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Summary: Reviving Ophelia Chenged My life
Review: I read Reviving Ophelia for the first time when I was a junior in High school. It was a book that was passed around from student to teacher to parent. It had such an impact on all of us. The stories helped me and my friends relate to what was happening not only in our lives, but in each other's as well. I had many friends battling eating disorders, abuse, etc. I was feeling depressed about myself for some time as well. Magazines and tv shows seemed to be portraying the "perfect" woman that we all needed to be. The truth is we're trying to be an ideal that someone made up. Growing up was hard. I am now 21 and getting ready to graduate college. I learned a lot from this book about the things around me that are affecting my outlook on life and myself. I'm not the only one that has tough problems to deal with in life. This book helped me to realize this and I recommend it to every mother and teenager. I'm going to read it again and make sure my daughters read it. It'll change your view of the world and yourself!
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Summary: Reviving Ophelia
Review: I found this book very helpful in understanding and relating to the teenage girls, specifically, my daughter. Although some of the scenarios may not apply to a person's particular situation, it definitely provided many scenarios that can be similar to one's situation. I don't feel that the author's view is "skewed" by her profession, I found her to be right on target. Only a female can agree here. I feel the media DEFINITELY plays a large role in causing damage to not only females, but males as well. Parents can only do so much and after a certain point much is out of their control. The television, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboard advertisements, how can a parent control all that? It is not easy to blame the media, it is accurate. I highly recommend this book to parents with teenage girls.It will help with your own child as well as her friends. Things you might not have noticed, or that you did not realize important, will now make sense to you and help your relationship with your child through some very tough years.
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Summary: Blame the Media
Review: It is easy to blame the media for the problems of adolescent girls; it removes the blame from parents making the book palatable to readers and demonizes an already nefarious industry. I think it is too simple to blame the media for adolescent problems.There are chapters on what it means to be a good Mother or Father in the book; the obvious conclusion is that parenting has something to do with the outcome of children. The book clearly blames the media for the woes of teens, and I don't think it is fair to say that girls are little more than robots consuming the likes of Cosmopolitan and MTV and becoming broken in the process. The book is written by a therapist and may be a well rounded point of view from that perspective, but to generalize that her clients are like all other teenage girls is ludicrous. There is a real shortage of objective data in this book and I believe that the author's view is skewed by her profession. Reading this book you might think that over 50% of girls have an eating disorder, whereas, I believe, the real number is closer to 10%.
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Summary: It's all about your perspective
Review: I've read a lot of reviews here by teenage girls who totally panned this book because they couldn't relate to the girls in the case studies or to Mary Pipher's observations about adolescent girls in general. I think it's great that there are so many teenage girls out there who feel so confident about themselves! But I would recommend you coming back to "Ophelia" several years down the road, once you are well out of your teenage years. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and you may find that you recognize more of these girls than you initally thought. When I was in high school, I would have described myself as basically happy, with pretty normal friends. Now that I'm 25, I can see how unhappy and insecure I really was. And while you don't recongnize any of these problems in your friends, watch out! I guarantee that there are things you don't know about your friends. Years later I learned how many of my friends had eating disorders, depression, bad self esteem, and these were not girls you would have thought ever had problems like that. One of my friends told me years later how she used to cry uncontrollably every morning because she was so depressed, but she always showed up to school looking happy every day. And she's definitely right on target with her eating disorder observations; almost every female friend of mine has some degree of eating disorder or distorted body image, and I am not exaggerating at all! (Of course, part of that could be the New York City 20something culture where thinness reigns supreme). Obviously I loved this book and have read and reread parts of it over and over.
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Summary: Book review
Review: I am a college student majoring in education and I read this book for a class. I really enjoyed Mary Pipher's book. She was right on target with the title "Reviving Ophelia". I would advise all future educators to read this book if you plan to teach young adolescent girls. I am twenty-one years old and it wasn't that long ago whan I was in school experiencing a lot of the same things that some of the girls featured in the book experienced. It has been very helpful for me to be able to understand myself and now realize that I wasn't alone.
