Partial profile · Book Profile — full narrative profile planned
Girls & Sex
Through in-depth interviews with more than seventy young women, Peggy Orenstein exposes the gap between girls' public empowerment and their private sexual experiences, arguing that a culture of self-objectification, silence, and misinformation deprives girls of pleasure, agency, and safety.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Girls & Sex takes readers inside the intimate lives of adolescent and college-age women navigating a landscape saturated with pornography, hookup culture, social media performance, and contradictory messages about virginity and 'hotness.' Drawing on candid conversations with girls across class, race, and orientation, plus research from psychologists, sociologists, and sex educators, Peggy Orenstein reveals a troubling paradox: even as girls lean in academically and professionally, their sexual lives remain governed by an old double standard, an absence of pleasure, and normalized coercion. The book asks why so little has changed in the bedroom when so much has changed in the classroom and boardroom, and points toward a Dutch-inspired model of frank, joyful, ethics-centered sex education as the way forward. It is essential reading for parents, educators, and young people who want intimacy grounded in mutuality, respect, and 'intimate justice.'
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A parent, educator, or young woman who wants girls to grow into sexually healthy, empowered adults with agency, pleasure, and safety.
- The problem
- Girls navigate a hypersexualized, porn-saturated, hookup-driven culture that prioritizes male pleasure and female performance while leaving them ignorant about their own bodies and vulnerable to coercion. They feel confused, ashamed, disembodied, and pressured to please others while doubting whether they are allowed to want or enjoy anything for themselves.
- The plan
- Recognize how self-objectification, porn, and 'hot' culture shape girls' expectations.
- Reconceptualize 'sex' beyond intercourse to include pleasure, communication, and mutuality.
- Talk honestly and early with girls (and boys) about desire, bodies, masturbation, and orgasm, not just risk.
- Center consent as enthusiastic mutuality and address boys' coercion and pressure.
- Adopt a Dutch-style approach emphasizing autonomy, egalitarian relationships, connection, and diversity.
- The payoff
- Girls understand and enjoy their bodies, ask for what they want, and hold higher standards for intimate encounters. · Young people experience reciprocal, respectful, mutually pleasurable relationships and safer sexual choices. · Parents and children remain closely connected while teens develop sexual autonomy and ethics.
See our guide
Additional reading
- Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture · Ariel Levy
Orenstein extensively uses Levy's concepts of 'raunch culture' and the commodified idea of 'hotness' to explain the cultural pressure on girls to perform a narrow, objectified version of sexuality.
- The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women · Jessica Valenti
The book's critique of 'purity culture' and the arbitrary, harmful focus on virginity is central to Orenstein's analysis in Chapter 3, which argues for a broader definition of sexual experience.
- Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex · Amy T. Schalet
Schalet's research comparing the open, relationship-focused Dutch approach to sexuality with the American fear-based model provides the central, positive alternative that Orenstein advocates for in her concluding chapter.
- Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb · Bernard Lefkowitz
Orenstein uses the Glen Ridge case as a historical touchstone to show how issues of jock culture, male entitlement, and victim-blaming in sexual assault cases are not new phenomena.