Review by New York Times Review
THERE'S A MOMENT midway through Peggy Orenstein's latest book that seems to sum up what it's like to be a teenage girl right now. An economics major taking a gender studies class is getting dressed in her college dorm room for a night out, cheerfully discussing sexual stereotyping in advertising with Orenstein - while at the same time grabbing a miniskirt and a bottle of vodka, the better to achieve her evening goal: to "get really drunk and make out with someone." "You look hot," her By Anna North AMERICAN GIRLS Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers By Nancy Jo Sales 404 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95. IN THE 12 YEARS since the founding of Facebook, young people's use of social media has been the subject of fear - kids are rotting their brains and ruining their ability to form friendships! - and then a backlash: Don't worry, savvy parents, social media is just another way for kids to connect. The journalist Nancy Jo Sales isn't convinced by such reassurances. In "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers," she offers a sort of third wave of social-media crit- friend tells her - and the student, apparently registering the oddness of the scene, turns to Orenstein. "In my gender class I'm all, 'That damned patriarchy,'" she says. "But... what's the point of a night if you aren't getting attention from guys?" Her ambition, she explains, "is to be just slutty enough, where you're not a prude but you're not a whore.... Finding that balance is every college girl's dream, you know what I mean?" Exactly how that got to be anyone's dream is the subject of "Girls and Sex," a thought-provoking if occasionally hand-wringing investigation by Orenstein, who in previous books has put classroom sexism, princess obsessions and other phenomena under her microscope. Be warned: Orenstein, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the mother of a preteen girl, begins her reporting worried by what she's heard about "hookup culture" - and ends it even more freaked out. It's not that girls are having so much sex (the percentage of high-schoolers who have had intercourse is actually dropping); even if they were, Orenstein's careful to say she wouldn't judge, really. But the acts the girls are engaging in, from oral sex to sexting, tend to be staged, she argues, more for boys' enjoyment than their own. For guys, she says, there is fun and pleasure; for girls (at least the straight ones), too little physical joy, too much regret and a general sense that the boys are in charge. Fully half the girls in Orenstein's book say they've been coerced into sex, and many had been raped - among them, by the way, that econ major, who was so confused that when her assailant dropped her off the next morning, she told him, "Thanks, I had fun." The sexual playing field Orenstein describes is so tilted no girl could win. I know, I know: Every generation thinks things have gotten more complicated since they were young (it's one of those universally accepted parental truths, like the fact that kids don't go outside and play anymore). But the interesting question at the heart of "Girls and Sex" is not really whether things are better or worse for girls. It's why - at a time when women graduate from college at higher rates than men and are closing the wage gap - aren't young women more satisfied with their most intimate relationships? "When so much has changed for girls in the public realm," Orenstein writes, "why hasn't more... changed in the private one?" To answer this question, Orenstein interviews more than 70 young women between the ages of 15 and 20. Some of the culprits she locates are more familiar than others: There's pornography, which teaches boys to expect constantly willing, fully waxed partners, and girls to imitate all those arched backs and movie-perfect moans. (Sorry, male college students, but studies show that the percentage of your female peers who fake orgasm has been steadily rising.) There are the abstinence-only sex-ed programs of the last two decades, which she argues encourage shame and misinformation; and the unhelpful tendency of even liberal parents to go mute with their daughters on the subject of what they deserve in bed. ("Once parents stopped saying 'Don't,'" Orenstein observes, "many didn't know what to say.") There's alcohol, so much alcohol, a judgment-dulling menu of Jäger bombs and tequila shots. There's selfie culture, which Orenstein charges encourages girls to see themselves as objects to be "liked" (or not) - a simple-sounding phenomenon with surprisingly profound implications, since self-objectification has been linked with everything from depression to risky sexual behavior. There are the constant images of naked, writhing women, as well as the idea that taking your clothes off is a sign of power. ("I love Beyoncé," one girl tells Orenstein. "She's, like, a queen. But I wonder, if she wasn't so beautiful, if people didn't think she was so sexy, would she be able to make the feminist points she makes?") And despite all the time girls spend "impersonating sexiness," Orenstein finds that absent from their universe is a sense of actual female sexuality - figuring out what you want and doing it. Society is giving girls, she concludes, a "psychological clitoridectomy." Oh, but just one thing - plenty of the girls Orenstein interviews don't see it that way at all, and it's to her credit that she documents them pushing back against what they view as her old-school assumptions. (No, they tell her, Nicki Minaj isn't a sex object - she's a self-determining superstar.) These conversations are the most interesting, least expected part of "Girls and Sex," as when girls share that while an endless string of hookups can bum them out, many of them prefer it to "catching feelings" for a guy, which would make them more vulnerable. (The interviews also reveal an almost comical generation gap. When one recent high school graduate explains to Orenstein that performing oral sex is "like money or some kind of currency. ... It's how you make