Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Time Top 10 Book of the Year - A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year

The author of the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage--high school through college--and reveals how they are negotiating it.

A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow's women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls' sexual behavior and sex lives in the modern world.

While the media has focused--often to sensational effect--on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in this important work of women's studies, Girls & Sex, Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table. She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people's lives as part of today's popular culture; what it means to be the "the perfect slut" and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture and the unfortunate realities surrounding sexual assault. In Orenstein's hands these issues are never reduced to simplistic "truths;" rather, her powerful reporting opens up a dialogue on a potent, often silent, subtext of American life today--giving readers comprehensive and in-depth information with which to understand, and navigate, this complicated new world.

This essential book for parents, educators, and young adults tackles the urgent questions of modern girlhood:

• A Widening Generation Gap: Based on in-depth interviews, this book reveals what mothers and fathers don't know about their daughters' lives and provides the tools to start a conversation.
• The New Hookup Culture: Go beyond the headlines to understand what casual sex, from high school through college, actually means for girls and how they feel about it.
• Body Image and Social Media: Explore the complex intersection of self-objectification, hypersexualized pop culture, and the pressure to perform online.
• Sexual Consent and Female Pleasure: A frank discussion of the hidden truths surrounding assault, coercion, and why girls' own pleasure is often left out of the equation.