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Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good

par Wendy Shalit

Membres	Critiques	Popularité	Évaluation moyenne	Mentions
102	3	266,291	(3.92)	3
At twenty-three, Wendy Shalit punctured conventional wisdom with A Return to Modesty, arguing that our hope for true lasting love is not a problem to be fixed but rather a wonderful instinct that forms the basis for civilization. Now, in Girls Gone Mild, the brilliantly outspoken author investigates an emerging new movement. Despite nearly-naked teen models posing seductively to sell us practically everything, and the proliferation of homemade sex tapes as star-making vehicles, a youth-led rebellion is already changing course. In Seattle and Pittsburgh, teenage girls protest against companies that sell sleazy clothing. Online, a nineteen-year-old describes her struggles with her mother, who she feels is pressuring her to lose her virginity. In a small town outside Philadelphia, an eleventh-grade girl, upset over a "dirty book" read aloud in English class, takes her case to the school board. These are not your mother's rebels. In an age where pornography is mainstream, teen clothing seems stripper-patented, and "experts" recommend that we learn to be emotionally detached about sex, a key (and callously) targeted audience-girls-is fed up. Drawing on numerous studies and interviews, Shalit makes the case that today's virulent "bad girl" mindset most truly oppresses young women. Nowadays, as even the youngest teenage girls feel the pressure to become cold sex sirens, put their bodies on public display, and suppress their feelings in order to feel accepted and (temporarily) loved, many young women are realizing that "friends with benefits" are often anything but. And as these girls speak for themselves, we see that what is expected of them turns out to be very different from what is in their own hearts. Shalit reveals how the media, one's peers, and even parents can undermine girls' quests for their authentic selves, details the problems of sex without intimacy, and explains what it means to break from the herd mentality and choose integrity over popularity. Written with sincerity and upbeat humor, Girls Gone Mild rescues the good girl from the realm of mythology and old manners guides to show that today's version is the real rebel: She is not "people pleasing" or repressed; she is simply reclaiming her individuality. These empowering stories are sure to be an inspiration to teenagers and parents alike.… (plus d'informations)

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In the well-written and well-argued Girls Gone Mild, Wendy Shalit examines the repercussions of the '60s sexual revolution on today’s girls and women. Like Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, Girls Gone Mild questions whether women have truly been “liberated” in the past few decades, or whether they have simply been given a new script from which to read: what Shalit dubs the “bad-girl script,” which often dictates that young women prove their “empowerment” through promiscuous behavior, regardless of the toll on their emotions and psyches.

Among other topics, Shalit investigates the effectiveness of various sex education curricula, debates the wisdom of coed dorms and bathrooms, and examines the attempted reclamation by feminists of the word “bitch.” The author is at her most compelling, however, when censuring the modern derogation of modest girls and women as “prudes,” and asking how the pressure on girls to engage in promiscuous behavior (in order not to appear sexually “repressed”) differs from the demands of yesteryear, when a woman might have felt just as straitjacketed by a society eager to call her a “slut” for being overtly sexual.

In a chapter titled “People-Pleasing Bad Girls and Rebellious Good Girls,” Shalit posits that in a sex-saturated society, modest young women are the true rebels, refusing to conform to cultural norms upholding the hyper sexual as ideal even in the face of often vitriolic opposition. Shalit calls these young modesty-advocates the “fourth wave” of feminism and hypothesizes that their variation on the movement will ultimately strike a balance between extreme promiscuity and strictest modesty. This interesting premise, along with insightful and genuinely moving anecdotes about real girls and women, makes Girls Gone Mild worthwhile for readers interested in feminism, modern cultural trends and messages, and/or today’s young people. (

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readingtangent | Sep 4, 2008 |

This book starts off well, pointing out that the measure of adulthood or of being a worthwhile human being shouldn't be sluttiness. Where I must part company with it with absolute horror is in its support for abstinence-only education and in its apparent denigration of all premarital sex. Starting sex-related conversations with young girls by saying, "When God sends you a husband..." (p.54) is at least as wrongheaded and damaging as pushing them towards unwanted sexual experiences. I fail to see how keeping girls (or boys, for that matter) ignorant, as abstinence-only education recommends, can possibly be helpful. The author suggests that a girl confront a parent pressuring her into sex by saying, "I ... want to preserve my sensitivity for my future spouse, and not become jaded and cynical" (p.50). The implication that premarital sex must inevitably make one "jaded and cynical" shocks me. It would be best for young women to feel that they have the option not to have sex if they don't want to, certainly. But why must that come with outright prudishness, the misinformation of the abstinence-only people, and knee-jerk religiosity? Furthermore, the book assumes that the only sex women have is with men, which seems a rather limited way to approach the issue. I couldn't finish this book, largely because I cannot in any way support the abstinence-only message. It gets two stars only for its strong start. (

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Risako | Aug 17, 2008 |

Great non-fic pertaining to raising young women within the "worldly values" around us. (

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Spibrarian | Jan 31, 2008 |

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At twenty-three, Wendy Shalit punctured conventional wisdom with A Return to Modesty, arguing that our hope for true lasting love is not a problem to be fixed but rather a wonderful instinct that forms the basis for civilization. Now, in Girls Gone Mild, the brilliantly outspoken author investigates an emerging new movement. Despite nearly-naked teen models posing seductively to sell us practically everything, and the proliferation of homemade sex tapes as star-making vehicles, a youth-led rebellion is already changing course. In Seattle and Pittsburgh, teenage girls protest against companies that sell sleazy clothing. Online, a nineteen-year-old describes her struggles with her mother, who she feels is pressuring her to lose her virginity. In a small town outside Philadelphia, an eleventh-grade girl, upset over a "dirty book" read aloud in English class, takes her case to the school board. These are not your mother's rebels. In an age where pornography is mainstream, teen clothing seems stripper-patented, and "experts" recommend that we learn to be emotionally detached about sex, a key (and callously) targeted audience-girls-is fed up. Drawing on numerous studies and interviews, Shalit makes the case that today's virulent "bad girl" mindset most truly oppresses young women. Nowadays, as even the youngest teenage girls feel the pressure to become cold sex sirens, put their bodies on public display, and suppress their feelings in order to feel accepted and (temporarily) loved, many young women are realizing that "friends with benefits" are often anything but. And as these girls speak for themselves, we see that what is expected of them turns out to be very different from what is in their own hearts. Shalit reveals how the media, one's peers, and even parents can undermine girls' quests for their authentic selves, details the problems of sex without intimacy, and explains what it means to break from the herd mentality and choose integrity over popularity. Written with sincerity and upbeat humor, Girls Gone Mild rescues the good girl from the realm of mythology and old manners guides to show that today's version is the real rebel: She is not "people pleasing" or repressed; she is simply reclaiming her individuality. These empowering stories are sure to be an inspiration to teenagers and parents alike.

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