The Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog

I just finished reading Wendy Shalit’s “Girls Gone Mild” and while it took me almost a month and a half, only getting to read a chapter every couple of days, the impact of this book was in no way lessened. This book made me think. In fact, a chapter at a time was really all that I could handle as each one possessed so much information that allowing for an intellectual digestion period was mandatory.

There were countless quotes, anecdotes, interviews, and statistics that struck me, sometimes floored me, and left my heart broken and despairing for the girls of the twenty-first century, but what I was most impacted by was how relevant the book was to me, personally.

I have always considered myself a modest girl, a “good” girl (in reference to Shalit’s terminology, which is the essence of this book - the discrepancy between the “good” and “bad” girl), and, consequently, upon beginning this literary adventure, did not anticipate that Shalit’s work would really have that much in store for me.

Famous last words, anyone?

I not only saw myself in this book, I saw my mom, my aunt, my best friend, even my six-year-old cousin - this book touched almost every facet of what I considered to be my “modesty worldview” and challenged me on almost every one too. To go into considerable detail would be lengthy and, frankly, not worth your time as the reader of this blog because my revelations from this book are simply that, my revelations. If you truly want to understand what I am referring to, all I can suggest is that you read the book yourself.

I will, however, comment on one quote that, upon reading it, made me think to myself, “I HAVE to share this with every girl I know - it’s pure genius!” To give you a bit of context, Shalit was remarking on what appears to be this generations’ attempt to swing the sexual pendulum back towards the modesty side of things, away from the hippie-love generations’ legacy of sexual pervasiveness and extremism. 

“While members of the new generation are pining for courtship and milkshakes, all they get fed is more explicitness, which only increases their longing [for the aforementioned]. Sex may sell, but at our current degree of saturation, mystery and honor will sell even more…We are hungry for examples of uniquely human striving, to be reminded that we can still experience genuine feeling and not just bodily contortions” (75).

Genius, right?!!

And not just genius - straight up true! In a world where the most frequently run nightly news stories center around the latest Hollywood-ette’s sexual trysts or public exposure and politicians are expending their energies and budgets on co-ed public bathrooms, there are still those who aspire to chivalry, the thrill of a meaningful first kiss, and the prospect of being respected and admired for more than their measurements and their body mass index.

Right here, in this public forum of sorts, I will join the ranks of those girls who have gone “mild” and say, without shame, that I am one of those girls who is fed up with explicitness, who appreciates the chivalrous boy, and who demands to be seen first and foremost as a spiritual, intellectual, intelligent and emotional being, not just some mass of flesh that might look good in a two-piece.