海角大神

If you were ever a teenage girl, and especially if you are the parent of one now, you will likely be lured to Caitlin Flanagan鈥檚 Girl Land the way a 13-year-old is enticed toward Twilight. The known provocateur, widely criticized as an anti-feminist, dangles insight like bait: She knows of the timeless struggle to understand our daughters鈥� private worlds and the fears of watching an unfamiliar generation grow up too fast. She promises to examine 鈥渢he passage into womanhood and out of childhood ... in the ever-shifting landscape of today鈥檚 youth culture.鈥�

To be sure, the passage part is informative, especially her discussion of dating norms in the 1920鈥檚 and the teenage etiquette books of the 鈥�50s and 鈥�60s. But Flanagan reveals herself to be an amateur sociologist of the worst sort: the kind who relies on her personal yesterday as the sole basis of comparison for today. She appears only vaguely aware of the modern girl鈥檚 life 鈥� taking no pains to quote any young women or tell any of their tales, and opining on things like 鈥渨hat it is like for a girl to get her first period, now that the event is no longer a harbinger of a process 鈥� reproduction 鈥� that might be gravely dangerous to her.鈥�

Now? The landscape of adolescence that Flanagan captures in 鈥淕irl Land鈥� is so distant that, in some cases, not even our grandmothers are old enough to remember it. In this, she presents the true risks of talking about girls: When they are absent from the discussion, marginalized even by their self-professed champions, they become even less understood than they were before, though now surrounded by adults whose opinions have hardened.

Flanagan鈥檚 fixation with the past and her cursory exploration of the present is a disappointment, because 鈥淕irl Land鈥� is premised around an important observation. 鈥淣ever in history have girls had so many opportunities, or shared so fully in the kind of power that was only recently reserved for boys,鈥� Flanagan writes. 鈥淏ut on the other hand, at the exact same cultural moment, we have seen the birth of a common culture that is openly contemptuous of girls and young women.鈥�

She is right that a great deal of visual media (television shows like Gossip Girl, Facebook photo albums) and rap music compel girls to 鈥渢hink of themselves as sexually disposable creatures.鈥� She is also right that our culture refuses to acknowledge 鈥渢hat female sexuality is intrinsically connected to kindness and trust as it is to gratification and pleasure.鈥澛�

What should follow these arguments, of course, is a nuanced examination of how today鈥檚 teenage girls feel about the music they hear, the online exhibitionism their social lives demand, and the pressure put on them to succeed. What follows instead are discussions of academic studies, books from her own childhood such as 鈥淟ittle House on the Prairie鈥� and 鈥淎 Tree Grows in Brooklyn,鈥� and accounts of wayward young women like Patty Hearst and Tammy Bellah. Her chapters, titled 鈥淒ating,鈥� 鈥淒iaries,鈥� and 鈥淧roms,鈥� barely follow the evolution of their subjects past the 1970s; even the words themselves 鈥� Diaries, Dating 鈥� feel anachronistic, like relics of a distant past. The same is true of Flanagan鈥檚 own stories. The retelling of her near date rape at 16 is affecting on its own but feels extraneous here, because Flanagan doesn鈥檛 use her experience to illuminate anything about how teenage girls date (or don鈥檛) today.

The final chapter of 鈥淕irl Land鈥� includes advice to parents about protecting their daughters from the dangers of the Internet. But now that Flanagan has finally ventured into the present, she seems lost. For one thing, she mixes her media the way a careless writer mixes metaphors; a significant part of her argument against the Internet is predicated on the sexism of a TV sitcom (a single episode of the admittedly sexist Two and Half Men she happened to catch one night while cooking dinner). Flanagan also shows a poor understanding of how teenage girls use the web. She offers parents a sure-fire way to understand how their teenage daughters spend their time online: type the word 鈥減orn鈥� into any search engine, she instructs, and then 鈥渢ake the Fifteen-Minute Tour ... through the eyes of your young daughter.鈥�

This advice is pure fear-mongering on Flanagan鈥檚 part, something she professes against earlier in the book. But it also doesn鈥檛 make any sense. Teenage boys are the ones typing 鈥減orn鈥� into their browsers, not girls. Boys are the ones who 鈥渂y minute two are far afield of anything that could be considered a mutually satisfying experience.鈥�

鈥淲hat does a twelve or thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl make of these nonstop images?鈥� Flanagan asks.

She makes nothing of them, because she鈥檚 not the one looking. And still, Flanagan uses this argument to implore parents to ban the Internet from their daughter鈥檚 bedrooms. This solution isn鈥檛 just impractical (Flanagan doesn鈥檛 realize that you can鈥檛 shut off Wi-Fi in a single room), it's also contrary to the girl-empowerment she is preaching. Shutting down the Internet in a girl鈥檚 bedroom only succeeds in shutting her up. It doesn鈥檛 encourage her to talk to her parents about what she鈥檚 looking at or how she feels about the online content she is consuming. It doesn鈥檛 empower her to talk about the pressure she feels to overshare her private life online, which, much more than porn, is a real threat to a young woman鈥檚 self-esteem.

Flanagan鈥檚 desire to protect girls is admirable. She鈥檚 right that the Internet has 鈥渕ade it so there is almost no such thing as a private experience anymore.鈥� But nowhere in 鈥淕irl Land鈥� does she show us how 21st century girls feel about the cultural expectations of social media. Nowhere does she tell us what they think, what they want, or what their dreams are. If only she鈥檇 pushed aside her nostalgia long enough to ask them.

Jennifer Miller鈥檚 debut novel, 鈥淭he Year of the Gadfly,鈥� will be published in May 2012.

Join the Monitor's book discussion on Facebook and Twitter.