Critical Review of “Reviving Ophelia”

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There is plenty of evidence available as to the fact that nowadays, teenage girls in America experience increasingly hard times while trying to adjust psychologically to the variety of existential pressures that are being directed at them by the system of education and by commercialized Media. Such state of affairs became possible in the early sixties when the notion of the “American dream” had transformed from serving as the synonym of liberty to serving as a synonym of blind pursuit of material enrichment as a “thing in itself”.

In other words, the deterioration of public morals, closely associated with the process of teenage girls beginning to experience “adult” psychological anxieties, had begun a long time ago. Therefore, we cannot refer to Mary Pipher’s book “Reviving Ophelia”, where the author explains the technicalities of this process; as such, that contains truly innovative ideas, in regards to the subject of discussion. Moreover, given Pipher’s affiliation with the political left, it would be naïve to think that the reading of “Reviving Ophelia” may provide parents with practical advice on how they may go about protecting their daughters’ psychological integrity, endangered by the realities of post-industrial living.

Pipher tends to confuse visible symptoms of existential well-being of teenage girls being continuously undermined, as time goes by, with the actual diagnosis as to why this is happening, in the first place. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to refer to “Reviving Ophelia” as a book filled with sophistically sounding but utterly meaningless ideas (the most characteristic trait of neo-Liberal educational literature), because the reading of it, does help us to recognize different aspects of counter-productive social pressure, which negatively affect young girls’ upbringing. In this paper, we will aim at outlining the main points of the author’s argumentation, while assessing them through the lenses of rationality.

Pipher’s book’s main idea can be defined as follows: media-created gender stereotyping is utterly sexist, which is why girls exposed to such stereotyping, are being gradually deprived of their sense of self-respect: “They (girls) are coming of age in a more dangerous, sexualized and media-saturated culture. They face incredible pressures to be beautiful and sophisticated, which in junior high means using chemicals and being sexual. As they navigate a more dangerous world, girls are less protected” (Pipher, p.12). In “Reviving Ophelia” the author comes up with numerous examples of teenage girls’ lives being shattered, as the result of their unhealthy preoccupation with “staying in shape”.

However, while agreeing with Pipher’s argument that young girls’ tendency to think of gender-centered mass culture in rather an uncritical manner causes them a great deal of harm, we cannot agree with the book’s implicitly expressed idea that girls strive to look beautiful is something “sexist” and therefore “unnatural”. According to Pipher, it is namely the commercialized notions of American mass culture, which instill teenage girls with a hypertrophied sense of sexuality, while in fact; it is these girls’ physiology that often does the trick. In “Reviving Ophelia”, the author never ceases to discuss the evils of premature sex, without bothering to come up with a definition as to what the concept of “premature sex” stands for.

For example, Hispanic teenage girls often reach sexual maturity by the time they are 12 years old, whereas many White girls do not even begin experiencing sexual urges before they reach the age of 18-20. Given the fact that the dropout rate among Hispanic girls in high schools amounts to 45%, we can safely suggest that the factor of sexual maturity plays a very important role, within the context of defining Hispanic girls’ social attitudes. It is needless to say, of course, that in her book, Pipher does not even mention the fact that the notions of racial affiliation and sexual maturity derive out of each other, simply because being a typical Liberal “leftie”, the author firmly believes that “race does not matter”, even while faced with the objective evidence that it does.

In her book “Babies: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent”, Meredith Small makes a perfectly good point, while suggesting that modern (neo-Liberal) theories of parenting simply ignore a variety of biological factors, which necessarily come into play, within a context of parents raising their children: “In fact, in parenting as in all human behaviors, the dictates of biology are often ignored, denied, or overridden for all sorts of social or cultural reasons” (Small, p. 25).

While criticizing Medias for encouraging young girls to perceive the surrounding reality through the lenses of female submissive sexuality, Pipher reveals her true colors as a psychologically unstable feminist, with an abundance of testosterone hormones in her blood, simply because of the influence of Media on girls’ existential psyche, could not possibly define their sexual drives, and the reason for this is very simple – these drives have absolutely nothing to do with “social environment”.

Moreover, while exposing the “evilness” of gender-centered mass culture, the author does not even try to rationalize the fact that the popularity of a particular media, directly depends on its owners’ willingness to utilize sexualized images, while forming this media’s informational content. Why do the covers of illustrated magazines almost necessarily display the images of semi-naked women? This is because the images of a naked female body never ceased to represent an objective aesthetic value, ever since the times of antiquity. These images can be “sexist” all they may, but since they objectively please men’s eyes, the chances for socio-political realities in Western countries to become “de-sexualized” appear as being rather slim.

