they are. The soundtrack? Billie Eilish's aching song What Was I Made For?, from Greta Gerwig's Barbie. Jen Zoratti is a Free Press columnist and a millennial who was 14 in 1999. Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen. Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Globe and Mail
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Sophie Gilbert explores how pop culture sold misogyny packaged as girl power
If you've recently logged on to Instagram or TikTok, you've likely noticed girl math, girl dinner, girly pops and girl's girls proliferate the digital landscape. Girl math is most pointedly not real math, replacing calculation with vibes and girl dinner is not real dinner, replacing the evening meal with pickles and a handful of crackers. The girlies, it should be said, who are broadcasting their gendered math and nutritionally empty dinners on social media tend to be fully grown adult women. Books we're reading and loving this week 'Girl power' isn't what it used to be, as The Atlantic magazine culture critic Sophie Gilbert outlines in her persuasive, decades-spanning analysis of women in the American entertainment sphere. Gilbert's first book, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, is a more-or-less chronological account of sexism in media from the late-eighties to the end of the 2010s. From Madonna's Sex to Lena Dunham's Girls, Gilbert skillfully connects the dots on how a generation of women were shortchanged, infantilized – gate-kept and girl-bossed, even – by mainstream culture. It's compelling and Gilbert's voice is extremely readable, with a magazine writer's polish. But the long view of the project and the many, many examples Gilbert deftly critiques lead to a somewhat dispiriting investigation of the misogyny deeply embedded in pop culture. Hit me one more time, indeed. 'I'm sorry,' Gilbert says, laughing over tea on a recent afternoon in Toronto. 'I didn't want it to be such a bummer. I wanted the book to be galvanizing. I mean, this is a word that comes up throughout the book and ironically, I'll use it now: I wanted it to be empowering.' She says cultural institutions concocted the entertainment, and subsequently the norms, that millennial women grew up with. It was basically, a 'very manufactured, fake version of things,' as Gilbert put it. This 'fake version of things' is the pop culture arm of what Susan Faludi predicted and described in her era-defining 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Where Faludi investigated the social, political and economic imbalances American women faced after feminism's second wave, Gilbert zeroes in on the cultural impact of increasingly available pornography, the sexualization of teen girl pop stars such as Britney Spears, and the death of the big movie rom-com making way for ultra-raunchy buddy movies such as the indelible 1999 film American Pie. In 'Girls on Film,' the aptly-named chapter where Gilbert looks at the Bush era comedy boom, she examines how Hollywood is a mirror and also a blueprint. 'We learn an awful lot from the stories we encounter,' she writes. During the 1980s, it was normal to see women be depersonalized on screen. Gilbert quotes cultural critic Wesley Morris to paint the picture: 'girls got drunk, spied on, stuffed in car trunks and shopping carts, and laughed at.' By the 1990s, she writes, things were even more complicated for heroines in Hollywood: 'The straightforward misogyny of Porky's and Revenge of the Nerds was replaced by filmmaking that saw girls as creatures with plenty of sexual agency of their own — maybe too much.' Gilbert gives plenty of examples of movies centered on the sexualization of teen girls, including 1995's Clueless, the straight-to-video thriller The Babysitter from the same year, and the 1993 video for Aerosmith's song Crazy – all starring a teenaged Alicia Silverstone. Clueless, Gilbert writes, 'only spelled out what other Silverstone products were implying: that teenage sexuality was the ultimate prize for any man worthy of claiming it.' For Gilbert's purposes, American Pie bridges the gap from the 1990s fixation on teenage girls and 2000s-era ultra-bawdy genre spoofs such as Scary Movie or Not Another Teen Movie. 'There was so much in that decade of movie-making that was benignly sexist, stuff you can just kind of shake off,' she says. 'But there was so much that was also really hateful.' Gilbert highlights a scene with Alyson Hannigan in Date Movie, where men flee as she runs down the street, because she's wearing a fat suit. 