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Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

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Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
List Price: $16.00
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The phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller. More than 1.5 million copies sold. Now available from Riverhead.

This is the groundbreaking work that poses one of the most provocative questions of a generation: Why are American adolescent girls falling prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and dangerously low self-esteem? Dr. Pipher posits that it's America's sexist, look-obsessed "girl-poisoning" culture-one in which girls are constantly struggling to find their true selves. In Reviving Ophelia, these girls' uncensored voices are heard from the front lines of adolescence. Personal and painfully honest, this is a compassionate call to arms, offering strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost senses of self.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.2352
EAN: 9781594481888
ISBN: 1594481881
Label: Riverhead Trade
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2005-08-01
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Studio: Riverhead Trade


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SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
• Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence
• Real Boys : Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood
• Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
• Surviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: "Reviving Ophelia" is not sufficient; Hamlet must be revived as well
Comment: Our teenagers face many challenges that we did not necessarily encounter; no question about it. Dr. Pipher explores many cases of patients she dealt with as a therapist to educate the reader and reach the conclusion that our culture targets the souls of young females through media and hidden sexist messages to a point that young women lose their true selves and their identity in a desperate attempt to please others.

According to Dr. Pipher, Ophelia from Shakespeare's well known play "Hamlet" is the best example of how females are pressured into pleasing others to such an extreme that they are weighted down and lose themselves to drown like Ophelia. The mistake I see Dr. Pipher repeating that other famous female thinkers like Simon de Beauvoir made (Pipher quoted her few times in this book), is that they only view females as victims while painting culture and males are the offenders.

Feminists are demanding equality with males, but they forget that men and women have different responsibilities and as a result there will always be unrealistic responsibilities/ standards against which females are measured. Whilst blaming culture and society for female's problems, we forget that we females are the main accomplices in this crime. Females are part of the sexually oriented commercials that treat women like sex objects. They are the individuals who participate in beauty pageants and forget about their soul and spirit, as well as these who go through tortuous plastic surgeries to please men and meet unrealistic cultural beauty standards. The only way to revive these Ophelia's is facing the truth instead of blaming the others. Only then, we can move to fix the way this world view us.

It is true that culture and media pressures contribute to young females' dilemma. Dr. Pipher examined many cases of troubled female teens, but she failed to propose a real solution.
Females are not the only victims; both Ophelia as well as Hamlet must be revived

Men and women should collectively liberate themselves from this decaying culture. We simply can't fix the young spirits if we don't start with ourselves including males/females and most especially parents.


Customer Rating:
Summary: Cultural Expectations for Girls
Comment: As a Clinical Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist, I read quite a few books on adolescents. There are primarily two that I recommend to my clients, 'Reviving Ophelia' and Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.

'Reviving Ophelia' is an excellent analysis of how cultural mores, media messages and peer pressure reconstruct interested, interesting and motivated young girls into off-centered adolescents by the time they are 14 years old.

Pipher speaks to the importance of family, support for authenticity and encourages girls to focus on their 'North Star', that place where values, priorities, goals and sense of self reside in a steady and sure manner.

This is a very readable and important book.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Comment: I just finished reading this book for an ethics class, a reference from my mom led me to this book. I believe that she recommend it not only because it would be something interesting to write on for my class but to also show that my teenage years were normal and all of the stress I went through had a cause. I am 21 years old and I would love to think that I had normal stressful teenage years but this book opened my eyes. I am one of those girls that were upset all of the time. I was literally brought to tears over some of the stories because I knew these girls and I was one of those girls just trying to fit in and losing myself in the process. This book is very eye opening and I recommend it not only to parents of young women but also to my peers. Reading a book like this will help girls understand better that the teenage years and turmoil that happen are not just something that girls are going through alone.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great condition
Comment: Ordered a used book and the quality was as new. Fast shipping. Great seller!

Customer Rating:
Summary: Wallowing while offering little solution
Comment: Alright. This book is a classic in feminist literature, esp. when dealing with teen girls.
What I find most off-putting about it is the way that it positions teen girls under the umbrella of victimization. The subtitle "saving the selves of adolescent girls" - oh please.

It completely overlooks the fact that young women walk through fire in their teens in order to understand their place in society as a woman. They learn to understand that they will face sexism, objectification and a world built on a patriarchal model.

There are much better books out there that champion the way girls navigate the world (as they face the aforementioned issues as teens already) - e.g.The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do--Sex Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt.

This book assumes teen girls are victims because of what they are - girls becoming women - when in fact they are learning to be in control of their lives.

Reviving Ophelia? Ophelia was driven mad and it's not certain that she committed suicide or fell from a tree limb that broke. Either way, adolescent girls are much more resilient; Reviving Ophelia romanticizes young girls as the tragic damsel who was too frail to live in a man's world; that these girls need saving.

And so much of this book is built on archaic and patriarchal ideas of womens' innate weakness and subsequent inability to fight against media and social structures.

It's fine to read if you are fifteen and looking for an explanation for why you feel you're Ophelia drowning but in the end, it's not a celebration of the true strength and resilience of teen girls but a treatise on the idea that the process of becoming a woman in the contemporary world is a dangerous thing.

Two stars because it's great to reference for a thesis paper on the convoluted ideas of teen / teen girl psychology.

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