Dilemmas Of Desire

Distinguished Publication Award by the Association for Women in PsychologyIn movies and magazines, in music and advice columns, girls are portrayed as the object or the victim of someone else's desire-but virtually never as someone with acceptable sexual feelings of her own. What teenage girls make of these contradictory messages, and what they make of their awakening sexuality, emerges for the first time in frank and complex fashion in Deborah Tolman's Dilemmas of Desire."'Girls are the objects of boys' sexual desires and have no desires of their own.' In this provocative study, Tolman ... turns this notion upside down. Basing her research on extensive interviews with both suburban and urban teens, Tolman investigates how young women's first sexual experiences may be influenced by societal pressure to dissociate from their own bodies and desires ... Tolman shows the chilling dangers-for individuals and society-when girls are afraid to take ownership of their sexuality ... And she offers ideas for how change can happen ... Parents and teachers alike will find much to contemplate and borrow from in this fascinating account."-Gillian Engberg, Booklist