Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407240011
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY LUCY LEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some things never change. And one of them is the female propensity to let others control their lives. Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist, addresses this problem in her compelling account of adolescent girls and the culture which shapes their development.
She likens their lack of inner direction to Shakespeare's Ophelia, who lived only for Hamlet's and her father's approval. When Hamlet spurned her, Ophelia drowned herself.
Pipher believes that adolescent girls are still in danger of drowning. "Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves." Adolescent girls' "IQ scores drop and their math and science scores plummet. They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic, and `tomboyish' personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed."
In her private practice in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pipher quickly realized that her own 1960s adolescent experience was not helpful in understanding today's girls. Their vastly different world includes realities never dreamed of by their parents' generation. She counsels girls who mutilate/cut themselves, contract herpes or genital warts, use drugs and alcohol, develop eating disorders, run away from home and/or commit suicide.
"Reviving Ophelia" is Pipher's attempt to understand why these girls' lives are so fraught with pain, despair and self-destruction. Her answer, in short, is that they come of age in a "girl-poisoning culture." She cites music, TV, movies, and sexist advertising as the chief purveyors of negative cultural values. Bombarded with unrealistic, but convincing, messages about how they should act and look, it is easy for girls to lose contact with their true selves.
"They become extraordinarily vulnerable to a culture that is all too happy to use them for its purposes."
Reforming the culture is no small task, but it is, says Pipher, what must be done. Her dual background in anthropology and psychology makes for unusually sharp insight into this problem. Remedies must include: changing the way women are portrayed in the media; rethinking values so adulthood is not synonymous with sex, drugs, and money; disassociating sex with violence, power, and status; strengthening family ties; and teaching such skills as centering, how to distinguish between thinking and feeling, making conscious choices, managing pain, and becoming other-oriented.
Pipher believes the ideal is "a culture in which there is the structure and security of the fifties and the tolerance for diversity and autonomy of the 1990s."
The bulk of the book consists of case histories which illustrate larger cultural problems - divorce, eating disorders, depression, sex and violence, drugs and alcohol. It is a good format for discussing girls' development since it allows Pipher to examine "the intersection of the personal and political." Pipher's clear, concise and straightforward writing style makes "Reviving Ophelia" an easy read, despite the heavy subject matter. She is obviously an insightful and caring therapist, and her frequent references to feminist and literary works reveal a broad-based understanding of what girls' and women's lives are really about. She tells us, "This book is an attempt to share my thinking with parents, educators, health and mental-health professionals, policymakers and anyone else who works for and with girls. It's also for girls."
If this vast audience takes advantage of Pipher's thinking, perhaps some things will begin to change. Let's hope so. The "selves" of adolescent girls is a natural resource we can't afford to lose.
- Lucy Lee reads and writes about girls and women.
by CNB