friends with the popular guys. ... It's more impersonal than sex," Orenstein writes, "I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it's hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as 'impersonal.'") It's a laugh-out-loud line, but Orenstein is of a different generation, and teenagers themselves may bristle at her judgment of them as victims. When she attends a Miley Cyrus concert and dismisses the half-naked star as "the opposite" of "unique," and a "lint trap of images and ideas," you know what she means - but that lint trap is also an actual young woman who is working out many of the same issues facing Orenstein's subjects (a fact that surely accounts for some of her popularity: "Slut-shamed" after her romp with Robin Thicke on the MTV Video Music Awards, Cyrus has held her own - a teen-girl revenge fantasy). What's more, the real-life teenage world isn't all Kardashians, anyway: Celebrities like Lorde have become popular without embracing the sex-doll style Orenstein frets over; thrift-shop dresses and Converse high-tops now mingle with minis and stilettos in teenage closets everywhere; even the Pirelli calendar dumped its nude models this year for shots of high-achieving women like the young blogger Tavi Gevinson, clothed. When Kim Kardashian tweeted a nude selfie recently, sure, some young women cheered her on - but plenty posted the Twitter version of an eye-roll. The truth is, female culture is more varied and rebellious than "Girls and Sex" lets on. And "Girls and Sex" isn't really about all girls: Though gay teenagers are included (and seem generally happier in their relationships than their straight peers), Orenstein's interviewees are mostly upper-middle-class, and she is mainly concerned with sex's impact on their emotional lives, not physical well-being - pregnancy and S.T.D.s come up rarely in her interviews, and current-day abortion access not at all. But given that lowincome young women are less able to pay, say, to travel across state lines to an open abortion clinic, you wonder how the picture of sex and its implications would have looked if girls of all incomes had been included. A bad night is one thing; a baby at 17 is another. AT ANY RATE, the true audience for "Girls and Sex" isn't girls at all - but parents trying to understand them. So what should a mother or father hoping for a sexually well-adjusted daughter do? "Here's a solution," Orenstein offers, only somewhat in jest. "Move to the Netherlands." Dutch girls, she points out, are more likely to have sex in the context of loving relationships, and less because of boys' expectations, than here at home. There are useful lessons from the Dutch examples: Parents and teachers there, she explains, talk to kids about sex - not just the birds and bees and condoms, but also pleasure and consent and exactly how to say no, or yes; they even endorse in-home sleepovers versus sneaking around. Orenstein makes an excellent case that all this will help (though it may not be easy: My own 13-year-old bolted from the room every time I tried to talk about this book with her and is probably in Nebraska by now). But the sweeping issues her reporting illuminates clearly can't be solved by dinner-table or classroom conversations alone. To really fix things, you'll need bigger solutions, and it's tempting to wish Orenstein would put down her reporter's notebook to write a more focused sexual bill of rights that girls themselves, and not just their parents, can get behind. "Girls and Sex" is full of thoughtful concern and empathetic questions: What if girls learned that their sex drives mattered as much as boys'? What if hookups took place sober? What if? But Orenstein is uniquely positioned to do more than ask questions; you want her next book to tell us: Here's how. Let's go. CINDI LEIVE is the editor in chief of Glamour. icism. After talking to girls between the ages of 13 and 19 in 10 states, she believes we should be very worried indeed. Too often, discussions of teenagers exclude teenagers themselves, and it's clear that Sales has gone to great pains to listen to her subjects and to earn their trust. These girls have a lot to say not just about the apps on their phones but also about beauty, gender, race and class, and the book is at its most fascinating when they chat among themselves, sometimes as though Sales isn't even there. For most of them, social media is a necessary evil. It's an inextricable part of daily life - "Girls our age live on their phones," one 16-year-old says - but also a source of anxiety and jealousy and a tool for harassment and abuse. Thirteen-year-old Cassy (Sales changed her teenage subjects' names) says boys her age "blackmail" girls for nude pictures: "They say, Oh, I have embarrassing pictures of you, if you don't send nudes I'll send them all out on social media." If a girl relents, boys may share the nude picture with others, or post it to an Instagram account devoted to such images. Says Cassy, "Everyone winds up having it." Anecdotes like this make a persuasive case that social media has ratcheted up the pressure girls have long faced to appear both desirable and chaste. Less clear from "American Girls" is what anyone can do about it. Well versed in the contemporary literature on social media and adolescence, Sales disagrees with those who say adult worries about teenagers and social media stem from "moral panic" or fear of adolescent sexuality in general. "What this point of view fails to acknowledge," she writes, "are the ways in which the sexual behavior of teenagers actually is being changed and shaped by thoroughly new technology, smartphones and social media, not to mention the influence of online porn. What's being avoided are the hard questions about whether these behaviors are in fact healthy or abusive or even legal, from the perspective of the age of consent." These are indeed hard questions, but Sales provides few satisfying answers. She tells the story of Padma, whose Facebook pictures showing her in "casual clothes" and hanging out with friends garnered few likes. One day, Padma began