akarr 's review for:

Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein

3.0

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I enjoyed this book for the most part, and I think Orenstein makes many strong and accurate claims but she brings this very grating moral superiority and privilege to the table, which detracts from everything she says. She also assures us in her intro and first chapter that this is not a white middle-class story but... it is. It's also painfully straight (she does touch on lesbian/bi women's experiences) and completely cis. I wish she had cited and supported her conclusions, because it seems clear that they come from theory AND interviews. It would be so easy to dismiss her claims because they just go unsupported, and that's such a simple thing to fix. I guess she's just not much of a journalist or researcher. As an introduction or an overview this book is great. It works as a pop psychology introduction into a lot of deeper things like alcohol abuse among young people, sex ed, college rape culture, porn and its affects. If you're looking for substance, you'll need to look somewhere else.