We never talk to girls about sexual self-exploration or self-knowledge.

Sex-ed courses look at girl’s internal parts: for boys it’s about ejaculation, erection and wet dreams for girls, it’s periods and unwanted pregnancy. That doesn’t change as kids go into puberty. Q: After speaking to more than 70 young women you conclude that society has performed the “psychological equivalent of a clitoridectomy on girls.” What do you mean?Ī: Parents tend to name all of baby boys’ body parts, but with girls they go from belly button to knees with this void in the middle. And we’re so anxious about that we’re unwilling to have honest discussions with girls about sexuality.

On one hand, the culture is absolutely saturated with sexuality, littered with female objectified body parts: porn is everywhere sexualized images of women are everywhere. Q: You say, “Girl’s bodies have always been vectors for society’s anxiety about women’s roles.”Ī: We’re still really schizophrenic and uncomfortable about female sexuality, and female power. I see this overt sexual culture coming at her like a Mack truck. Marketing to girls constantly presents a hypersexualized idea of girls they’re expected to appear sexy but be cut off from their sexuality. Marketing to children began in the ’50s but accelerated in the ’80s. This book begins with Miley Cyrus, herself a former Disney product. Q: Your last book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, explored how a “princess industrial complex” reinforced gender stereotypes and commodified young women. Her new book, Girls & Sex, explores young women’s conflicted experiences of and attitudes toward sex within a culture that ignores and misrepresents female sexual pleasure. (Photograph by Jonathan Sprague/Redux)Īuthor and journalist Peggy Orenstein is acclaimed for her work investigating the lives of girls and women.

Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein