Backtalk

"Ophelia Speaks," a book by teens for teens, talks back to adults who think they know what's up. This teen says it doesn't speak to her.

By Lillie Wade

Sep 15, 1999 | In the wake of Columbine and other school shootings, I resented how "experts" in their 40s and 50s immediately swooped onto the scene and brayed to the nation's teenagers about how we were supposed to feel. Adults -- clearly suffering a case of amnesia about their own high school days -- don't like to admit that sex, drugs and violence are as much a part of teen life as they are a part of adult life. When they see teens who are confronted with adult problems, they treat us like children who need to be coddled, or criminals who need to be punished.

"Ophelia Speaks," a collection of autobiographical writings by girls between the ages of 12 and 18, is marketed as a self-help book for teens by teens. Edited by a 17-year-old, Sara Shandler, it sets out to show that teenage girls can speak for themselves, and thus are more mature and responsible than they are often thought to be. The book grew out of Mary Bray Pipher's bestselling "Reviving Ophelia," which Shandler read at 16. Although Shandler agreed with Pipher about the issues confronting teenage girls today, she was disappointed in the lack of voices from teens themselves. "I didn't just feel spoken to," writes Shandler, "I felt spoken for." From this she conceived "Ophelia Speaks."

I was not as impressed as Shandler with "Reviving Ophelia." Pipher does discuss important issues facing teenage girls today -- dysfunctional families, incest, abuse, eating disorders and premature initiation into sexual relationships. But she fails to come up with a convincing solution to these very real problems: She peddles tired feminist ideas like praising androgyny as the cure for problems between the sexes, and hilariously suggests that so many teenage girls embrace vegetarianism because they identify with animals' inability to speak.

Ultimately, "Reviving Ophelia" blames all of the problems of the girls in the case studies on a "girl-poisoning society." Pipher never mentions genetic factors (such as inherited mental illness) and rarely explores early childhood trauma in depth. Indeed, she faults everything that happened to the troubled girls in her book on a bogeyman-ish patriarchy that is so brilliantly evasive, most women are unaware of it.

"Ophelia Speaks" is divided into five categories -- the body, family, friends, sex and overcoming obstacles. Pipher explored all of these subjects as a psychologist, parent and -- let us not forget -- adult. Shandler treats them in a less clinical way; each section features first-person essays by teenage girls who have direct experience with the issues. Sometimes, however, it's hard to decide which is worse: Pipher's feminist bombast, which is harder to digest than a bowling-ball-sized wad of ABC gum, or the hand-wringing style of Shandler and her contributors.

Before each new chapter, Shandler writes a little introduction about how the topic has affected her. Unfortunately, this is one of the book's biggest weaknesses. By the book's standards, Shandler has had an easy life; she is the daughter of happily married, upper-middle-class parents. By her own admission, she has never suffered parental abuse, eating disorders or sexual assault. The only problem that she shares with her contributors is depression, which she cured by reading books. She tries to be empathetic, but she is actually condescending, with dowager-like sympathy for all the poor, benighted souls she tries to address. This rather obliterates her "by teens, for teens," approach. She has little connection with her contributors, and seems to be using the opportunity to make her life seem more of a cinematic agony than it is. One of her sentences -- "New England humidity can be unbearable sometimes" -- is laughable from my Southern view, in which New England may as well be Canada. I eventually found myself disliking her, not because of her easy life, but because she constantly tried to make her life seem harder than it is.

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