Reviving Ophelia Read Online Free Page B

on girls are at an all-time high. Now girls are more vulnerable and fearful, more likely to have been traumatized and less free to roam about alone. This combination of old stresses and new is poison for our young women.
    Parents have unprecedented stress as well. For the last half-century, parents worried about their sixteen-year-old daughters driving, but now, in a time of drive-by shootings and car-jackings, parents can be panicked. Parents have always worried about their daughters’ sexual behavior, but now, in a time of date rapes, herpes and AIDS, they can be sex-phobic. Traditionally parents have wondered what their teens were doing, but now teens are much more likely to be doing things that can get them killed.
    This book will tell stories from the front lines. It’s about girls because I know about girls. I was one, I see them in therapy, I have a teenage daughter and I teach primarily young women. I am not writing about boys because I have had limited experience with them. I’m not saying that girls and boys are radically different, only that they have different experiences.
    I am saying that girls are having more trouble now than they had thirty years ago, when I was a girl, and more trouble than even ten years ago. Something new is happening. Adolescence has always been hard, but it’s harder now because of cultural changes in the last decade. The protected place in space and time that we once called childhood has grown shorter. There is an African saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Most girls no longer have a village.
    Parents, teachers, counselors and nurses see that girls are in trouble, but they do not realize how universal and extreme the suffering is. This book is an attempt to share what I have seen and heard. It’s a hurricane warning, a message to the culture that something important is happening. This is a National Weather Service bulletin from the storm center.

Chapter 2
    THEORETICAL ISSUES-FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

CAYENNE (15)
    In a home video made when she was ten, Cayenne was wiry and scrappy, all sixty-eight pounds of her focused on the ball as she ran down the soccer field. Her red ponytail bobbed, her face shone with sweat as she ducked in and around the other players, always hustling. When she scored a goal, she held her arms over her head in a moment of self-congratulation. She tossed her parents a proud smile and moved into position for another play.
    Her parents loved her willingness to take on the universe. One day she dressed up like a belly dancer, the next like an astronaut. She liked adults and babies, boys and girls, dogs and sparrows. An absolute democrat, Cayenne treated everyone with respect, and she expected the same.
    When outraged, she took on the world. She got a black eye from fighting with a boy who said that girls couldn’t play soccer. Once she dunked a much older boy who was throwing rocks at a little turtle. She threatened to hit kids who were racist. Because she was good at standing up for herself and concerned with justice, her teachers predicted she’d go to law school.
    In elementary school Cayenne didn’t fret much about her appearance. She weighed in once a year at the doctor’s office and was pleased with gains in her height and weight chart. She wore jeans and T-shirts unless forced to dress up. Her mother had to beg her to go shopping and remind her to brush her hair.
    She walked to school every day with her best friend, Chelsea. She and Chelsea biked together, watched television, played on the same ball teams and helped each other with chores. They talked about everything—parents, school, sports and interests. They shared their dreams. Chelsea wanted to be a pilot, and Cayenne wanted to be a doctor. They made up elaborate fantasies in which Chelsea would fly Cayenne into a remote Alaskan village to deliver a baby or amputate the leg of a fisherman.
    Cayenne liked school. Her grades were good and she loved projects, especially science projects.