In her book, the author positions herself as an unengaged observer, who is simply interested in helping “poor gals”. However, it is namely the promotion of the feminist agenda, which appears to concern Pipher the most, because she tends to oppose the representatives of both genders in terms of “oppressors” and “oppressed”: “By junior high girls sense their lack of power…They see mostly men are congressmen, principals, bankers, and corporate executives.

They notice that famous writers, musicians, and artists are mostly men” (Pipher, p. 41). It never even occurred to the author that psychologically normal women might not necessarily be willing to associate their chances of gaining social prominence with the concept of happiness. As Otto Weininger had suggested in his famous book “Sex and Character”: “The condition of sexual excitement is the supreme moment of a woman’s life. The woman is devoted wholly to sexual matters, that is to say, to the spheres of begetting and of reproduction. Her relations to her husband and children complete her life, whereas the male is something more than sexual” (Weininger Ch. 9).

As practice shows, it is actually, when women begin pursuing a professional career as fully independent individuals, which often results in these women succumbing to depression. As we have mentioned earlier, Hispanic girls become sexually mature at a comparatively young age. Is it necessarily a bad thing? The fact that even in the poorest Hispanic neighborhoods, merry Latino tunes are being played 24/7, and the fact that young Hispanic women, who have given birth to often as many as 5-6 kids by the time they reach their twenties, appear as being happy with their lives, suggests something opposite. On the other hand, many successful White women, who had made a point in not having children (bad for their career), seem to be filled with existential bitterness, which often sublimates in the form of feminist attitudes, on their part.

It is very ironic that, after having undermined the national integrity of this country, by shoving the doctrine of multiculturalism down citizens’ throats and by encouraging people to seek instant gratification, as such, that represents the very purpose of their lives; neo-Liberals like Pipher now shed crocodile tears over the fate of teenage girls in America. There can be no doubt that in recent years, the idea of female beauty had undergone a drastic transformation – nowadays, the fashion top models often look as if they had just been released from Auschwitz (unnaturally skinny).

But for this, Pipher would have to thank her spiritual affiliates – the hook-nosed “progressive” Media magnates, who are being just as committed to the promotion of “celebration of diversity” policy as the author herself. However, the young girls of even average intelligence would never believe that it is possible to lose 50 pounds, over a few weeks, as suggested by magazines that feature female “Auschwitz survivors” on their cover pages. Young girls that were born without genetically predetermined mental or physical inadequateness and who were raised in normal families, could not care less about “aggressive dieting”, advertised by fashion models as the pathway to happiness, simply because they are well aware of the power of their physical attractiveness and are not being affected by an inferiority complex.

In her book, Pipher rightly points out the fact that the percentage of teenage girls, suffering from obesity, has increased dramatically, during the last decade. However, the solution to this problem, offered by the author, can be referred to as anything but sensible: “Our daughters need time and protected places in which to grow and develop socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically. They need safe places where they can go to learn about themselves and others. They need places where they can take risks and make mistakes without fearing for their lives. They need to be valued for their personhood, not their bodies” (Pipher, p.230).

Of course, while providing readers with her “valuable” opinions on how teenage girls can be shielded from the “ugly realities”, Pipher does not specify what kind of “places” she has in mind, or how much taxpayers’ money should be wasted on hiring the hordes of psychologists, social workers, and councilors, who would be given a task of convincing fat teenage girls that it is their “personhood”, which represents an objective value, or that it is their physical unattractiveness which accounts for their “uniqueness”. Unfortunately, given the fact that Pipher’s suggestions as to what might help teenage girls deal with their life problems are based on the author’s wishful thinking, they can hardly be taken seriously. Men have always appreciated women primarily for their looks and this will continue to be the case into the indefinite future; no matter how “sexist” such men’s tendency might appear in the eyes of crazed feminists.

The chances of the Sun beginning to revolve around the Earth are much greater when compared to the chances of men beginning to be sexually attracted to women’s “personhood” rather than to their bodies. Pipher’s apparent inability to realize this simple fact significantly undermines the validity of her book’s conclusions. This is the reason why the reading of “Reviving Ophelia” by teenage girls might cause them more harm than good, simply because the author’s ideas about the essence of womanhood are metaphysically wrong, just as the overall conceptual premise of modern feminism is.

Bibliography

Pipher, M. 2001 “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. New York: Ballantine Books.

Small, M. 1999. “Babies, Ourselves: How biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent”. London: Anchor.

Weininger, Otto “Sex and Character”. [1906] 2001. The Absolute. Web.

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Critical Review of “Reviving Ophelia”

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