Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher

trained to be less than who they really are. They are trained to be what the culture wants of its young women, not what they themselves want to become.
    America today is a girl-destroying place. Everywhere girls are encouraged to sacrifice their true selves. Their parents may fight to protect them, but their parents have limited power. Many girls lose contact with their true selves, and when they do, they become extraordinarily vulnerable to a culture that is all too happy to use them for its purposes.
    Alice Miller said, “It is what we cannot see that makes us sick.” It’s important for girls to explore the impact the culture has on their growth and development. They all benefit from, to use on old-fashioned term, consciousness-raising. Once girls understand the effects of the culture on their lives, they can fight back. They learn that they have conscious choices to make and ultimate responsibility for those choices. Intelligent resistance keeps the true self alive.

Chapter 3
    DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES—“I’M NOT WAVING, I’M DROWNING”

CHARLOTTE (15)
    Rain drummed on the office windows and rolled down the casings as Rob and Sue, looking weary, talked about their daughter. Charlotte was fifteen, but looked much older in her heavy makeup and tight dress. Her face had a hardness that I hate to see in anyone, especially in someone so young.
    Sue thought that Charlotte’s problems went back to her divorce, which had occurred when Charlotte was three. Charlotte hadn’t missed her father, who was an abusive alcoholic, but she had missed Sue, who immediately began a full-time job at a Quick Stop. Sue looked at her nicotine-stained fingers and said, “After the divorce, I had less of everything—time, money, patience. I think that hurt Charlotte.”
    As Sue talked, Charlotte sat stiffly, her mouth a tight, thin line.
    Rob changed the subject. “Sue and I met at a singles group and dated for ten months. We got married when Charlotte was eight. She was our flower girl. Really a cute kid.”
    “Charlotte was okay till junior high, but then things started going wrong fast,” Sue said. “She developed an attitude. She started smoking and dressing like a slut. She slipped out to drink with older kids.”
    “She’s not the only one in trouble,” Rob said. “Three of her friends have babies. Our town has one thousand people and three liquor stores. Kids have nothing to do but get into trouble.”
    Sue added, “We haven’t been great supervisors. Rob commutes to manage a Safeway, and I run the Quick Stop at home.”
    Charlotte was in about every kind of trouble an adolescent girl could be in. She was flunking ninth grade. She smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey and used pot. She had an older boyfriend. She barely spoke to her parents and had tantrums when they tried to keep her safe. A month ago, when they insisted on a drug and alcohol evaluation, Charlotte ran away from home.
    For three weeks Rob and Sue worried that she’d been kidnapped or killed. Sue said, “You don’t know what fear is until you have a daughter hitchhiking around the country.” Then Charlotte called from Seattle to say she wanted to come home. She sounded frightened and promised to do whatever her parents wanted. They called for a therapy appointment.
    I asked Charlotte if she was willing to work with me for a while. She shrugged elaborately, feigning exasperation. But over the next few months Charlotte and I figured a few things out. She really had been okay in elementary school. She had played ball every summer until the town’s insurance was canceled and Little League was discontinued. She liked hanging out at the Quick Stop, drinking root beer and reading the magazines. She was happy when Rob became her dad. He took her camping and bought her a new bike. He made her mom laugh.
    But adolescence changed everything. First it was the ordinary stuff: fights with girls and teasing by the boys. Her breasts developed early and boys were always