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

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Key Phrases: pure fashion, cuddle party, closing circle, Girls Gone Mild, Mild Fourth Wave, Have You Seen My Friends (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this follow-up to her 1999 A Return to Modesty, Shalit takes a second stab at getting the women of the Western world to stand up and take notice of their rampant objectification. Using letters, interviews and various studies, this new book examines current attitudes toward sexuality, "empowerment" and childhood among parents, teachers, kids and the mass media. Like her last, this volume is dense with anecdotes designed to shock and dismay (a mother who tells her 25-year-old that she is going to lose her boyfriend if she doesn't sleep with him, a teacher who tells a 14-year-old that you might as well call it over if you haven't had sex by the third date), and to report on the women and girls who aren't giving into the pressure of hyper-sexualized society-including the harassment they routinely face because of their stand (Shalit answers with admirable bonhomie her own critics, who dismiss her as a backward-thinking " 'professional virgin,' " "a seat that I believe is already occupied by Madonna"). This book takes a hard look from the traditional family-values perspective at how we got to where we are and what progress can be made, and does so with a conviction that will resonate with and bolster many parents.
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Jennifer Howard

A few years ago, Wendy Shalit graced us with A Return to Modesty, an invitation to indulge in what she called the "lost virtue." Conservatives hailed it as a much-needed antidote to the poisonous legacy of the sexual revolution. Liberals, not as kind, wrote it off as a neo-Victorian call for a return to the bad old days when ladies were supposed to behave themselves. It earned its author the contempt of such feminist stalwarts as Katha Pollitt, who sniffed in the pages of the New York Times that Shalit "cites her experience in fourth-grade sex ed to argue that feminism and liberal sexual mores have encouraged men to degrade women. The solution: women should stay virgins, and arm themselves, as Shalit implies she has done, with blushes and long skirts to inspire chivalry in men."

Eight years have passed since then. Shalit now has a husband, a family and a Web site called Modesty Zone, and continues to champion the cause of virgins everywhere.

There's no shame in that. "Whether you're a virgin waiting until marriage, or just against casual sex more generally, you can find a safe harbor here to share your ideals, interests, and goals for the future," Modesty Zone promises. "Join forces with other young women who are tired of power struggles between the sexes. Believe in the possibility of real intimacy."

There, tied up in a pretty pink ribbon, is the argument of Shalit's new book, Girls Gone Mild. Shalit believes that too many girls and women have been denied a happy ending because, post-sexual revolution, we now believe it's good to be bad. "The plain fact," she writes, "is that girls today have to be 'bad' to fit in, just as the baby boomers needed to be good. And we are finding that this new script may be more oppressive than the old one ever was." You can't meet Mr. Right when you're busy shagging a series of Mr. Wrongs.

To make her point, Shalit roves through the bordello of popular culture, sweeping up unpleasant bits of evidence. She begins with Bratz dolls, a scantily clad line of playthings aimed at young girls, and goes as far as the "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon, in which young women who ought to know better get drunk and take off their clothes and make lots of money for ungentlemanly types who sell videotapes of them.

If you're the parent of a young daughter (I am), Girls Gone Mild does one heck of a job of playing off your worst fears. Shalit wants me to believe that my innocent darling will, by the age of 6, be so saturated in hyper-sexualized contemporary culture that it will take an act of God to keep her from baring her midriff and painting herself to look like the pop tartlet of the moment. She will, by the time she's 13, be greeting her friends with such empowering phrases as "Hey, slut!" And by the time she's in college, if she wants male company, she'll be forced to find it by "hooking up" with lads who want nothing more than to be "friends with benefits." Her social life, in short, will be about cheap sex, bought with cheap clothes and cheaper liquor, at the price of self-respect and the prospect of any serious romance.

And I thought that Disney princesses were all I had to worry about.

Shalit tells me to take heart, though, because there's a new sexual revolution a-brewing -- one in which sex is supposed to be a meaningful act between two people who actually care about each other. It's tempting to mock her, but what's so silly about the idea of self-respect and finding one's soul mate? Nothing, even if you're more the "Sex and the City" type than the virgin-till-marriage type.