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Summary: Rosemary for Remembrance
Review: A recent college graduate, I am not so far away from adolescence as I would like to think! I was motivated to read this book after writing an extensive journal entry on my standard-yet-traumatic adolescence (a time which I have worked to forget!). I now understand my own adolescence more than I ever did before. I have come to terms with issues in my own life, as well as recognizing the phenomenal job my parents did in raising me. I have identified potential areas to watch for in my own (future) daughters. I have been instilled with the desire to positively impact adolescent girls in any way I can now -- whether that be through babysitting, teaching, or just treating them with respect when they show up at the store in which I work. I am grateful to Pipher for her interest in this subject, and the sensitivity which she exhibited in dealing with the clients who illuminate the pages of the book. I was moved to anger for the injustices our daughters are forced to endure, and fought back tears at the lack of love that many of them experience. I was made aware of situations that I was not previously aware of: persistent yet quiet misogyny in the classroom, the self-detachment many girls undergo in order to be socially acceptable, and the simple persistence of terrible attitudes regarding sex & sexuality in our junior highs (and I was IN junior high in the early nineties!). I was reminded of cultural situations which HAVE bothered me: lookism, sexism, physical/emotional/sexual abuse. Mostly, I have been moved from a state of defeated, dispassionate indifference to an inferno of anger against society's "junk values". Please, if you deal with adolescent girls, read this book. It may save their lives.
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Summary: Reviving Ophelia:Saving the Selves fo Adolescent Girls
Review: I am a student majoring in education at Macon State College and I read Reviving Ophelia for a class. I found this book extremely interesting and easy to read. Reviving Ophelia reminded me of some of the struggles I faced while I was an adolescent, such as the constant pressure to be thin and to measure up with what the media considers attractive. The case studies in each chapter were particularly helpful in personalizing the issues that were presented. I believe Reviving Ophelia will be an extremely useful resource in my career because I plan on teaching middle school. This book has made me more aware and sensitive to the daily struggles adolescent girls face. I would highly recommend Reviving Ophelia to anyone who wants to help adolescent girls during this difficult time.
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Summary: Those of us that are raising daughters
Review: I have a daughter that is four years old and I am expecting another child in July. I have to admit that I hope it is a boy after reading this book. I was required to read this for my education class. I choose it for obvious reasons. It was very eye-opening for me. Pipher tells us story after story of young girls and their endured trials and tribulations of adolescence. I feel powerless in a way for my daughter now. Pipher gave many positive examples of support systems that we can create for young girls, but the truth to me is that no matter what kind of parents we are, our culture is going to grab our girls and put them on a roller coaster that we can not barely stop. What a great book! I will not be sitting in the background in awe of the turbulents!
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Summary: Reviving Salome
Review: While I was glad that Pipher "uncovered" the dark world that a lot of teenage girls live in: sex, self mutilation, okay... I agree with Wendy Shalit's critisism in "Return to Modesty". Pipher remains clueless as to what's really going on. To her, these girls are pathetic Ophelia figures that are suicidal victims of some sexual drama that is happening outside themselves. They just need to snap out of it and get some confidence in their own sexuality. I was discussing the JonBonet case with a friend recently, and the idea that mothers often push sensuality on their daughters. The images alone of Jon Bonet all made up are shocking and sick. It's like this little girl was killed off before she was murdered. Well, it struck me that all of us girls in this generation (born after mid 1960's) are pushed towards sensuality by other WOMEN. These "mother figures" can be psychologists like Pipher, our professors, magazine advice columnists, whoever. Anyway, the idea is that we are supposed to boldly live the dreams of sexual equality that the women of the past have constructed. I cant help thinking that this less like the drama of Hamlet's Ophelia and more like Salome. You know Salome: the young girl that asked Harod for the head of St John the Baptist. Salome's mother is so angry about having her sexual sins revealed that she wants St John silenced in the most morbid way. So she encourages her daughter to perform an erotic dance to seduce Harod into a horrible act of violence. The girl now becomes a participant, not an innocent victim, in the drama. All so the sins of the mother can continue without the judgment of the Saint. I think Salome dies from a sort of decapitation, a violent separation from her own body, when her mother offers her up to the Male Tyrant (Harod, the baby-killer). Someone should write a book called, "Reviving Salome". Maybe Wendy Shalit's "Return to Modesty" is that book.
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Summary: The Quest for the Teens
Review: This book is so good, and specialy for girls who happend to feel that they are loosing themselves in this caothic world of demandin female rols. A great book for our "little girls" , either the real ones and the one inside every woman yong or older. It is a very interesting approach, with great vocabulary and fantastic examples from the real life and the real girls. This makes the book became a "cookie" -you want to eat it as fast as you can-, due to the fact that when you star reading you cant stop. It is simply beautiful. Do not miss the opportunity to read this book. Angela.
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