Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher

I've always had the feeling that I should read Reviving Ophelia, that perhaps I needed to read it. Not too many years ago, I was an adolescent girl with my fair share of issues, and since making it through that dreadful stage of life, I've always felt the need to process the experience, or at least try. So when I came across a cheap used copy of this book at The Dusty Bookshelf (which just so happens to be my place of employment), I snatched it right up, and I'm glad I did.

It turns out that my inklings were not far-fetched; this was an important book to read. It was like therapy for me, and I'm only exaggerating a little. Mary Pipher has had extensive experience counseling all sorts of adolescent girls, and at times, their stories hit a little close to home, their problems seemed a little too familiar. Most people, unless they have gone through it themselves, cannot fathom what the world is like for the modern adolescent girl. Our culture bombards girls with mixed signals. Be sexual, but not sexy; be smart, but not too smart; be thin, but not too thin. Television and music are filled with images of sex and violence, drugs and drinking, meanwhile adolescents are (hopefully) coached by adults to avoid these things. Yet, there is no avoiding them in daily life; they are everywhere teens are.

Mary Pipher discusses numerous past clients who have had a multitude of issues, from drug and alcohol abuse to physical abuse, from eating disorders to unhealthy sexual encounters. Her incredible insight into the strange and desperate, ever-vacillating, ever-spinning, swinging, shifting, apparently nonsensical world of adolescent girls never ceases to bore the mind.

This is an important book for anybody to read. Though it was published in 1994, it is still just as relevant, if not more so. Culture is growing increasingly crude and unabashed, and young people, sponges that they are, keep soaking it in. Though it has been less than ten years since I was an adolescent, I find myself appalled by some of the things children are watching and listening to now. Perhaps my awareness has been heightened since I was young, but I don't doubt that culture has changed as well. Thus, anyone who cares about the future generations and what we can do to help them should pick up a copy of this book.