Reviving Ophelia by Mary Phipher

This book is about female adolescent development and it’s considered a classic by psychological folk. I read it with a group of teachers and I must say we were less than thrilled. The author gave many case studies and scratched the surface of the reasons why teen girls often become depressed and freakish, but she didn’t offer many solutions for parents or teachers. Basically, I gleaned wisdom from her description of the “false self” these girls feel compelled to create in order to be considered feminine, and I appreciated her points about how we rarely allow girls to become frustrated or angry. We do a disservice to them in that respect because we don’t validate all their emotions and we don’t allow them to suffer the hardships of the learning process. But, other than that, I would say you could pass it over. My book’s at school so (again) I can’t type out my favorite quote, but it had something to do with the fact that we have to send all our girls to self-defense classes to ward off rapists and sickos, when really we should have classes for young men to learn how to treat women.