Peggy Orenstein writes about the culture of American girls like no other writer. As the bestselling author of CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER, she looks at the dangers of our diva/princess-oriented world. It’s a world where every girl is encouraged to hold unrealistic fantasy expectations about a princess lifestyle, in which difficulties are overcome by pretty dresses, unicorns, and the love of a handsome young man with magical powers and undying respect and devotion. Her thoughtful introspection on topics so few dare to pooh-pooh in public makes Orenstein a valuable writer in our pop culture-obsessed world, where everything we do, think, eat, drink and wear comes from someone or something talking to us from a screen.

"GIRLS & SEX is a powerful and important volume that hopefully will bring attention to the ways in which we can avoid the disasters of the past and present and make the future a more progressive, kind, happy and healthy place to be for all kids, especially our girls."

Orenstein’s newest offering, GIRLS & SEX, takes her search one step further. What happens when your perfect little princess enters into the Kingdom of Raging Teenage Hormones and the abject confusion of puberty and growing up? In high school and college, a double standard faces all girls as they wrestle with their sexual identity, gender identity and the rampant porn culture that has helped make the sexualizing of girls from a young age into a trillion-dollar business. Girls are traversing a new landscape, with social media making porn and darker sexual images the norm (not to mention all their mothers who thought 50 SHADES OF GREY was actually a romance and not a book about SMBD, and are doing their part in making that type of stuff more prevalent while expecting their daughters to adhere to a 1950s idea of what is appropriate and what isn’t). Orenstein looks at this and dissects it for all the damage it can do to our girls --- and the good it could do if more progressive mores win out over old-fashioned “don’t talk about it” mentalities.

Helicopter parenting is all the rage on playgrounds, and in schools and concert arenas, but parents are still finding it very difficult to get a grip on what their girls are up to when it comes to their sexuality. I will be honest: I wished this book had come out last summer when I needed it with my 15-year-old, whose issues with sexuality and gender came roaring up on us, and I had so little literature to read to help me through it. Things are working out okay because my daughter and I have worked hard to find a new way to communicate with each other as her life changes so fully. Orenstein would have been a great source of comfort to me through some confusing, disheartening, crazy scary and helpless times. Reading her book, I am happy to know that other parents like me who go through what my family experienced this year will find GIRLS & SEX a great source of information for a long time to come.

You will find a media consumed with the rise of casual sex and rape on campus incidents, yet there are no answers as to why this is happening now. Orenstein knows --- and she will talk about the things that no one else wants to discuss by examining the ways in which porn and the dangerous sexual myths it puts into the general discourse have upset so many young people’s lives, what being “the perfect slut” means, and why many girls lose their virginity earlier and earlier. She considers what has become the result of the hookup culture, and the true and scary realities surrounding sexual assault. She doesn’t settle for platitudes or quick fixes. Rather, she discusses how we have to change the way we look at all sexuality in order to help our kids navigate and understand their bodies, their feelings, the expectations of the world and its mixed messages.

Sexually transmitted diseases, alternative lifestyles, suicide caused by kids forced into college by fear and repressed parents, teen pregnancy, gender dysphoria… The list of all the nasty things children will deal with because they don’t have any true access to accepting their feelings and their bodies will get longer if we don’t pay attention. And soon. GIRLS & SEX is a powerful and important volume that hopefully will bring attention to the ways in which we can avoid the disasters of the past and present and make the future a more progressive, kind, happy and healthy place to be for all kids, especially our girls.

This book can save the life of your daughter. Please read it.

Audiobook available, read by Peggy Orenstein