Rating: 
Summary: Reviving Ophelia: A wake up call
Review: Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher is a wakeup call to the millions of people that are contributing to the deterioration of the teenage girl. Reviving Ophelia should definitely be read by every single young female and their parents. In fact, any person who cares about a teenage girl should read this novel. Reviving Ophelia is a book that describes the obstacles that young females are faced with today. Pipher explains why so many young girls have eating disorders. Pipher also focuses on why our culture is not a healthy environment for young females. For instance, there is too much stress on being pretty, skinny, and perfect. Young girls are overwhelmed by this pressure and are therefore, developing into someone who they are not. Pipher uses various scenerios to display how perfectly healthy female children develop into disturbed, unhealthy adolescence. Pipher does an excellent job and truly cares about helping the numbers of teenage girls that are suffering.
Rating: 
Summary: no no no
Review: The issues addressed in this book are not universal to adolescent girls; they occur mostly among upper middle class white teenagers in the suburbs. Girls in these communities are adept at manipulation and appearing the good girl, good student, good friend. Instead of confronting problems, they tiptoe around them. Instead of telling another girl that she is angry or upset with her, these girls will resort to cattiness, back-stabbing, and cruel rumour-spreading. Feminism has not empowered these young women. Now girls are encouraged to be more secure in their sexuality, but this is a farce. This sexual aggression is not from actual lust or self-confidence, but from a need to feel attractive and look cool to her friends. Eating disorders and depression come from this dysfunctional atmosphere. Women who learn social skills in this type of community are inevitably immature and as they grow will probably raise children as dysfunctional as they are. Grim exaggeration? No. I grew up in this atmosphere and understand it better than any spectator or theorist whose opinions are derived from mere hear-say.
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Summary: We are not helpless saplings
Review: This book in not an eyeopener. Pipher is simply stating the obvious, over and over again. It does not take a Ph.D to realize that society harms girls like myself. She also portray us to be helpless victims floundering in a misogynistic (a word she throw around too freely) culture. As a psychologist, doesn't she realize that depression cannot be blamed on the world? It is a chemical imbalance of the brain, proven to be severely intensified by changing hormones. She generalizes, stereotypes (the rich girl, the poor girl, the anorexic girl, the smart girl), and does not seem to see her clients as individuals. As a teenage girl, I was not impressed. I am not a sapling in the wind, I am something far more resilient and righteous. If you want to read about the way adolescent girls feel and are, why don't you ask one, instead of hearing a story filtered through the mouth of someone intent of saving "saplings."
Rating: 
Summary: An important look at societal pressures on adolescent girls
Review: This book is a much-needed first step in looking at the effects of modern society on young girls. Why do I call it a first step? While it is a very insightful book, the sample of girls Dr. Pipher includes is not large enough or diverse enough. Throughout the book, there is a general lack of attention to girls of color - African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans, etc. The statements Pipher makes in her book are very, very important, but for the most part they take into consideration only the experiences of white girls. Societal pressures take different forms for girls of varied ethnic backgrounds, and these differences need to be acknowledged in order to conceptualize modern American culture. Nevertheless, "Reviving Ophelia" is a book I would highly recommend, and not only to adolescent girls and their parents. All of American society, and Western society in general, needs to be made aware of what it is doing to its female youth. Adolescent boys, too, should read this, as well as adults that do not have children. These people, too, send messages to our young women, and therefore need to become conscious of what the effects of those messages are. Dr. Pipher uses the stories of her own clients to paint a vivid picture of the environment our young girls live in, and it's not a pretty one.
Rating:
Summary: Start asking questions...
Review: This book is not to provide the parents of teenage girls with all the answers. Instead, it's a call to all of us to open our eyes to the pressures and concerns of our teenage daughters (and sons, for that matter) and start asking the questions. It is arrogant and dangerous to assume that our own daughters will escape unharmed from this difficult time. I was especially surprised while reading this book how my own adolescent "challenges" came back to me. As I look back on my life, it's amazing how many important, pivotal moments occurred during the fog of my teenage years. It has given me renewed passion to do all that I can to be supportive, understanding and available for my children. I recommend this book to anyone who isn't afraid to look back at their life and look forward to our future. Ask the questions...
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite as good as it could have been
Review: This is an important book. It's a book teenagers should read, it's especially a book their parents should read, and it's a book educators, politicians, publishers and artists should read. So why do I only give it three stars? For a book this celebrated, it is just far too narrow. Yes, we do live in a look-obsessed, sexist, girl-poisoning culture. Yes, it is extremely damaging and harmful to women, and can plausibly be linked to eating disorders, self-mutilation, and depression, as well as to violence and sexual abuse. Yes, we should be worried, and educate ourselves and others. But this book answers the question of why American girls are falling prey to depression, eating disorders and suicide at such alarming rates with only one answer, when the real answer is undoubtably a complex mixture of causes. In her anxiety to take the blame off the parents, the author doesn't have much to say about all the cases where the parents ARE even partly to blame for their teenagers depression. Hundreds of thousands of teenagers live with abusive home situations. Others suffer from clinical depressions which although they might be triggered in part by environment, can not be entirely explained by them and may need medical treatment; others suffer from appalling poverty, or racism, or other problems we don't see addressed. I wish this book were more comprehensive. I wish it included other teenage voices, to give a more complete picture. The voices it shares with us are ones which need to be heard - but they are far from being the only ones, and I finished this book with the feeling that they had drowned certain other voices out.
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Summary: Does Ophelia NEED to be revived?
Review: This is the stupidest book I have ever read- including Dr. Seuss! I think that Mary Pipher has some childhood issues that need to be worked out, because she stereotypes girls at a certian age as being something they usually aren't. I really can't say that it was worth the time I spent reading it.
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Summary: An excellent Primer
Review: Though the simplicity of this book means it is of little use in serious research, I've found that it is an excellent tool for helping non-psychologists to see the dominance of patriarchal representation and the methods by which it constructs the female self.
I especially recommend it to busy parents with young girls, as its insights might prove useful when trying to save children from having their identities molded by less than sympathetic cultural forces.
I must repeat however, this book is clearly written for those unfamiliar with the complexities of professional psychology, and should not be considered the definitive source of information on this topic.
Rating:
Summary: HS isn't the same as when we were kids
Review: You must read this to truly understand today's adolescent girls. Pipher respects her clients and doesn't blame the parents. She gave me hope and positive solutions to try. Her case studies are heart wrenching but need to be told.
Rating:
Summary: HS isn't the same as when we were kids
Review: You must read this to truly understand today's adolescent girls. Pipher respects her clients and doesn't blame the parents. She gave me hope and positive solutions to try. Her case studies are heart wrenching but need to be told.
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