Don't Call Me Princess Quotes

“Maybe learning to live with the question marks, recognizing that closure does not always occur, is all I really needed to do.
I hadn't expected, coming from a world that fights to see life's beginnings in black and white, to be so comforted by a shade of gray.
The notion of the water child made sense to me. What I had experienced was not a full life, nor was it a full death, but it was a real loss.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“Young women today are sold the idea that sexiness is the same as sexuality, that being desirable is more important than understanding their own desires.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“The idea that there could be one solution to breast cancer- screening, early detection, some universal cure- is certainly appealing. All of us, those who fear the disease, those who live with it, our friends and families, the corporations who swath themselves in pink, wish it were true. Wearing a bracelet, sporting a ribbon, running a race, or buying a pink blender expresses our hopes and that feels good - even virtuous. But making a difference is more complicated than that.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“Whereas discussion of male puberty includes the emergence of a near unstoppable sex drive, female puberty is defined by periods and the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. When do we talk to girls about desire and pleasure?”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“The stay-at-home mom is just as vulnerable as the working mom”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“We are learning to support girls as they 'lean in' educationally and professionally, yet in this most personal of realms, we allow them to topple.
It's almost as if parents believe that if they don't tell their daughters that sex should feel good, they won't find out. And perhaps that's correct, they don't. Not easily anyway. But the outcome is hardly what adults could've hoped.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“The statistics on sexual assault may have forced a national dialogue on consent but honest conversations between adults and teenagers about what happens after 'yes', discussions about ethics, respect, decision making, sensuality, reciprocity, relationship building, the ability to assert desires and set limits remain rare. And while we are more often telling children that both parties must agree unequivocally to a sexual encounter, we still tend to avoid the biggest taboo of all; women's capacity for, and entitlement to, sexual pleasure.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“A researcher at the university of michigan found that, when asked to talk about good sex, college men are more likely than women to talk about pleasure while the women are more likely to use their partner's satisfaction to measure their own.

It's not suprising that young women feel powerful when they feel 'hot'. It's presented to them over and over as a precondition to success. But the truth is that 'hot' tells girls that appearing sexually confident is more important than actually being confident. And because of that, as often as not, the confidence that hot confers comes off with their clothes.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“From the smoothness of their skin, the length of their hemlines, the banality of their song lyrics and sitcom plots, these young stars embody an ideal of teenage innocence that adults are grateful to embrace. For as many seasons as the illusion can be maintained they remain, at least on screen, uncomplicated, untroubled good girls on the verge of, but never actually awakening to, their sexuality.
There is a lot of money to be made and a lot of parental anxiety to be tapped by walking that line.
There is also a lot of fury unleashed at those who step across it. When young stars pose semi-nude or get caught drinking they threaten the notion that our own daughter's coming of age could be effortless. Suddenly the role models, who perpetuated that myth, become the vector of our fears. The betrayal feels personal and cuts deep.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life

“girls enjoy torturing, decapitating, and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“What gets to you is the everyday ignorance,”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“All these hours and chatting and things like that don’t make the science better.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“Rihanna! We’ll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“The minimum I ask for my footwear: to be able to dance in it and that it not get me murdered”);”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“It was fuckups within fuckups.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“housework is bullshit,”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life

“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Don't call me princess: essays on girls, women, sex, and life