posting pictures of herself in more revealing clothing - and getting lots of likes, as well as comments like "sexy" and "#pornstar." Sales draws a connection between Padma's new style and a period several years earlier when another girl bullied Padma on Facebook. "Was this part of how girls become hypersexualized, first by having their self-esteem destroyed?" Maybe - but it's just as likely that Padma began posting more sexually charged photos of herself as she grew older, and kept doing it because she got positive reinforcement. The question of whether she can make that choice freely in a society that vigorously polices her appearance and sexual expression is a valid one. But such questions have been asked many times before, and Sales doesn't bring much that is new to the debate. Nor does she have much to say about social media's more positive applications. While new platforms have opened up new avenues for harassment, they have also enabled new forms of activism, and young people have often been the first to adopt them. Kira, one of the only black girls in her graduating class at a Manhattan private high school, points out that social media has helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement. "Some people are using social media to promote themselves," she says. "But other people are using it as a way to try and really change our society for the better." She is one of the few girls in the book to make this point, and Sales could have delved deeper into the ways girls use social media to push back against the pressures they face, online and off. I wanted to hear more from the "feminist girls" one 17-year-old describes: "They express themselves, they stick up for themselves and they, like, put feminist things on social media." SALES WROTE a Vanity Fair story last year on the effect of Tinder and other dating apps on contemporary sexuality. In it, college women complained that men their age had no interest in courtship or even basic politeness - "Tinder has destroyed their game." And 20-something male Tinder aficionados made a variety of repellent comments suggesting women are disposable and interchangeable: "If you had a reservation somewhere and then a table at Per Se opened up, you'd want to go there," one of them said. In "American Girls," Sales argues that the same problem affects even young teenagers. She writes of "boys who never want to make a definite plan; who seem to be leaving all their options open; and who seem to assume that girls are waiting with bated breath for boys to appear at their door, or at least to text them." But social media didn't create boys like this - as Amanda Marcotte at Slate put it in response to the Vanity Fair story, "gross dudes were not invented by apps." Sales does point out real double standards for male and female sexual behavior, which have been far slower to change than technology. (While she talks to gay teenagers - one girl says friends of her ex-girlfriend harassed her on social media after the two broke up - most of her discussions of dating and sexuality focus on heterosexual kids.) But there's something exhausting about hearing, yet again, that boys and young men can't be bothered to be boyfriends; critics of hookup culture have been repeating that claim since some of Sales's subjects were in diapers. "American Girls" is also limited by its single-gender focus. While Sales talks to some older boys and young men, male voices are largely absent from the sections dealing with younger teenagers. The choice makes sense in a way - girls seem to suffer sexualized harassment and shaming on social media more frequently than boys do. But excluding boys' perspectives gives readers an incomplete view of the problem and its potential solutions. Do boys, too, feel pressure to present a certain image - maybe that of a player who's talking to lots of girls? What do they think when their friends demand nude pictures from girls or harass them online? Do they ever feel guilty about how they treat girls on social media? What, if anything, might get them to change? Sales's conversations with male college students hint at some answers to these questions. One of them, Ethan, is intriguingly conflicted about his social-media-enabled sex life. He boasts of "a scoring average higher than Kobe Bryant" and says he has no problem cheating on girls: "My friends are like, She's not gonna find out - you can have the main course and some appetizers, too." But, Sales writes, "he'd been cheated on; he still didn't seem over it." And Ethan says he wishes he lived "when you had to go knock on the door and ask the dad for permission." This time (which Ethan somewhat amusingly puts "in the '70s") wasn't necessarily a happy one for women - many jeremiads about today's sexual freedoms forget the oppressiveness that came before. But Sales doesn't probe Ethan's odd and possibly illuminating mixture of bravado and romanticism. And while she does mention the lack of female representation in Silicon Valley, she doesn't spend much time discussing what tech companies could do to fix some of the problems she identifies. The effect is to make apps like Facebook and Twitter seem static and unchangeable, when in fact they change all the time, and their corporate owners could modify them to protect younger users. It feels a bit strange to call for more talk of boys and big corporations in a book about girls. But when it comes to dating and sex, teenage girls are already subject to near-constant scrutiny, and they're too often considered in isolation, as though the dangers and injustices they face are entirely theirs to solve. By focusing almost exclusively on how girls suffer, Sales repeats the usual unhelpful and defeatist refrain: It's a terrible world out there, and girls have to navigate it all on their own. ANNA NORTH is a staff editor for The Times's opinion pages. Her latest novel, "The Life and Death of Sophie Stark," was published last year
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 10, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
