Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls spent three years on the New York Times Best Seller list, so obviously a lot of moms owned it — a lot of non-moms owned it too — and therefore it’s impossible to perfectly predict which ones stayed in the
So, I am the mom in this scenario. I did, indeed, read Reviving Ophelia in 1995. Working at a used bookstore in North Carolina, I sold A LOT of copies of A Child Called It, but I did not read it. I most assuredly owned, read, and enjoy Traveling Mercies, although I also remember Anne Lamott becoming problematic a few years ago, maybe, which has cast a pall on that book for me. I read As Nature Made him with great interest, as one of my best friends—seriously, we have matching tattoos—was transitioning at the time and I was getting deep into gender. Judith Butler, Anne-Fausto Sterling, the whole thing. Eventually I would interview Jeffrey Eugenides about Middlesex, which was kinda, sorta based on As Nature Made Him. I read reviews of Nickel and Dimed and Hillbilly Elegy. That's it.
Mitigating circumstances: By 1995 I had already been to a women's college during peak Third Wave Feminism. That trans BFF I mentioned. By 2020, my own kid had already been transed. I thought about hate-reading Irreversible Damage but just read articles about it instead and yelled about it on the socials.
But now you've got me imagining a parallel universe in which I read My Dog Skip and turned into a very, very different person. Possibly someone who wears a lot of matched separates.
Freaking spooky, Danny! It’s only really post-estrangement that I’ve been able to see what a devastatingly, embarrassingly cliche Concerned White Christian Woman my mother was. Crushing reality!
So, I am the mom in this scenario. I did, indeed, read Reviving Ophelia in 1995. Working at a used bookstore in North Carolina, I sold A LOT of copies of A Child Called It, but I did not read it. I most assuredly owned, read, and enjoy Traveling Mercies, although I also remember Anne Lamott becoming problematic a few years ago, maybe, which has cast a pall on that book for me. I read As Nature Made him with great interest, as one of my best friends—seriously, we have matching tattoos—was transitioning at the time and I was getting deep into gender. Judith Butler, Anne-Fausto Sterling, the whole thing. Eventually I would interview Jeffrey Eugenides about Middlesex, which was kinda, sorta based on As Nature Made Him. I read reviews of Nickel and Dimed and Hillbilly Elegy. That's it.
Mitigating circumstances: By 1995 I had already been to a women's college during peak Third Wave Feminism. That trans BFF I mentioned. By 2020, my own kid had already been transed. I thought about hate-reading Irreversible Damage but just read articles about it instead and yelled about it on the socials.
But now you've got me imagining a parallel universe in which I read My Dog Skip and turned into a very, very different person. Possibly someone who wears a lot of matched separates.
If my mom didn't buy that book, it's only because I'm perpetually 2 years old in her headcanon. Adolescence? Not for MY little girl!
Freaking spooky, Danny! It’s only really post-estrangement that I’ve been able to see what a devastatingly, embarrassingly cliche Concerned White Christian Woman my mother was. Crushing reality!
the only reason i’m not having kids is because they’d write a pitch-perfect version of this about me and my cliches i’m not even aware of
The "City Slickers" quote you snuck in there is *chef's kiss* (if the chef's kiss is still a thing that we're doing).
I'm surprised at how many of these books *I've* read so far. Also, I knew this was building up to Abigail Shrier's book, I just knew it!
This has big Tanya energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctPt74CNBA4
"...swapping out anxiety of the specter of transition for anxiety of the specter of artificial light."
I subscribed just so I could leave this comment: Ooof, this line hits hard and leaves me with the cold spooky. You write good.
The second I saw the headline I scanned for Queen Bees and then knew this list was Truth