Book Review: Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein

In her latest book, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, author Peggy Orenstein discusses, well…girls and sex—young women and how they are affected by society and its attitudes towards sex and female sexuality. Backed up by statistics, research, and personal interviews (mostly with white, heterosexual, middle-class girls), this book offers a good overview of the subject from a variety of angles, without every becoming too academic or too commercialized.

This is the sort of book I recommend to any reader—especially college-aged women. It’s informative, thought-provoking, and insightful. And, aside from the fact that this is yet another exposé on millennials written by a not-millennial (some parts did make me cringe with their obvious generational disconnectedness), I find that the author, the mother of a teenage girl herself, did a pretty solid job with her topic.

The book deals with a variety of subjects, but I’ll just touch on some of the main ones, and/or some passages that stood out to me.

SELF-OBJECTIFICATION AND WOMEN IN POPULAR CULTURE

Much of the beginning of the book talks not about how (presumably male) objectification of women is harmful (which is what you might expect), but how the objectification of women by themselves is harmful. Which, honestly, isn’t exactly a subject I’ve spent much time thinking of, considering how the most blatant and insidious things I deal with are male comments about my body/appearance, not my own comments when I look in the mirror. Yet, as Orenstein points out:

Self-objectification has been associated with depression, reduced cognitive function, lower GPA, distorted body image, body monitoring, eating disorders, risky sexual behavior, and reduced sexual pleasure. In on study of eight-graders, self-objectification accounted for half the differential in girls’ reports of depression and more than two-thirds of the variance in their self-esteem. Another study linked girls’ focus on appearance to heightened shame and anxiety about sexuality, discomfort in talking about sex, and higher rates of sexual regret. Self-objectification has also been correlated with lower political efficacy: the idea that you can have an impact in the public forum, that you can bring about change.

This is all well and good, and the observations were apt. Makes sense, I agree, moving on.

However, what really gave me pause in this section was the author’s critique on popular music artists who openly express their sexuality on stage—think Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus. Women in my generation, pretty much without exception, hail these women as role models, as strong women who are positive about their bodies and their sexuality. Not only that, Nicki Minaj and, say, Beyoncé are both excellent businesswomen, as well as women of color, in an industry that caters towards the white and the male. You don’t have to like their music to recognize that Nicki and Bey are kicking ass.

Or…well, maybe not. Orenstein has something else to say about these women that counters this notion:

The decision to twerk onstage, or twirl on a pole, or dance in one’s drawers around a fully clothed man, or to pose nude on the cover of a magazine is now a woman’s alone: rather than capitulating, they are actually reclaiming their sexuality. Yet those performers still work within a system that, for the most part, demands women looks and present their bodies in a particular way in order to be heard, in order to be seen, in order to work. Successfully manipulating that system to their advantage by, say, nominally reimagining the same old strip club clichés may get them rich, it may get them famous, but it shouldn’t be confused with creating actual change. Artists such as Gaga or Rihanna or Beyoncé or Miley or Nicki or Iggy or Ke$ha or Katy or Selena may not be puppets, but they aren’t necessarily sheroes, either. They’re shrewd strategists, spinning commodified sexuality as a choice, one that may be profitable but is no less constraining, ultimately, either to female artists or to regular girls. So the question is not whether pop divas are expressing or exploiting their sexuality so much as why the choices for women remain so narrow, why the fastest route to the top as a woman in a sexist entertainment world is to package your sexuality, preferably in the most extreme, attention-getting way as possible.

I’m not going to lie, the first time I read that paragraph, I dismissed it as an “older” woman’s more traditional, Puritanistic values speaking. I scoffed and moved on, sure that some level of prudery was at work here. But reading again…I have to wonder. Honestly, I’m not sure; Orenstein makes some good points. But also…if you want to shake your naked ass onstage, do it. Maybe the patriarchy has made it so that “sexual” performances sell faster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t perform sexually if you want to.

For me, it’s something to think about. Someone once told me that merely existing within patriarchy is enough—as women, we don’t have to take on every single fight we run into. These female artists are existing within patriarchy, and not only that, they’re thriving. And at some level, that’s pretty important, too.

