Top 40 Quotes & Sayings by Peggy Orenstein

Girls are freer to express their femininity and their sexuality and we're not tamping that down or denying it anymore. But it ends up putting them, first of all, in this box. And secondly, premature sexualization of girls actually does the opposite of what people think it might; it actually disconnects them from their sexuality and makes for decreased sexual health as they get older.

We're afraid if girls find out sex is pleasurable they'll stop being gatekeepers, they'll go out and have sex.

Maybe I wanted children, maybe I didn't, but I wanted the decision to be a choice, not a mandate. Last time I checked, childlessness was only supposed to be a condition of career advancement for nuns.

Intimate justice touches on ideas of gender inequity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health. I don't expect a 15-year-old girl to have that figured out; it's hard enough to have it figured out when you're 50.

I found that in a perverse way our culture and parents are far more comfortable talking about girls' vicitimization than girls' sexual agency.

I had a lot of girls ask me whether it was weird that they didn't make a lot of noise during sex. I would get so irritated that they had learned this.

The point of creativity is to express and challenge yourself, to make meaning, to embrace your life.

I asked a high school girl about unreciprocated oral sex and said, "What if guys were asking you to get them a glass of water and never offered to you a glass of water? Would you put up with that?" She burst out laughing. It never occurred to her.

American Psychological Association, the girlie-girl culture’s emphasis on beauty and play-sexiness can increase girls’ vulnerability to the pitfalls that most concern parents: depression, eating disorders, distorted body image, risky sexual behavior.

Displaying yourself as sexy doesn't do anything to increase sexual self-knowledge or pleasure.

Girls would say: "I have a boyfriend for that." So in addition to putting their pleasure literally into someone else's hands - an inept teenage boy - these are the same girls who say they do not climax with a partner. It's the opposite with boys; they say because they can do that themselves, girls should perform oral sex.

I talked to a junior in college, and she was fed up. She said, "I'm not doing other girls any favours by faking orgasms and not calling out guys when we're having unequal experiences."

Sex-ed courses look at girl's internal parts: for boys it's about ejaculation, erection and wet dreams; for girls, it's periods and unwanted pregnancy. We never talk to girls about sexual self-exploration or self-knowledge.

For years we've used the bases analogy - with intercourse being the "ultimate sex" even though that's probably not going to feel good to girls. That model doesn't let you say "I like it at second base, maybe I'll stay here."

Effectively, it makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self. If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show: we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it.

It's not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow, and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girl's identity to appearance.

I never expected, when I had a daughter, that one of my most important jobs would be to protect her childhood from becoming a marketers' land grab.

My kind of nightmare quote is from Deborah Tolman, who does research on girls and desire and is, I think, brilliant. She told me that by the time girls are teenagers, when she asks them how sexual experience made them feel, they respond by how they think they looked; they think that how they look is how they feel.

All girls over age 14 remove pubic hair. The only touching is to remove hair. That's grim.

Mothers are doing a better job talking about risk, danger, reproduction, consent, unwanted pregnancy. We're not talking about how to balance the risks and joys and we're really not talking about the joys.

Marketing to girls constantly presents a hypersexualized idea of girls; they're expected to appear sexy but be cut off from their sexuality.

One of the challenges is to create an equally positive, satisfying sense of femininity and feminine identity in a different way so that there are things you're saying yes to and satisfying that urge that your daughter has to be assert her girlness. The surface level of the culture, and really several inches into it, makes that very hard to do. I hate to put another thing on parents' plates. But the culture is very intentional in what it's telling your daughter and what it's telling you about the message of femininity. And if you're not intentional and conscious back, you lose.

Parents tend to name all of baby boys' body parts, but with girls they go from belly button to knees with this void in the middle. That doesn't change as kids go into puberty.

There is a way hook ups are serving young women. And it was important for me to always talk about how behaviours were serving girls, not just making them the victims.

But it is Bella, not the supernaturals she falls in with, who is the true horror show here, at least as a female role model.

Sexualization is imposed from the outside as opposed to sexuality, an understanding of the body's responses and desires and ability to communicate that, cultivated from within.

The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Not that long ago, the idea of feeding your kid with organic fruit and vegetables or paying attention to sustainability or any of that - that was very fringy. And I guess some people will argue it still is to a degree, but it's kind of mainstream fringy now.

It's particularly important as parents in our conversations with our daughters and our sons to consider ideas intimate justice when we talk about and set them going on their early formative experience.

A lot of what happens in consensual encounters and in the way we talk to both girls and boys about sex creates a medium in which assault flourishes.

The anesthetizing against caring really threw me for a loop. I was seeing it with 15-year-olds. It was how they were starting their intimate lives. It alarmed me.

I'll tell you what is insidious about the Disney Princess, besides the fact that if you look into their merchandise, the 26,000 items, you're always finding books that are about "my perfect wedding." It's what it puts girls on the path for. And that it poses as something that protects girls, or staves off premature sexualization, when I think it primes them for it. I don't know where to put that on the continuum exactly. I guess eight?

Girls are removing pubic hair before fully having it. They would say I feel cleaner, it's for me, but then they'd say if a boy saw pubic hair down there they'd head for the hills.

Saying "yes" [to sexual activity] is a pretty low baseline for sexual experience and I wanted to write about what was happening to girls after "yes."

Sexualization is the performance of sexuality, the performance of sexiness. Girls are super good at that now.

We continue to think of virginity as first intercourse. That ends up minimizing and marginalizing other things kids are engaged in, like oral sex. And it's not going to feel particularly good for girls as the big marker of adulthood.

There is only one princess in the Disney tales, one girl who gets to be exalted. Princesses may confide in a sympathetic mouse or teacup, but they do not have girlfriends. God forbid Snow White should give Sleeping Beauty a little support. Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of the rest of their lives.

While I completely disagree with the "purity" concept, it was the only place I saw fathers talking to girls about their expectations and attitudes to sex and expressing love and support. I didn't see liberal dads having similar conversations with their daughters.

I'm watching my own daughter grow up. I see this overt sexual culture coming at her like a Mack truck. She's in seventh grade.