She asks, "Why, in the year 2007, should women's focus be completely on pleasing young men?" (Is it?) And she wants us to take heart (and I do, I do) from the growing number of young women whom she describes as "rebellious good girls." These new avatars of girl power give abstinence talks to high-schoolers; they stage "Pure Fashion" shows in which fashion doesn't just mean flesh; they become "girlcotters" who lobby retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch to pull tee-shirts emblazoned with sexist slogans. They don't sleep with the first, or second, or third boy who comes along. They don't become "people-pleasing bad girls" who will do anything, anything, to get a boy's attention.

More power to them. Behind Shalit's celebration of such girls, however, is some very dubious sociology.

I admit she had me scared for a while. I've encountered more than enough young women who have made questionable sartorial and sexual judgments. I'm not blind to the icky cultural messages that my children are subjected to every day. I worry about them, God knows, and the pressures they'll face as they grow into adults. But I worry about global warming, too, and terrorist attacks and paying the mortgage and whether my daughter will get paid as much as her male colleagues do for the same work.

How real is the sexed-out, I Am Charlotte Simmons world Shalit describes? There's plenty of sleaze everywhere you look, but Shalit's reporting leaves me unconvinced. She leans too hard on secondhand evidence, most of it grabbed from the Internet and readers' e-mails. She's promiscuous in her reliance on studies but does not give much detail about their methods; as long as they support her conclusions, they must be sound.

Even more detached from reality is Shalit's takedown of older feminists. These are the good ladies, second- and third-wavers, who run organizations such as NOW and who have fought for years to give women the same chances as men -- not, as Shalit would have it, just the chance to sleep around like men. She attacks them for "the concessions they made to pornography" and for being "so committed to the idea of casual sex as liberation" that they're baffled by younger, more restrained women.

"As the third-wavers continue to advocate a public, crude sexuality and younger girls feel oppressed by how public sexuality is, the two sets of women are on course for an inevitable collision," Shalit writes. This is bone-headed conservatism at its most offensive. Last time I checked my Feminist Manual, letting it all hang out in public didn't appear on the must-do list. Nor did making concessions to pornographers, but maybe I missed that section. Shalit would have us believe that feminism is not a dirty word in her vocabulary. Yet she seems surprised when a Wesleyan undergraduate "rejects sexual exhibitionism even though she identifies as a feminist."

Imagine that! A feminist who doesn't take her clothes off. What is this world coming to?

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (June 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400064732
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064731
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #460,724 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Timely Challenge, July 27, 2007

By	Tim Challies (Oakville, Ontario) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In 2000, when she was only twenty-three, Wendy Shalit published A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, a book in which she argued that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended "compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual reticence." Of course many people, and feminists in particular, were disgusted with the book and ruthlessly mocked her.

In her second book, Girls Gone Mild, she writes about a new trend she has discovered in speaking to thousands of girls and young women in the aftermath of the publication of A Return to Modesty. She draws upon over 100 in-depth interviews and thousands of email exchanges with women from ages twelve to twenty eight, representing diverse racial, religious and economic backgrounds. Some identify as Christians or Jewish, liberals or conservatives, feminists or not. The one thread tying all of these together is a desperation to find new and better role models. Shalit says the book is "about my search for an alternative to our Girls Gone Wild culture. It's about finding a way to acknowledge sexuality without having to share it with strangers. It's about rediscovering our capacity for innocence, for wonder, and for being touched profoundly by others."

Shalit opens by discussing Bratz, those Barbie-like dolls that look "hotter than hot," appearing overtly sexual in slinky clothes. Marketed to pre-teen girls, these dolls encourage even the youngest girls to see themselves as sexual creatures who can use their sexuality to attract others. In a Bratz book even the youngest girls are asked to fill in the blanks: "When I want to look hot for an extra special occasion I'll put on _________." "These days, the way dolls are dressed," Shalit says, comparing Bratz to a beloved Cabbage Patch Doll from her youth, "the question is not so much 'Is my dolly real?' as 'How much does she charge per hour?'" From Bratz and the countless similar products, whether sexy dolls or t-shirts sold to infants emblazoned with sexy slogans or thong underwear for six year olds, we see that being a child is no longer a valid excuse not to be sexualized. And further to this, being publicly sexual has become the most, and possibly the only, acceptable way for girls to express maturity. Thankfully a rebellion is underway, and one that may even represent the dawning of a fourth wave of the feminist movement. This rebellion, girls and young women rising against the sultry status quo, is a reaction to the over-sexualization of nearly everything. The rebellion is the theme of the book. It shares equally the despair of the status quo and the hope for a better future.

Our culture has some things backward. Where it was once the "bad girl" who stood out from the crowd and who was known for her reputation, today the bad girl is the new normal, the new expectation. The "good girls," on the other hand, the ones who refuse to engage in sexual behavior and the ones who refuse to flaunt their bodies, are the ones who face rejection from their peers and, tragically, even from adults. Young people need to be and to act bad just to fit in. And this is exactly what they do. "Consider how girls today need to be thin, available, and always sexy. At the same time they are supposed to have no hopes, no messy feelings, no vulnerability. They must be aggressive, yet somehow inviting. It's complicated, and to rebel against the new bad-girl script takes enormous confidence." But it can be done. Unfortunately it needs to be done with few role models to serve as guides or mentors. Where a group of girls is rising and extolling the benefits of chastity and more traditionally feminine behavior, it is adults who are criticizing this movement and attempting to keep it from gaining ground. Many young people are tiring of the game and are tired of experiencing the consequences of bad girl behavior, but adults continue to push them into it.

Shalit thinks this movement towards chastity, towards feminine virtue, would be far greater and far more powerful were it not for the repression girls experience because of the new normal. Many women stifle their desires for more chaste lifestyles simply because society teaches that casual sex is good and wonderful and healthy. Further, society teaches that it is the weak who delay sex while the strong, those who are uncomfortable with their sexuality, are the ones who hold out. Similarly, the ones who are comfortable with their bodies are glad to exhibit their nakedness in public while only those who are ashamed of their bodies keep them covered.

The book has many stories of hope. The author writes, for example, about "Pure Fashion Divas," girls who hold fashion shows exhibiting clothing that is trendy but not exhibitionist. The way people dress, after all, makes a powerful statement. "Dress can turn a young woman, unwittingly, into walking entertainment for men, or it can do the opposite, and cause people to focus on her internal qualities." A statement that seems shocking only for how old-fashioned it sounds today. Shalit is correct when she shows that today's bad girl is really just a girl who is prone to please others. An overwhelming desire to conform to other people's expectations leads them to surrender their dignity and their sexuality. The costs are high. I was intrigued by a chapter called "Excuse Me, Ma'am, Have You Seen My Friends?" Here Shalit argues that women are fast losing their ability to maintain strong, meaningful friendships. Women today enjoy fewer same-sex friendships because adultery and competition for men is now normal. Women no longer trust other women; they no longer understand what it is to be happy for someone else and to rejoice with those who rejoice. Their relationships are strangled by a sexualized, competitive spirit. Ironically, the liberated woman is increasingly a woman who is alone. The consequences of the new bad girl behavior eventually isolate women from even each other.

I think I can be excused for often thinking, while reading this book, "Isn't this what the Bible has been saying all along?" Shalit is Jewish and conservative in her belief and practice of her faith. And, in fact, faith is a theme throughout the book as Shalit often turns to the Old Testament or to Jewish tradition to show how Scripture provides wisdom that is applicable to this topic. Many of the examples of young women who fight the status quo are Christian girls, fed up with the sexually-charged atmosphere around them. The Bible has been telling us all along that God has created men to be men and women to be women. Men and women are equal in value and worth but separate in function. The feminist movement has been pushing women, exhorting them to become more like men. But this book shows, as have many Christian authors in recent years, that true liberation comes not from pushing aside feminine distinctives but by rediscovering, embracing and celebrating them. What makes this book distinctive, at least among the similar titles I've read, is that it comes from outside the Christian publishing industry. It ties in nicely with titles like Unhooked, Female Chauvinist Pigs and others. It has already been widely reviewed and is sure to generate a great deal of discussion. If Shalit's first book is any indication, it will generate anger, bitterness and outrage. Yet hopefully it will also give young women at least a few role models--pure fashion divas, girls who refuse to give it all away, and perhaps the author herself--who can be role models to a new generation of girls gone mild.

Somewhat ironically, I wrote this review while spending time with my family at the beach. If we are in the midst of a trend towards modesty, I don't think there is much evidence of it here. My wife and I conferred and agreed that swimwear does not seem to be showing much in the way of modesty. Yet I do believe that Shalit's thesis is right. Girls are increasingly fed up with the way they've been told to act. They are the ones who bear the consequences for their behavior and they are the ones who are beginning to agree that enough is enough. As the father of two girls I hope and pray that this movement lives through its infancy and makes an appreciable impact. Few things would be healthier for society than to rediscover some semblance of femininity as defined by the One who created women to be women.