'It was not an uncommon instance of really quite shocking cruelty.' The fat suit is a riff on the 2001 Gwyneth Paltrow flick Shallow Hal, whose whole premise is that the average man (played here by Jack Black, who also didn't fit the chiseled stereotype of a leading man) would have to be deeply hypnotized or otherwise mentally controlled to find a fat woman attractive. 'Some of these movies just had real, real disgust at the idea of women in their real-life bodies,' Gilbert says about that era of comedy. 'The filmmakers, the culture, all these people told us it was a joke.' While Girl on Girl creates a neatly organized timeline of women's marginalization, there are moments where her schema feels too narrow to account for moments of disruption or dissent, or even what today's terminally online girlies might call the 'female gaze.' Even in the mainstream, there were women working in entertainment who challenged the status quo. Tina Fey, who was absent from Gilbert's book and our conversation, became Saturday Night Live's first female head writer in 1999, and in 2008, gave the culture an enduring but unprintable joke about the ability of women to make things happen. Gilbert describes porn parodies mocking Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, but somehow leaves out Fey and Amy Poehler's infamous sketch portrayals. Screenwriter Diablo Cody's cult-classic late 2000s films Juno and Jennifer's Body are both toothy comedies responding to a culture that oversexualizes teenage girls, but neither are discussed in Girl on Girl, although the filmmaker is fleetingly mentioned in a list of autobiographies about sex work. When asked about her decision to avoid writing about counternarratives to the era's general misogyny, Gilbert smiles with some contrition. 'There was so much that it could have included and there was so much in this era that was positive,' she says, adding she could probably write a whole other version of the book about activism on the outskirts. There is one section where she engages with online feminist culture: 'In the chapter on writing, I do mention how much feminist media and feminist blogs in particular were doing during this era to challenge these very mainstream, very dehumanized portrayals of women,' Gilbert says. But for the most part, she found herself assembling each chapter as if creating a collage. 'I was trying to put things together in a way that made sense and I did find that sometimes the easiest way to do things was to focus on the bad.' While Girl on Girl is not quite an empowering interruption in the history of women's cultural subordination, it does provide a compelling overview of just how common cruelty toward women was during the years covered. While Gilbert didn't conduct any interviews or even write much about her own experiences, millennial women especially will recognize the world she describes. Gilbert admits that sometimes, the book was difficult to write. One chapter in particular, on the rise of torture porn films such as Saw and Hostel, gave her some trouble sleeping. Still, she found it exciting to connect the dots and see how patriarchal ideas shaped the culture she grew up with. 'Now, I get why this happened,' Gilbert says. 'I get why we all felt this way.' 'It felt so thrilling to me to make it make sense.'
Daily Mirror
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'2000s pop culture thrived on turning millennial women against themselves'
Feminist author Sophie Gilbert explores the complicated relationship between pop culture and modern women in her book Girl on Girl - and details how the culture turned a generation of women to misogyny Britney Spears 's breakdown. American Pie's hero journey to get laid. Pamela Anderson 's stolen sex-tape. All of these were huge pop culture moments in the 1990s and 2000s. But with hindsight, each was an intrusion onto women's vulnerability played out for entertainment. Looking back now, it's brazenly horrific. Author and staff writer at The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert's new book Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves explores the myriad ways that the media, from news to movies, was consumed by women and used as a weapon against themselves. Sophie spoke with The Mirror about the process of writing Girl on Girl and how society has moved on to where we are now. That is to say: in an era of OnlyFans and so-called involuntary-celibate ('in-cel') culture. Sophie says that there were many moments that jolted her into writing this book, not least the election of Donald Trump over his opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016. It is no secret that we live in a time where progress in equality is no longer guaranteed, with the recent news of a reductive definition of what the Equality Act definition of a woman passed down by the UK Supreme Court on April 16. Across the Atlantic in the States, Roe v Wade, the historic legal win for reproductive rights in 1973, was subsequently overturned in 2022. But beyond the contemporary political moment, she tells me, 'so much of wanting to write the book was trying to understand why I didn't see Britney's mental health crisis as a mental health crisis [at the time].' It was presented for all to see as a media moment across magazines and gossip forums. Now there is a near-total infiltration of technology into every facet of our daily lives, but in the 1990s and 2000s this internet was a new frontier. Sophie explains that this had a direct impact on pop culture. She told us: 'The internet had infinite space and we clicked on [relentless coverage of celebrities' daily lives]. So they just gave us more and more and more and I think we all got disgusted with ourselves in the process and projected that disgust outwards at the women who we could not stop looking at.' Visibility, both in the pop culture and beyond, is a power tool, wielded by and against women. Gilbert explains: 'The more people gave us of their lives, the more we wanted to see something that they wouldn't give us, something that we shouldn't.' The interplay between power and visibility in pop culture, particularly in depictions of sex, has exponentially increased from the 1990s to now. Beginning in 1990, HBO's documentary Real Sex, that aired until 2009, was symbolic of the heightened voyeurism of the era, where women's bodies were shown naked and engaging in various sexual acts. This context is important as it created an environment of heightened access to the ordinary person's life, with the boundaries expanded into the sex lives of regular people. But how did this translate into pop culture? In one chapter of Girl on Girl, Sophie rewatches and dissects the hit-movie American Pie, in which teenage boys are presented on a kind of hero's journey to lose their virginity. Sophie tells me about how, as a teenager, she went to see the movie with friends. She said that the movie presents sex as a 'right of passage that cements your path from boy to man.' Later, she realised that the boys she was friends with had 'absorbed this idea of entitlement to sex.' In the 1990s an entitlement to privacy was eroded away. Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson had a sex-tape of her and her then partner Tommy Lee stolen and released. The resulting court case in 1997 ruled that due to her work with Penthouse magazine, that these images of her were not private property. Gilbert says of this that it 'signif[ies] a culture that women no longer had authority over what happened to their body and certainly no longer had claims of privacy over their own body.' In recent years there has been a proliferation of sexualised content, not least in the rise of the platform OnlyFans. Punters can pay for access to a woman's body, to view them in ways they would not be permitted to in their regular day-to-day life. Gilbert said: 'I find people like Bonnie Blue so interesting too because they're really capitalizing on the profit that can be made from not just visibility but extreme visibility.' To put it another way, she adds: 'The people who get the most attention are the ones who are willing to do the most extreme things.' However, Sophie says that it is not the 'extreme stunts of sexuality' that is her concern - she says that it is an individual's choice - but rather what these sites do for women as a collective. She says that it can warp 'men's portrayal [and] understanding of women in general when they see sex being commercialized in this way.' But with every extreme trend, there is a counter-trend. Recently social media has been flooded with so-called 'trad-wife' content, where women are presented as wholesome care-givers and providers. To view it, it harkens back to 1950s womanhood, or as Sophie describes it, it is a 'new traditionalist very conservative impulse'. She said: 'What the trad-wife does is appeal to men's desires but through a more traditionalized frame. So acknowledging that what men really want is a woman who caters to them, who is very beautiful but who also is not threatening in the way that other men might find her desirable. So she's willing to stay home to raise the kids to make bread from scratch.' In Girl on Girl is an astonishing text, that speaks with forensic feminist rage against the misogyny that was so normalised in the 2000s. When I finished this book, I felt like I had been truly seen for the first time, as if the 2000s were a collective horror for women everywhere. The aftermath of which we are still contending with today.
