Reviving Ophelia takes personal stories of girls and connects them to larger cultural issues. While written in the mid-nineties, and a little out of date in places, for the most part Dr. Pipher still delivers sound advice, often sharing tidbits about herself along the way. Pipher is a child of the 1950s, and even though the writing is over thirty years old, her stories still hold up. Who hasn’t been “untrue” to themselves, lying about their level of hunger, downplaying grades, pretending to like a style of music or fashion to impress someone else? Peggy Orenstein addresses eating disorders in Schoolgirls in much the same way as Pipher. At times, the stories of girls with overwhelming desires to be thin were so similar I would forget which book, Pipher or Orenstein, I was reading. Reviving Ophelia is different from Schoolgirls in that Pipher is drawing from actual therapy sessions while Orenstein visited two different middle schools and interviewed children in a different atmosphere. ( )

I highly recommend it to teachers and mothers of girls. ( )

The trouble with reading a book like this, written over 20 years ago, is that you start wondering how things have changed. Has it gotten better for girls since then? Or even worse? I still would have liked a daughter. ( )

very interesting information about what teenage girls are going through these days. ( )

Read this while I was in college because it interested me (it wasn't assigned). Pipher provides answers to the mysterious (ridiculous) behavior of adolescent girls. Having been the most awful adolescent--a curse to a hopeful mother--I was definitely curious. If only my mother could have read this back then! This book explains it all; mostly the affect our society has on developing young girls. It seems I was destined to suffer from depression, low self-esteem, an eating disorder, and a toxic relationship with my mother (not her fault!) Pipher helps adolescents and their baffled, suffering mothers understand their problems, behaviors, and motivations. I recommend this book to this group as well as grown women who are interested in women's issues.
This particular copy has been lent to friend's aunt, who read it during a time of crisis with her own teenage daughter. (It helped, she says). She left it in the rain, which explains its appropriately warped body-- ( )