Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Orenstein is a journalist and the author of books including Boys & Sex, Girls & Sex, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Waiting for Daisy, Don’t Call Me Princess, Flux, and Schoolgirls. Her writing has appeared in major publications like The New York Times, AFAR, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. She is also a frequent guest on radio and television programs like NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS News Hour, and Good Morning America. She rose to fame with her TED Talk, “What Young Women Believe About Their Own Sexual Pleasure.”

Orenstein graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and began her career as an associate editor for Esquire. She was later the managing editor for Mother Jones. Orenstein has spent her career studying American kids, mostly young women in California, to explore truths and misconceptions about girlhood and gender politics. She writes about cultural inequalities that continue to harm and limit girls, and her research focuses on primary sources: interviews with girls themselves. Her book Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap was first published in 1994 and was groundbreaking in its exposure of how education was failing girls. She spent two years in two California high schools talking to students about their experiences.