CBC
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
CBC's Commotion Sophie Gilbert Book Giveaway
1. HOW TO ENTER No purchase required. This Contest is open to Canadian residents only and is governed by Canadian law. To enter the Contest, you must have an Instagram account, follow @commotioncbc ("Website") on Instagram, like our Sophie Gilbert book contest announcement post on Instagram, comment on that same post the name of your favourite female artist from the 1990s or 2000s, and tag a friend in the comments. Submission of an entry to the Contest signifies that you have read and agree to the Contest Rules. By submitting an entry to the Contest through the Website or any other electronic platform, you agree that the act of submitting the entry to the Contest is a binding form of your electronic signature, which you agree binds you to these Contest Rules. Questions marked with an asterisk or otherwise indicated as mandatory are required to be eligible for the Contest. Answers to questions not marked with an asterisk on an entry form are appreciated, but not required to participate in the Contest. To be valid, entries must be received by no later than Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 12 p.m. ET. Limit of one entry per person/social media account/email address during the Contest Period/per day or per method of entry. If you attempt or are suspected of attempting to enter more than the authorized amount, or use robotic, automatic, programmed or any other methods of participation not authorized by these Rules, it shall be deemed as tampering and will void your entries, votes or other results of such participation. No submissions will be accepted after the above deadlines for any reason. Any entries received after the above deadlines will be void. 2. ELIGBILITY Contest is open to all Canadian residents who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory of residence as of the Contest opening date. In cases where the Contest is open to contestant who has not reached the age of majority in their province (a "minor"), parent or guardian consent is necessary to enter the Contest and participate in the prize. Parent/guardian will be responsible for minor's participation in the prize. Where appropriate, the terms "contestant" and "winner" mean parent or guardian of the minor. If a minor contestant has not received consent to enter the Contest or a minor winner does not have parental/guardian consent to participate in the prize, or, where applicable, does not have a parent/guardian to accompany them in the prize, the entry shall be invalid. The following individuals are not eligible: Employees of CBC, during the Contest Period; CBC personalities on air anytime between the start of the Contest Period and up until the prize is awarded Members of the Judging Panel; and Any of the above persons' immediate family (father/mother, brother/sister (including step brother/sister, half-brother/sister), son/daughter) and persons living under the same roof. Where an entry is made on behalf of a group (i.e. class entry, school entry) which includes a person mentioned above, such group's entry may be allowed by CBC in its sole discretion. 3. PROCEDURE FOR AWARDING PRIZES After the Contest Period has ended, a random draw will be conducted by the producers of Commotion on Tuesday May 27, 2025 from among all eligible entries received during the Contest Period. The first selected contestant from the random draw who fulfills the submission requirement and correctly answers the mandatory mathematical skill-testing question shall be declared the winner, subject to meeting all the conditions described in these Rules. The Winner will be announced on the Website and on CBC's Commotion episode airing Wednesday, May 28, 2025. Selected potential winner(s) will be contacted using the social media account used for entry and should claim their prize as instructed by CBC by no later than 5 days after the date and time they are initially contacted. If a potential winner does not claim their prize within such time, incorrectly answers the mathematical skill-testing question (where applicable), declines the prize, or is otherwise found to be ineligible, the prize shall be forfeited and CBC has the right, at its sole discretion, to select another potential winner, even if the potential winner's name has already been publicly announced; forfeited prizes will not be awarded. You may be required to provide proof of your name/identity/age as requested by CBC in its sole discretion. If you fail to provide adequate proof you will be automatically disqualified from the Contest. 4. DESCRIPTION OF PRIZE(S) The winner will receive one (1) signed hardcover copy of the book Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert. The prize includes only what is specifically described and no other allowance will be granted. The total approximate retail value of all prizes offered is: $36.00 5. GENERAL RULES 5.1. To be declared a winner of a prize as a result of a random draw, the selected contestant must first correctly answer a mathematical skill-testing question. 