Reviving Ophelia
by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.

List Price: $14.00
Pages: 306
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0345392825
Publisher: Ballantine

A Conversation with Mary Pipher, Ph.D

Q: Why did you choose the title REVIVING OPHELIA?

A: The story of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet shows the destructive forces that affect young women. As a young girl Ophelia is happy and free, but with adolescence she loses herself. When she falls in love with Hamlet, she lives only for his approval. She has no inner direction; rather, she struggles to meet the demands of Hamlet and her father. Her value is determined utterly by their approval. Ophelia is torn apart by her efforts to please. When Hamlet spurns her because she is an obedient daughter, she goes mad with grief. Dressed in elegant clothes that weigh her down, she drowns in a stream filled with flowers.

Q: What happens to girls in early adolescence?

A: Many confident, well-adjusted girls are transformed into sad and angry failures. In early adolescence, studies show that 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. They report great unhappiness with their own bodies. Girls know they are losing themselves. One girl said, "Everything good in me died in junior high."


Q: Is adolescence the most critical time in the development of teenage girls?

A: Adolescence is the most formative time in the lives of women. All kinds of development--physical, emotional, intellectual, academic, social, and spiritual--are happening at once. Girls are making choices that will preserve their true selves or install future true selves. These choices have many implications for the rest of their lives. Teenage girls need loving parents, decent values, useful information, friends, physical safety, freedom to move about independently, respect for their own uniqueness, and encouragement to grow into productive adults. Even so, they will all still feel pain and confusion. All are aware of the suffering of friends, of the pressure to be beautiful, and of the danger of being female. All are pressured to sacrifice their wholeness in order to be loved. Like Ophelia, all are in danger of drowning.

Q: How does American culture contribute to the pressure placed on our young girls?

A: America today is a girl-destroying place. Everywhere girls are encouraged to sacrifice their true selves. There are many different experiences that cause girls to relinquish their true selves. In early adolescence, girls learn how important appearance is in defining social acceptability. The media preaches the message "Don't worry about feeling good or being good--worry about looking good." Also, girls come of age in a misogynistic culture in which men have most of the political and economic power, and girls sense their lack of power.

Q: How do most girls react to societal pressures, and how should they respond?

A: Girls have four general ways in which they can react to the cultural pressures to abandon the self. They can conform, withdraw, be depressed, or get angry. The best way for girls to productively fight back is for them to explore and begin to understand the effects of American culture on their lives. Intelligent resistance keeps the true self alive.

Q: Why do so many girls hate their parents and pull away from their families during adolescence?

A: Just when girls most need the guidance of their parents, our culture sends them the message that they are to distance themselves from their families. Girls pull away from those people who love them the most and who are fighting the hardest to save their true selves. Americans believe adolescence is the time when children emotionally separate from their parents. This distancing creates a great deal of tension in families. Parents set limits to keep their daughters safe, while daughters talk about their rights and resent what they see as their parents' efforts to keep them young. The messages of the mass culture pit girls against their parents and against their own good judgment. Girls fight with parents who try to protect them and they hurt themselves proving they are adults. Families of adolescent girls struggle to find a balance between security and freedom, conformity to family values and autonomy. Finding that balance is not easy.

Q: Why is divorce particularly hard on adolescent girls?

A: When their families break apart, teenage girls have too much coming at them too fast. Girls deal with this situation in various ways. Some get depressed and hurt themselves, either with suicide attempts or more slowly with alcohol and drugs. Some withdraw and sink deep within themselves to nurse their wounds. Many react by rebelling. One of the things that helps saplings survive the hurricane is the root system. With divorce, the root system splits apart. Girls are oftentimes unsupported, at least temporarily. They face the strong winds without the support of a home base, and they are at risk of blowing over.

Q: So many teenage girls experience forms of depression. What are the signs of depression and what are the causes?

A: Depression makes some young women sluggish and apathetic, others angry and hate-filled. Some girls manifest their depression by starving themselves or carving on their bodies. Some withdraw and some swallow pills. Others drink heavily or are promiscuous. Whatever the outward form of depression, the inward form is the grieving for the lost self, the authentic girl who has disappeared with adolescence; there's been a death in the family. Some may destroy their true selves in an effort to be socially acceptable. Others strive to be fully feminine and fail. They aren't pretty enough or popular enough in just the right ways at the right times. Some girls are depressed because they have lost their warm, open relationship with their parents. All girls experience pain at this point in their development. If that pain is blamed on themselves, on their own families, it manifests itself as depression.

Q: The most severe symptom of depression is suicide. How serious a problem is it for American girls?

A: The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reports that the suicide rate among children age 10 to 14 doubled from 1979 to 1996. Adolescence is a time when development and culture put enormous stress on girls. So many things are happening at once that it's hard to label and sort experiences into neat little boxes. And there are many casualties. For example, a girl who is suffering from a mild case of adolescent misery may try to kill herself, not because her life as a totality is so painful, but because she is impulsive, reactive, and unable to put small setbacks in perspective. Some girls are suicidal because of biochemical factors, some because of trauma, and others because of the confusion and difficulty of the times. Obviously they need different kinds of attention, but all are potentially dangerous to themselves and must be taken seriously.

Q: We don't hear as much about eating disorders as we used to. Is it still such a dangerous problem for young women in our country?

A: There's been an explosion of girls with eating disorders. Studies report that on any given day in America, half our teenage girls are dieting and that one in five young women has an eating disorder. Eight million women have eating disorders in America.

Q: What can be done to help solve the serious problem of drug and alcohol abuse among teen girls?

A: Our culture needs to change. For many adolescents, smoking and drinking stand for rebellion and maturity. The media contributes to this illusion, linking sophistication with self-destructive, unrestrained behavior, not prudent, thoughtful behavior. The junk values of our mass culture socialize girls to expect happiness and regard pain as unusual. American culture places enormous emphasis on the gratification of every need. As a society we have developed a "feel good" mentality. We should teach our children new ways to relax, to enjoy life, and to cope with stress.

Q: For adolescent girls, sex has always been a difficult issue, but why is sexuality so complicated and dangerous for girls now?

A: The development of healthy sexuality is fraught with peril. Our culture is deeply split about sexuality. We raise our daughters to value themselves as whole people, and the media reduces them to bodies. For example, sex is the most precious gift a person can give, and it's the best way to sell suntan lotion. Sex is associated with freedom, adulthood, and sophistication. The movies make sexual encounters look exciting and fun. But girls are scared of many things. They are worried that they will be judged harshly for their bodies and lack of experience. They are worried about getting caught by their parents or going to Hell. They fear pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. They worry about getting a bad reputation, being rejected, and pleasing their partners. More than half of all young women ages 15 to 19 have had sex, nearly double the rates of 1970.

Q: How can girls hold on to their true selves?

A: In order to keep their true selves, girls need love from family and friends, meaningful work, respect, challenges, and physical and psychological safety. They need identities based on talents and interests rather than appearances, popularity, and sexuality. They need good habits for coping with stress, self-nurturing skills, and a sense of purpose and perspective. They need quiet places and times, and they need to feel they are a part of something larger than themselves.

Q: How can our culture change to help our daughters?

A: Long-term plans for helping adolescent girls involve deep-seated and complicated cultural changes--rebuilding a sense of community in our neighborhoods, fighting addictions, changing our schools, promoting gender equality, and curtailing violence. The best "fence at the top of the hill" is a culture in which there is the structure and security of the fifties and the tolerance for diversity and autonomy of the nineties. Then our daughters could grow and develop slowly and peacefully into whole, authentic people.

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