Don't Call Me Princess

November 15, 2017
A feminist journalist gathers some of her most influential pieces.New York Times Magazine contributing writer Orenstein (Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, 2016, etc.) came to journalism believing that individual stories--especially those about girls and women--could "illuminate something universal [and] essential about our time." Here, she collects articles written over a distinguished career spanning more than 30 years. The author groups her work into four themed sections. The first presents profiles of well-known women such as Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. Both became the driving forces behind Ms. magazine, which they saw gutted and remade over the decades by a sexist, profit-driven media industry. Orenstein also covers lesser-known figures such as the "worldly and independent" feminist Japanese journalist Atsuko Chiba and the controversial graphic artist Phoebe Gloeckner, whose work about teenage sexuality is as unique as it is disturbing. In the second section, Orenstein covers topics related to female corporeality. These articles are among the most personal in the book. They include a piece comprised entirely of diary entries that Orenstein wrote during a battle with breast cancer and a memoir-style reflection about her post-cancer experiences with miscarriage. In the third section, the author tackles modern motherhood. She observes that working mothers still struggle with critical attitudes toward a life split between parenting and a career. Advances in bio-technology have "shattered conventional definitions of 'parent, ' " further complicating notions of what constitutes a "mother." The last section of the book contains Orenstein's musings on girlhood in America. In one piece she profiles two teenage girls: one poor and the other middle class. Their one commonality was feeling alone and misunderstood in a system hostile to them and their needs. In another, the author discusses the way girls must navigate a "princess culture" that infantilizes notions of "girl power" as it sexualizes it. Compelling and intelligent, Orenstein's book offers a powerful vision of the challenges of modern womanhood and of what it means to be female in 21st-century America.A sharp, timely collection of essays.

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February 12, 2018
Drawn from over three decades of work, this middling collection of essays by Orenstein (Girls & Sex) explores many of the same topics as her previous books: parenthood, cancer, infertility, and body image. Orenstein is at her best and most personal when she writes about breast cancer: she recounts her own diagnosis and its effect on her fertility, and reflects on the “pink ribbon culture” and how increased attention on breast cancer and early screening may do more harm than good. The collection also includes a handful of profiles of successful women artists and scientists, including biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, graphic novelist Phoebe Gloeckner, and Guardian columnist Caitlin Moran. In a posthumous profile of Atsuko Chiba, published in 1989, Orenstein vividly captures the Japanese journalist’s strong personality and relentless writing career without having ever met her. Chiba, however, is the only woman of color profiled in the book (though Orenstein does write about her own teenage daughter, Daisy, who is biracial). While Orenstein thoughtfully and incisively captures the perspectives of the people she writes about, those perspectives appear too similar to each other when presented in collected form; notably missing are lower-income women, black women, and trans women. Nonetheless, Orenstein is an enduring and important voice in the feminist choir, and the book will be welcomed by her longtime fans.

Starred review from November 15, 2017
In this collection of insightful, conversational essays, Orenstein (Girls and Sex, 2016; Cinderella Ate My Daughter, 2011) presents an ever-evolving body of work. Although Orenstein has focused her quarter-century career exploring the female experience, the scope of her questions, observations, and poignant case studies is always expanding. This book features many of her previously published works of investigative journalism, each with a new introduction relating the author's perspective at the time of publication to her present-day point of view. The anthology also offers an intimate portrait of Orenstein herself, comforting readers with accounts of her battles with breast cancer and infertility. Other essays address genetic testing, artificial insemination, middle-school dress codes, and, in one never-before-published piece, how to raise young men in the era of Trump. The power of her work comes from her incessant curiosity and her general unwillingness to provide a singular answer to life's biggest questions. How should a white mother navigate parenting a child of color? Must parents disclose their decision to utilize an ovum donor to their child and extended family? Orenstein's refusal to draw conclusions breaks down barriers between the different sides of an argument and invites those with opposing viewpoints to see eye to eye.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2018

Like her previous books Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Orenstein's latest looks at the damage that gender stereotyping has on lives and laws, among other things. This book would complement women's, gender, and sexuality studies because of the range of the essays, especially in the first section, in which Orenstein profiles women such as graphic novelist Phoebe Gloeckner, iCarly star Miranda Cosgrove, and scientist Elizabeth Blackburn. That being said, the real strength of this collection is Orenstein's beautiful interweaving of personal stories with politics and her writings on/about politics. In some ways, her description of Gloeckner's deployment of genre conventions (mixing a traditionally female form, the diary, with male-dominated comic book writing) could describe her own approach, which blurs the boundaries among polemical, personal, and political. Orenstein situates her writing within her own identity, thereby suggesting the limitations of her viewpoints. Overall, she enriches her readers' understanding of abortion laws, breast cancer, body image, pornography, and other timely issues in specific yet open-ended and complex ways. VERDICT For all interested in how situation and circumstance influence women's everyday lives.--Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

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