5.2. By entering the Contest, you: declare you have read, agree to and have complied with the Contest Rules; declare you meet all criteria to enter the Contest and to accept and participate in the prize (if awarded); agree that subject to the accuracy of the response to the mathematical skill-testing question, if you are the winner of a prize, you agree to accept the prize as provided by CBC; consent and agree that your name, city/province of residence, image, statements and/or voice and your entry may be used for promotional and other purposes related to this Contest free of charge by CBC; your heirs, your successors and your assigns, release CBC as well as its affiliates, directors, officers, consultants, agents, volunteers and employees (the " Contest Parties") from all liability for any damages, compensatory, direct, incidental, consequential or otherwise arising from your participation in this Contest, the use of your entry, and from the awarding, acceptance or use of the prize (if awarded). 5.3. If the prize allows the winner to be accompanied by one or more people anyone accompanying the winner in connection with the prize shall sign a release agreeing that their name, image and/or voice may be used for advertising purposes related to this Contest free of charge, and releasing the Contest Parties from all liability for any damage or loss arising from use of the prize. 5.4. The prize shall be accepted as is and may not be exchanged or refunded for an amount of money, sold or transferred. No substitutions will be allowed. Any portion of a prize not used for any reason will be forfeited. 5.5. If the prize cannot be awarded as described in these Rules, the Contest Parties reserve the right to substitute a prize or prize component with another of comparable value, as determined in their sole discretion. In no event will CBC be liable for more than the stated number of prizes available to be awarded. 5.6. Refusal to accept the prize or a portion of the prize releases the Contest Parties from any obligation toward the winner with respect to that prize/portion of the prize. 5.7. In the event of a dispute or complaint regarding whether an entry contravenes the Contest Rules, entries will be deemed to have been submitted in accordance with the Contest Rules, by the authorized account holder of the account used to submit the applicable entry. You may be required to provide proof (in a form acceptable to CBC) that you are the authorized account holder of the account used to submit the applicable entry and, if applicable, that you have all necessary consents, permissions and/or licenses as required by these Contest Rules. If CBC determines (in its sole discretion) that an entry contravenes the Contest Rules, the entry will be automatically disqualified from the Contest. 5.8. The decisions of the CBC with respect to all aspects of this Contest are final and binding on all entrants without right of appeal, including, without limitation, any decisions regarding the eligibility/disqualification of entrants and/or entries. 5.9. CBC reserves the right to amend the Contest Rules or to terminate the Contest at any time without any liability to any contestant. Any amendments to these Contest Rules will be posted on the Website. Without limiting the foregoing, CBC reserves the right to, without prior notice, adjust any of the dates and/or time frames stipulated in these Contest Rules, to the extent necessary, as a result of any technical or other problems, or in light of any other circumstances which, in the opinion of the CBC, in its sole and absolute discretion, affect the proper administration of the Contest as contemplated in these Contest Rules, or for any other reason. 5.10. For the award of a prize by voting method, CBC reserves the right to cancel any vote deemed unlawful or illegitimate and to make adjustments accordingly in calculating the number of votes received by the participant. 5.11. The Contest Parties assume no liability for any loss, damage or injury, including without limitation: (i) lost, stolen, delayed, damaged, misdirected, late, destroyed, illegible or incomplete entries; (ii) loss, theft or damage to software or computer or telephone data, including any breach of privacy; (iii) fraudulent calls; (iv) inability of any person to participate in the Contest for any reason including but not limited to: mistaken addresses on mail or e-mail; technical, computer or telephone malfunctions or other problems with computer on-line systems, servers, access providers, computer equipment, or software; lost, late, incomplete, illegible, incomprehensible or misdirected entries; bugs, failures in services, hardware or software transmission failure or loss, delayed or corrupted data transmission; congestion on the internet or at any website, or any combination of the foregoing; (v) damage to any person's computer, including as a result of playing or downloading any material relating to the Contest; (vi) any delay or inability to act resulting from an event or situation beyond their control, including a strike, lockout or other labour dispute at their location or the locations of the organizations and businesses whose services are used to administer this Contest; (vii) prizes that are lost, damaged or misdirected during shipping; (viii) loss, damage, defects, or inability to use the prize once awarded to the winner for any reason whatsoever. 