constraints they face as they leave childhood. Our society idealizes tall, dark and very skinny women. Thin is one thing, but “we” like skinny enough that it kills. I really like when Pipher uses the quote from Monica, a depressed fifteen year old, who had a hard time making friends because of her weight. “All five hundred boys want to go out with the same ten anorexic girls,” she pleaded. This kind of put some humor in a very serious matter. Television, movies, and magazines are at the root of glamorizing thinness and sexuality, and even encouraging the use of drugs. Our society also puts women on the back burner. Men are wonderful, powerful, and successful and women need to put sugar and crme in their coffee. Pipher attributes this attitude to the schools of adolescents. Schools treat girls and boys differently. Boys are twice as likely to be seen as role models, more likely to receive teachers attention, and more likely to speak up in class. Junior high school is when girls began to drop in their academics. This may be due to the fact that girls place being popular as a higher priority, or they might give up on their hopeless efforts at trying to gain the teacher’s approval. Pipher also believes that an adolescent girl’s thoughts and emotions effect their relationships and actions, and can be a cause of their problems. Girls’ emotional immaturity makes it hard for them to hold on to an identity of themselves as they often idealize characteristics of other girls. One thing that I noticed while reading “Reviving Ophelia” is that two girls can come from totally different backgrounds, be a part of different social cliques, and have an enormous gap between their intelligence but still have the confusion and anxiety of becoming a woman as a common bond. Girls during adolescents cannot think clearly; everything is a dramatic event. For example, a pimple can keep an eig...