I found Girls Gone Mild a fascinating read and am glad to recommend it to others.

62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A much-needed explanation of what our girls face, June 28, 2007

By	J. Ping "dangermom" (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wendy Shalit has written another great book that all young women and parents should read. I think that very few adults (including myself) truly understand how very sex-saturated our children's environment has become. Girls are under constant pressure to turn themselves into objects for male viewing pleasure and servants to boys' sexual desires; which is terrible for both sexes, but particularly destructive to the girls. How did our supposedly feminist society get to be so bad for girls? When did it become so bad to be good, and when did 'badness' become an absolute requirement? Why did we stop protecting even our youngest kids from the worst our society can produce? When did sex become the main way for women to claim power--albeit a fleeting and false power--instead of the truer, more permanent achievements of mind and skill? (Gee, did nothing change?)



Shalit describes all the pressure modern girls face to objectify themselves, to put themselves on display, to smother their deeper instincts in order to fit in. It's a terrible picture, and I feel lucky to have escaped so much of it myself, and very worried about how my own young daughters will fare. But Shalit also offers us hope, by introducing us to amazing young girls who are speaking up for themselves, their dignity, and their own desires to achieve. I admire these young women so much, and I hope that more of them will appear and start changing the world. This "fourth-wave feminism," as Shalit terms the rising generation of outspoken girls, seems to me to be a much better, truer, and healthier feminism than what we have seen in the past few years. I have always laid claim to the title "feminist," because I have sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, but now I've discovered that I can define myself more clearly as a fourth-waver.



Detractors apparently accuse Shalit and her young colleagues of 'wanting to turn back the clock,' 'bring back corsets and petticoats,' or even of being the Taliban in disguise. None of this is true. These young women want progress. They are true rebels, and the older generation doesn't seem to like it very much. But the older generation didn't have to grow up in a morass of pornography; perhaps they wouldn't have cared for it either.

54 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Scary That I Actually Thought She Was Right More Often Than Not--How Times Have Changed!, July 5, 2007

By	Penny Dreadful (Under Your Skin) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I guess the fact is I'm getting old.

A few years back, when this same author released A Return To Modesty, her ode to all things chaste, I read it in a sociology class and found it so preachy and unrealistic that had I been an Amazon reviewer then I probably would have trashed it here. But now it's 2007 and after hearing Wendy Shalit on NPR this week, I got the cheerfully titled Girls Gone Mild and was startled at how much sense some (not all) of what she wrote made to me. Of course I also fell into a brief depression when I was compelled to realize that I, barely a decade out of high school and so recently part of the demographic Shalit is writing about, was hopelessly past it all and now every bit as disapproving of the culture of sex that has somehow come to be forced on girls so young that by all rights they should still be playing with Barbie's.

In Girls Gone Mild Shalit still retains a little of her sing-song preachiness that gagged me in A Return To Modesty, and I think her "hundred girls surveyed" must've been hand-picked to embody certain pre-programmed extremes (come on, how many parents truly pressure their teens to have sex because they're ashamed to be raising an eighth-grade virgin?) but just as often I respected the assertions behind her chapters on the marketing of revealing attire to an ever-younger demographic; the raunchiness of music that targets pre-teens; and her statements made about the emotional neediness in a lonely culture of minors inundated by pressure to see the mandatory normality of serial hookups that leave a desire for emotional closeness anything but fulfilled. And Shalit and others from both the right and left who point out the scarcity of positive role models for girls in this decade are exactly right. For every teen queen whose party lifestyle makes for tabloid fodder there are probably a hundred-thousand girls who have the idea reinforced in them that this is what they have to imitate in order to be cool. No, I wasn't a saint when I was a teenager but I think the world I grew up in was positively PG-rated compared to today's, and where will it end?

I don't pretend to be convinced that the extremism Shalit is making a living writing about actually represents the norm for American society, but it would be equally naïve to try to say the fringe isn't out there, or that it doesn't infiltrate the mainstream year by year. Wendy Shalit made some sense this time around, and I'll be fair enough to admit it.