Quotes from Peggy Orenstein

Displaying yourself as sexy doesn't do anything to increase sexual self-knowledge or pleasure.

The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

The point of creativity is to express and challenge yourself, to make meaning, to embrace your life.

There is a way hook ups are serving young women. And it was important for me to always talk about how behaviours were serving girls, not just making them the victims.

They too struggle with the expectation to look sexy but not to feel sexual, to provoke desire in others without experience it themselves. Our daughters may not be faced with the decision of whether to strip for maxim, but they will have to figure out how to become sexual beings without being objectified or stigmatized.

at best, young children who are drilled on letters and numbers show no later advantage compared with those in play-based programs. In some cases, by high school their outcomes are worse. That inappropriately early pressure seems to destroy the interest and joy in learning that would naturally develop a few years later.

Young women today are sold the idea that sexiness is the same as sexuality, that being desirable is more important than understanding their own desires.

What this means for parents is that you never know what your child's "sex education" class may entail. Only fourteen states require that sex ed be medically accurate.

Any good lover is a good listener. And a bad listener is at best a bad lover and at worst a rapist.

Maybe it was just one of those days when you hear an old question a new way, that quite suddenly shifts your perspective.

There is, it's worth noting, no "Mom-with-three-ungrateful-children Barbie.

We've raised a generation of girls to have a voice, to expect egalitarian treatment in the home, in the classroom, in the workplace. Now it's time to demand that "intimate justice" in their personal lives as well.

Wait a minute,' I countered. 'Didn't you just tell me about all the strong women role models in your family, about how you were loud and have a big personality and didn't take shit?' 'I know,' she said. 'I think I didn't realize...' She paused, trying to reconcile the contradiction. 'I guess no one ever told me that the strong female image also applies to sex.

By midway through Kindergarten- that's age five or six- they've learned from their peers to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings, shun intimacy, and become hierarchical in their behavior. The lifelong physical and mental health consequences of that gender performance are ingrained as early as ten. By fourteen boys become convinced that other guys will lose respect for them if they talk about problems.

The idea that there could be one solution to breast cancer- screening, early detection, some universal cure- is certainly appealing. All of us, those who fear the disease, those who live with it, our friends and families, the corporations who swath themselves in pink, wish it were true. Wearing a bracelet, sporting a ribbon, running a race, or buying a pink blender expresses our hopes and that feels good - even virtuous. But making a difference is more complicated than that.

As culture critic Dara Mathis tweeted about Kanye West, 'Daughters are not spiritual retribution for your misogyny.' They are neither a form of punishment nor tiny spiritual guides sent to newly show you the humanity of girls and women.

The way I look at it, impatience may be the enemy of perfection, but the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Whereas discussion of male puberty includes the emergence of a near unstoppable sex drive, female puberty is defined by periods and the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. When do we talk to girls about desire and pleasure?

The stay-at-home mom is just as vulnerable as the working mom

At the same time, she [Charis Denison] offered this to an eleventh-grader whose friend was having sex with many different people. Your response doesn't have to be 'That's gross' of 'That's bad.' You can ask, 'How did that feel to you? What does it bring you? How does it serve you?' Approached in the right way, that can be a great conversation. Then, if you really care about that person, your job is to be their human shield from shame.

Can there be true equality in the classroom and the boardroom if there isn't in the bedroom?

I never expected, when I had a daughter, that one of my most important jobs would be to protect her childhood from becoming a marketers' land grab.

If we start with that, with wanting girls to see themselves from the inside out rather than outside in , we will go a long way toward helping them find their true happily-ever-afters.

Rather than freedom from traditional constraints, then, girls were free to choose them. Yet, the line between get to and have to blurs awfully fast.