This book was even more intensely personal than misconceptions, somehow, while still being grounded in solid research.

It approaches the way young girls in our society learn to be women, in particular addressing how they deal with sex. And I would have to say that I really agree quite strongly with her central message – to whit – we don’t tell them enough, while bombarding them with too much.

The healthy rituals to introduce girls into womanhood are completely missing. And because they get sex ed that tells them that abstinence is ideal, desire abnormal, and sex mysterious and dangerous, and because they get bombarded with ‘the perfect woman’ on celluloid and billboards, and because parents don’t know what to say any more… Girls get mixed up. And it gets them into trouble.

I know it got me into trouble.

Some parts of the book were squirmy, though not nearly as many as The Beauty Myth or Misconceptions. The message was more hopeful than not, too, which I appreciate. Of girls of her muddled-up generation, she says, they were confused and bewildered, but none of them failed to reach a womanhood they could appreciate. And even the darker recollections were tempered with a sort of nostalgia.

So if you read this book, and if you plan to have children, especially should they turn out to be daughters, you probably should, let’s pledge, together, to institute the sort of rituals of coming of age that will let our future adults come into that stage of life with poise, knowledge, and a mutual respect.

Are you in?