Girls & Sex

Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

By: Peggy Orenstein

Narrated by: Peggy Orenstein

The author of the New York Times best seller Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the postprincess stage - high school through college - and reveals how they are negotiating it.

A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow's women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over 70 young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls' sex lives in the modern world.

While the media has focused - often to sensational effect - on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in Girls and Sex Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table. She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people's lives; what it means to be the "the perfect slut" and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture; and the unfortunate realities surrounding assault. In Orenstein's hands these issues are never reduced to simplistic "truths"; rather, her powerful reporting opens up a dialogue on a potent, often silent subtext of American life today, giving listeners comprehensive and in-depth information with which to understand and navigate this complicated new world.

©2016 Peggy Orenstein (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

A must listen for any parent

enlightening understanding of what is going on with young women today if you know anyone in college or about to go into college please share this book with them

Must read for all parents

This book was powerful to read as a 30 something woman who has experienced many of the situations described within. Even more powerful was the sense of duty I was left Witt to make sure my children understand sex in a completely different way than is taught and shown in current sex ed classes, media and porn. I could not recommend this book more highly and really think it should be required reading for all middle school or high schoolers

Must read for all parents and everyone!

This book is very enlightening and should be mandatory for all adults and teens to read/listen to. It really shows you how messed up sexual norms are for both men and women. The author has done a fantastic job and interviewed so many women for this book.

Great Book For Any Parents

This is the book you. need when your kids are ten years of age or older. Valuable information on the hook up culture, and how teens view current social sex issues. Great book, never list interest.

Informative on the outlook of women in sex.

I learned a new perspective on women's sexuality and sexual drive. It was informative and helpful.

I recommend this to all parents

Girls & Sex was an incredibly thought provoking book. My daughters are 8'and 10, and I'm so glad that I had a chance to read this now because it will certainly inform the way I parent. So good.

Almost perfect

This is a stunning and compelling bitch slap to religious and political conservatives (and liberal sycophants) who'd sooner bury their head in the sand than deal with the reality of the devastation their ignorant policies actually cause young people, who as we know, are our actual future. The evidence provided in this well-researched and in-depth book serves as searing testimony to the wages of false morality and callous ideologies of the "abstinence only crowd" and the consequences to girls and women, some of which are heartbreaking and enraging.

While I'll never be able to convince one of these moral cretins to read this book, I plan on buying a hard copy that at the least can be hurled at their heads.

For girls, boys, women and men

I wish I had read this before raising my daughter, parenting a teenage son, and while teaching Our Whole Lives sex/ life Ed curriculum. As a parent and a woman, this American world of sex is even harder on our youth than it was for me; I had hoped for better. Orenstein lays out today's landscape for kids-all manner and gender- in hs and college, then presents a different possibility realized by other countries, Denmark in particular. Let's keep talking about sex in the way we want it for our kids.

All girls should read

When my daughter and son are 10 this is definitely a book I will be busying them. There is so much information in this book that is so curtail to being safe emotionally and physically with sex. A must read for all teens or individuals who are considering to have sex. The book focuses more on heterosexual sexuality and relationships but it also includes topics LGBTQ + community deals with in sex and relationships.

Must read.

If you have daughters or sons this is a must read. A very clear depiction of what girls go through in school and what can help to mitigate their experiences as parents. Really amazing insight with interviews of the demographic. Every parent should read this to be able to educate themselves and their children to the culture we live in.