SEX EDUCATION

I think pretty much everyone knows that sex education in the United States is…not great. Federally funded abstinence-only education spreads misinformation and fear, and also just plain old doesn’t work. Orenstein cites research that indicates that on average, teens who make “purity pledges” only delay their first intercourse by 18 months, compared to peers who did not make similar pledges. Plus, young adults who were raised in evangelical Christian communities are, actually, far more sexually active than mainline Protestant/Roman Catholic/Jewish peers, and are far less likely to practice safer sex methods (buying condoms beforehand might seem like a premeditation to sin, y’know). So, clearly, thumbs down to abstinence-only education.

Even non-abstinence sex ed programs don’t cover everything they should, focusing mostly on the negative outcomes of sexual activity. These programs are especially detrimental to girls and their ideas about sex.

Even the most comprehensive sex education classes stick with a woman’s internal parts—uteri, tubes, ovaries. Those classic diagrams of a woman’s reproductive system, the ones shaped like the head of a steer, blur into a gray Y between the legs, as if the vulva and the labia, let alone the clitoris, don’t exist. Imagine not clueing a twelve-year-old boy into the existence of his penis! And whereas males’ puberty is characterized by ejaculation, masturbation and the emergence of a near-unstoppable sex drive, females’ is defined by…periods. And the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. Where is the discussion of girls’ sexual development? When do we talk to girls about desire and pleasure? When do we explain the miraculous nuances of their anatomy? When do we address exploration, self-knowledge? No wonder boys’ physical needs seem inevitable to teens while girls’ are, at best, optional.

Orenstein also adds:

Women’s feelings about their genitals have been directly linked to their enjoyment of sex. College women in one study who were uncomfortable with their genitalia were not only less sexually satisfied and had fewer orgasms than others but were more likely to engage in risky behavior.

The major takeaway from this section of the book? Teach girls (and boys) about the female body! Just some basic anatomy, people. Not too hard.

HOOKUP CULTURE

The section on college “hookup culture” was the one I was most interested in and expected to get the most from. Sadly, I didn’t get much from it. This was where the lack of diversity in Orenstein’s interview subjects really became apparent. The focus was entirely on hookup culture with the Greek sorority/fraternity system, with no discussion of what casual/recreational sex looks like outside that specific subset of college students. True, Greek like is the center of campus hookups, but drunken frat parties are not the only place they happen. Orenstein presents casual sex for college students as something that never happens sober, often leads to other risky behavior, and makes it easier for young women to be raped. (The author doesn’t victim-blame, but she does point out that scantily-clad, drunk girls roaming campuses at night are probably excellent targets for entitled, drunk men.)

All that the book discusses is probably true—but only about Greek students. Surprise, surprise: other students do engage in recreational sex, and they’re not always drunk, and they don’t always go on to do drugs, etc. or rape/get raped in the process. So I guess I was just miffed by the limitations of the author’s sample-size.

However, I did like this quote on “having it all”, which really challenged some of my own ideas about sex/romance and academics/ambition:

Hookup culture, then, acts as a kind of buffer, a placeholder until the time for more official adult partnerships begins. The girls I met often claimed to be too “busy” for relationships. On one hand, it was heartening to hear that their lives didn’t revolve around men. Yet it was also hard to imagine a time when that “busyness” would abate—it would arguably become more intense after college, when they’d be career building or attending graduate school. What were they so busy doing now, anyhow? …While I was all for broadening possibilities, the idea that romance and ambition were mutuall exclusive troubled me. It sounded a bit too redolent of “you can’t have it all,” a phrase that blames individual women rather than structural inequities for our struggles at work and home.

BASICALLY, READ THE BOOK

So, this review probably gives a pretty solid overview of what you’ll find inside Girls & Sex. There’s also discussion of LGBTQ+ teens, campus rape, other countries’ approach to sex education, and some other things. I’ve highlighted and outlined only what was most meaningful to me, of course. It’s a good book, made absolutely stronger by the inclusion of firsthand accounts and interviews from real girls, even if they all had similar social/economic/ethnic backgrounds. As I said at the beginning of this, if you’re a young woman, sexually active or no, this is worth a read. Or, if you’re an older adult and you wonder what’s going on with “kids these days,” you can read this for some rather accurate and on-point information.