Reviving Girlhood with Mary Pipher & Sara Pipher Gilliam

Strong Feelings

When Mary Pipher first published Reviving Ophelia in 1994, she changed the way America thinks about teenage girls and their needs. Now she’s back with a new 25th anniversary edition of her landmark book—this time, published with her own daughter, Sara Pipher Gilliam.

From student debt to school shootings to climate change to digital culture, a lot has changed for teen girls in the past 25 years. But many things remain the same: body image issues, anxiety, sexual harassment and abuse. We sat down with Pipher (who you may remember from the spring, when she came on to discuss [women, friendship, and aging](link to ep)) and Gilliam to talk about what teen girls experience today, what it was like to write a book together, and why it matters so much for all of us that we change our “girl-poisoning culture.”

There’s a strange way in which girls today are never together and never alone. And so the primary building blocks of self—which is to be interacting face-to-face with other people and to be alone reflecting and developing one’s own inner strength—those aren’t occurring right now.
Mary Pipher, co-author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, 25th Anniversary Edition

We chat about:

• How the culture we remember as teen girls in the ‘90s is so very different for teens today
• Why depression among teen girls has gone up and down over the years, where it stands now, and what social media has to do with it
• How Sara Gilliam went from reading her mom’s book for teen authenticity 25 years ago to co-authoring the update with her as an adult
• The ways today’s teen girls helped update Reviving Ophelia for modern times
• How it’s too late for parents and teachers to simply tell teens to stop using smartphones, so it’s important to encourage intentionality around social media and device usage instead

Links:

• Reviving Ophelia 25th Anniversary Edition
• Mary Pipher
• Sara Pipher Gilliam

Plus:

• Why we simply had to get our driver’s licenses immediately
• Exploring the love/hate relationship we had with our early jobs
• Why you need to wear at least two hemp necklaces for school pictures
• Fuck yeah to naps and Netflix breaks during the day