Sex and teenagers have always gone together, but parents reading Orenstein's frank exploration of current trends may still be in for a shock. She interviews more than 70 young women between the ages of 15 and 20, attempting to understand their views on when sex is sex, the nature of hook-ups, orgasms, oral sex, abstinence, sex education, gender identity, online pornography, and other hot topics. What the journalist found again and again was talk of what the boys expected and the girls' feeling of power in sexual situations. Teens spoke about uncomfortable parents dodging their questions and educators preaching only abstinence. They seemed at a loss when asked about intimacy and sexual satisfaction. Orenstein compares the U.S. to Holland, where education includes sexual pleasure, contraceptives are readily available, and conversations are open. This isn't a comfortable book to read (Orenstein herself admits twinges a few times), but it's an important one. Like it or not, if parents are to prepare themselves for honest conversation, they need to be aware of the situations their girls (and boys) face.--Smith, Candace Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestselling journalist Orenstein follows up Cinderella Ate My Daughter with a look at what happens when the little princess hits puberty. The result is an eye-opening, sometimes horrifying look at sex for today's girls and young adults. Through frank interviews, research, and school visits, Orenstein reveals that, on average, young women are engaging in sexual contact earlier than ever, in more varied ways, and reporting more coercion and less satisfaction than their male counterparts. She cuts through many of the prickly topics associated with girls' sexuality in contemporary culture, including purity debates, hook-up culture, arguments about what girls wear, rape and consent on college campuses, the problem of porn, and what kind of sex education actually works. She looks briefly at gender fluidity and touches on the concerns of LGBTQ young women. Orenstein draws powerful, humane portraits of her interview subjects, self-reliant young women who find themselves trapped by sexist stereotypes about women's bodies and women's pleasure. In this smart, earnest, and timely assessment, Orenstein urges frank, open communication among trusted adults and curious teens, declaring it the best way to encourage girls and boys to make safe, healthy decisions that "end in joy and honor rather than regret, guilt, or shame" and achieve "intimate justice." (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A keen observer of girlhood cultures, Orenstein (Cinderella Ate My Daughter) turns her analytic eye on the experiences of girls and young women growing into sexual adulthood at the dawn of the 21st century. Weaving the stories of young adult interviewees (the majority of whom are college-bound or college students, white, cisgender, and heterosexual) with the voices of scholars and political activists, the author charts the contemporary landscape within which middle-class American girls explore their sexual selves. From social media to school dress codes, and from rape culture to campus hook-ups, the meaning of virginity and the state of sexuality education today, much of what Orenstein distills will be familiar to readers well versed in these subjects. However, her accessible prose and narrative style will bring the work of many thoughtful experts to a wider audience, and the selected bibliography encourages further study. While this book largely documents our systemic failure to support young women's sexual thriving, the final chapters point toward potential solutions, including an important reminder that men and boys must be included in any successful intervention. VERDICT Young adults, parents, educators, and activists alike will find this passionate work a timely conversation starter. [See Prepub Alert, 9/28/15.]-Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, -Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An examination of the newest trends in the sex lives of young women in America. After interviewing dozens of young women between the ages of 15 and 20, as well as educators, sociologists, psychologists, and other experts, New York Times Magazine contributing writer Orenstein (Cinderella Ate My Daughter, 2011, etc.) has compiled an eye-opening study of the way that girls and women in America think, feel, and act regarding sex. With a daughter of her own soon entering this new phase of her life, the author sought to understand the current culture, "at a time when celebrities presented self-objectification as a source of strength, power, independence; when looking desirable seemed a substitute for feeling desire; when 50 Shades of Greywas being hailed as the ultimate feminine fantasy; when no woman under the age of forty appeared to have pubic hair." What she discovered was both intriguing and highly disturbing. With interviews that lasted for hours, the girls discussed the fine line they walk between dressing to look "hot" and then being called a slut if they engage in too many sexual acts. They were frank about the often unspoken expectations of boys to receive fellatio with no sense of reciprocity and how the act has become so common that most girls don't even consider it sex. Ready access to pornography via the Internet has raised boys' expectations of how girls will react when engaged in intercourse. The girls speak explicitly and honestly about their hookups and the pressures they feel during these casual encounters and the disturbing number of drunken "date rape" incidents. Orenstein also delves into the sexual subculture surrounding fraternities and sororities, which continues the ongoing discussion regarding consent and the meanings of "yes" and "no." Though the author doesn't offer many solutions, the abundant information she provides will give parents and young girls the power to make informed decisions regarding sex. Ample, valuable information on the way young women in America perceive and react to their sexual environment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
