”The Girlie-Girl Industrial Complex”

Young women today are succeeding at geometric rates. The number of young women graduating from colleges, from law schools and graduate schools is far out stripping young men. Women are succeeding in a remarkable range of careers, including politics and corporate boardrooms, heretofore places built with the proverbial glass ceiling. Yet paralleling all of this is a culture that is encouraging young girls to wrap themselves up in the pink accouterments of ultra-girlie, princess culture and then to later enter a cultural of extreme sexualization. How can all of these facts be true at the same time? What’s happening they creates this apparent contradiction in the lives of young women? Journalist and best selling author Peggy Orenstein tries to put all of this in perspective in her new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. My conversation with Peggy Orenstein: