Girl Land
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
The physical, emotional, and social milestones of every girl's life: what we've lost and gained in the 21st century.
The physical, emotional, and social milestones of every girl's life: what we've lost and gained in the 21st century.
Caitlin Flanagan's essays about marriage, sex, and families have sparked national debates. Now she turns her attention to girls: the biological and cultural milestones for girls today, and how they shape a girl's sense of herself.
The transition from girl to woman is an experience that has changed radically over the generations: everything from how a girl learns about her period to how she expects to be treated by boys and men. Girls today observe these passages very differently, and yet the landmarks themselves have remained remarkably constant-proof, Flanagan believes, of their significance. In a world where protections of girls' privacy and personal freedom seem to disappear every day, the ultimate challenge modern parents face is finding a way to defend both.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flanagan's personal essays on girlhood, dating, menstruation, diaries, proms, and sexual initiation take a noble subject the interior lives of girls transitioning into womanhood and do it a disservice. The author, indisputably a strong and elegant writer, unfortunately skips making arguments or providing evidence in favor of settling for outdated generalizations ("Girls with a father living at home always fare better in the dating world, because malevolent adolescent boys... don't want to come up against the authority of grown men. In fact, the hallmark of most dangerous teenage boys is that they have never been held to account by a grown man, and they move more confidently in a world of women, where they can threaten and cajole"). Her authorial voice shifts radically from overprotective mother to victim and back to thoughtful intellectual. Nuggets of brilliance (on how the 1990s were especially schizophrenic in regards to gender relations, say) get buried beneath screeds and mounds of well-meaning but off-the-mark advice.
