Peggy Orenstein Quotes - Page 2

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.

Mothers are doing a better job talking about risk, danger, reproduction, consent, unwanted pregnancy. We're not talking about how to balance the risks and joys and we're really not talking about the joys.

Maybe I wanted children, maybe I didn't, but I wanted the decision to be a choice, not a mandate. Last time I checked, childlessness was only supposed to be a condition of career advancement for nuns.

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Not that long ago, the idea of feeding your kid with organic fruit and vegetables or paying attention to sustainability or any of that - that was very fringy. And I guess some people will argue it still is to a degree, but it's kind of mainstream fringy now.

While I completely disagree with the "purity" concept, it was the only place I saw fathers talking to girls about their expectations and attitudes to sex and expressing love and support. I didn't see liberal dads having similar conversations with their daughters.

I'm watching my own daughter grow up. I see this overt sexual culture coming at her like a Mack truck. She's in seventh grade.

It's particularly important as parents in our conversations with our daughters and our sons to consider ideas intimate justice when we talk about and set them going on their early formative experience.

I asked a high school girl about unreciprocated oral sex and said, "What if guys were asking you to get them a glass of water and never offered to you a glass of water? Would you put up with that?" She burst out laughing. It never occurred to her.

A lot of what happens in consensual encounters and in the way we talk to both girls and boys about sex creates a medium in which assault flourishes.

I had a lot of girls ask me whether it was weird that they didn't make a lot of noise during sex. I would get so irritated that they had learned this.

There is only one princess in the Disney tales, one girl who gets to be exalted. Princesses may confide in a sympathetic mouse or teacup, but they do not have girlfriends. God forbid Snow White should give Sleeping Beauty a little support. Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of the rest of their lives.

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.

But it is Bella, not the supernaturals she falls in with, who is the true horror show here, at least as a female role model.

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