I am a huge fan of the writing style of the Atlantic columnist Caitlin Flanagan and her latest book about the emotional geography of the female adolescent has me thinking alot about what it means to be a pastor and in time, perhaps, a parent.
Here’s a slice, that is typically muse-worthy:
But make no mistake: the mass media in which so many girls are immersed today does not mean them well; it is driven by a set of priorities largely created by men and largely devoted to the exploitation of girls and young women. Even a teenage girl who doesn’t seem particularly interested in the current culture is not safe from it, because the culture is interested in her. It encourages her to think of herself as a creature who lives to please men, to post revealing or undignified photographs of herself online, to develop a persona on Facebook and Twitter that is highly sexual. It wants her to live her private moments in public, to expose every aspect of her interior life for all to see, to dress and behave in ways that will draw the most heated reactions from boys and men. The question parts of girls must ask themselves is to what extent they want to raise them within a counterculture that rejects the commercialization of sexuality, the imperatives toward exhibitionism and crudeness. Creating a counterculture is hard work, but it can be done, and it is my strong belief that the young women who emerge from Girl Land having been protected from the current mainstream values are much stronger and more self-confident than those who have been immersed in it throughout their adolescences.
– Caitlin Flanagan, Girl Land, p. 182.
Your Correspondent, From hell’s heart he stabs at thee.