5.12. Social media or other platforms used for this Contest, and their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, directors, officers, consultants, agents, volunteers and employees shall not be responsible for any damages, compensatory, direct, incidental, consequential or otherwise, with respect to or in any way arising from damages to participants occasioned by participating in the Contest or downloading any information associated with the Contest. 5.13. You agree that in your use of social media or other platforms for this Contest, including but not limited to chat areas, and the registration and use of social media accounts, user names or group names, you will not use obscene, libelous or slanderous language, or language which infringes upon a third party's trademark, trade name or other intellectual property right or right to privacy. 5.14. Contestants found tampering with or abusing any aspect of this Contest, including but not limited to acting in violation of these Rules, attempting to participate in the Contest more than the maximum number of times allowed, acting with the intent to disrupt the normal operation of this Contest, as determined by CBC, will be disqualified. The discovery of any use of robotic, automatic, macro, programmed, third party or like methods to participate in the Contest will void any attempted participation effected by such methods and the disqualification of the contestant utilizing the same in CBC's sole and absolute discretion. 5.15. When the Contest Rules allow entry via Facebook, X or any other social network, the terms of use of these social networks apply and the social network, as well as its directors and officers, assume no liability whatsoever in connection with the Contest. 5.16. CBC reserves the right to cancel or suspend this Contest in its sole discretion for any reason including but not limited to corruption of the security or proper administration of the Contest as a result of a bug, virus, tampering or other cause. Any attempt to deliberately damage any website or to undermine the legitimate operation of this Contest is a violation of criminal and civil laws. Should such an attempt be made, CBC reserves the right to seek remedies and damages to the fullest extent permitted by law, including criminal prosecution. 5.17. Personal information collected at the point of entry, such as your name, age and contact information, is collected by CBC and will be stored and used by CBC solely for the purposes of administering this Contest as well as for any other purpose you may have opted into at the time of entry. By providing your personal information, you expressly consent to these terms. Please see CBC's privacy policy at 5.18. If the identity of a contestant is disputed, the authorized account holder of the e-mail address submitted at the time of entry will be deemed to be the contestant. The individual assigned to the e-mail address for the domain associated with the submitted e-mail address is considered the authorized account holder. A selected contestant may be required to provide proof that (s)he is the authorized account holder of the e-mail address associated with the selected entry. All entries must be submitted from a valid e-mail account that may be identified by reverse domain name search. The sole determinant of time for the purposes of receipt of a valid entry in this Contest will be the Contest server. 5.19. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries. All entries that are incomplete, illegible, damaged, irregular, have been submitted through illicit means, using any robotic, automatic programmed method that artificially increases the odds of winning or do not conform to or satisfy any condition of the rules may be disqualified by the CBC. CBC is not responsible for any errors or omissions in printing or advertising this Contest. 5.20. In the event of any discrepancy or inconsistency between these Contest Rules and disclosures or other statements contained in any Contest-related materials, including, but not limited to: website and/or point of sale, television, print or online advertising; French version of these Contest Rules, and/or any instructions or interpretations of these Contest Rules given by any representative of CBC or the CBC Terms of Use, the terms and conditions of these Contest Rules shall prevail, govern and control to the fullest extent permitted by law. 5.21. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of these Contest Rules shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision. In the event that any provision is determined to be invalid or otherwise unenforceable or illegal, these Contest Rules shall otherwise remain in effect and shall be construed in accordance with the terms as if such provision were not contained herein. 5.22. By entering, you agree to abide by the Contest Rules and the decisions of CBC and/or the Judging Panel, which decisions are final and binding on all contestants. 5.23. The Contest shall be deemed to be entered into pursuant to, and your agreement to enter and abide by the rules of the Contest shall be construed, performed and enforced in accordance with, the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein. By your submission of the registration form you agree to attorn to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Ontario. 5.24. If you have any accessibility requirements or special needs in relation to this Contest, please contact the contest coordinator, as noted below. May 16, 2025
