A very unfleshed-out thought, but I was talking about this idea with my guy the other day: is the female New Age-searcher sorta like the current equivalent to the beats? Can you relate Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love to Jack Kerouac and On the Road? Do both works inspire a visceral “aw, fuck this!” from - often - the opposite sex, a sort of revulsion at somebody’s glorifying how they threw off the shackles of society and discovered enlightenment-to-the-minus of everybody else?
It’s really half-formed right now but I don’t think I’m wrong. I also found it very funny that, of course Kristen Stewart is all like “MAN I LOVE THE BEATS, ON THE ROAD, YEAH FREEDOM,” because that seemed like the most “Kristen Stewart” answer to “why did you do On the Road, the movie that nobody saw?”