Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape is the informative sex and pleasure pamphlet our conservative, but well-intentioned, parents were too uncomfortable to give us.
While interviewing seventy girls, aging from middle-school to college, she displays the history of sexuality, corresponds from the battlefield of identifying and defining rape and deconstructs how society—porn, media, education, dress codes—have failed to prepare women for the rocky terrain of sex. She delves in deep to get specific but sometimes newer definitions of things like “second base” and the commonality of anal sex.
The interviews create an open dialogue while exploring the mentalities of girls who engage in “hookup” culture, declare abstinence, enjoy committed relationships, discover their sexuality and scrutinize their rapes.
Often, she finds inescapable paradoxes such as, girls dressing “slutty” for confirmation of their hotness vs. girls who are dressing to please themselves and how easily boys exploit a girl’s intentions through catcalling and unwelcome gestures. Or how when it comes to blow-jobs, some girls give them as an obligation to their boyfriends. While for other girls, they feel empowerment while doing the same favor.
Something unnerving she finds amongst all the girls interviewed is the incapability to communicate how comfortable they are with a partner. These are the same strong-willed girls who demand “egalitarian treatment in the home, classroom and workplace.” Instead of demanding an orgasm and satisfaction they are focused on the pleasure of their partners.
Girls & Sex gives ladies the tools to mentor, educate, and listen. This book should be on your Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or birthday list and should be the go to present to give to the ladies in your life. Women can begin to obliterate the shame that society associates with having a vagina and create a positive culture towards healthy, sexual exploration. By having our questions and concerns answered with facts instead of jjudgment we can be the women we needed when we were younger.
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