Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Sex & sexuality, social aspects

GIRL LAND

Caitlin Flanagan

Boys. Other girls. Dating. Diaries. Sex. For most girls, one hundred years ago or today, these are the signposts along the road that leads from childhood to adulthood, in the territory Caitlin Flanagan calls Girl Land.

At once a lively social history, a sympathetic consideration of the tumult of every girl's teenage years, and a rousing reminder to parents to protect their dauthers, this is a sparkling and incisive look at just what girls have gained and lost, and how these changes shape the women they will become.

Available products
Book Published 2012-01-01 by Regan Arthur Book
Book Published 2012-01-01 by Regan Arthur Book

Comments

"the focus of her new essay collection, GIRL LAND, Flanagan is not anti-feminist, or controversial. In fact, her methods and attitudes come straight out of the women's studies classes I took at college in the late '70s, and her outrage on behalf of girls coming of age in the "Brush Your Teeth With a Bottle of Jack" era will feel just right to most women in our age group."

"Flanagan's most concentrated historical effort occurs in the chapter about dating, which is the book's best. She pulls telling quotes from novels aimed at adolescent girls and presents us with delightful primary sources, like a mid-century ad for Baltimore's 'Twixteen Shop' She also culls decades' worth of dating guidebooks, parsing them for now-obsolete conventions, and concluding that most perform the rhetorical feat of disguising "quiet safety mechanisms" as points of etiquette."

The Atlantic cites GIRL LAND by Caitlin Flanagan on a piece analyzing “Hook-up Culture” in colleges and universities. Read more...

"Flanagan dissects the harrowing world of female adolescence in her second book GIRL LAND Weaving her own recollections of adolescence with on-the-ground research and history, Flanagan's portrait of this transitional period in a girl's life is a fascinating study of how society itself has changed and not always for the better."

"GIRL LAND offers a history of, and guide to, parenting girls (though the author is quick to admit that she herself has only sons). Part social critique, part memoir, and, like Flanagan, a little contrarian, GIRL LAND is both a moving account of what it means for girls to leave childhood behind, and a chiding of society for not providing a more positive environment through which to make the transition."