Promiscuities

I read this at the height of learning to understand being a woman. It was a great tool to have as i tried to rise above judgements, and instead go with my instincts.

Growing up in this world, and in this country, is not always easy. I am a 17-year-old girl who first read this book when I was 15 years old, and became completely amazed by how much she "gets it". Though it is in many ways a memoir, Naomi Wolf portrays teen life as a young woman in such an on-target way and with such eloquent and honest words that you cannot help but truly relate to everything she says. This is an incredible and original work that I would recommend to any teen girl that needs to find someone who can relate.

This is an incredibly empowering book for women. No longer do we need to think of ourselves in a manner of either being a virgin or a whore. I only wish I would have read this three years ago, before I became desperate not to be seen as the former. The history of women's sexuality was particularily wonderful. Though I took sex ed in the 80s and 90s, we still were being taught that it was always the boy who made the first move, and it was up to the girl to say no. (In other words, it is her fault when things go all the way.) It is depressing that no matter how far we come, we still regress back to that. This book should be required reading for every sex ed teacher, every school-aged girl, every school-aged boy, every parent. Want an insight into the mind of a female teenager? Things haven't changed much since Wolf was a teen 30 years ago. This book changed -- probably forever -- the way I view matters of sex and sexuality.

I enjoyed "Promiscuities" so much that I found myself continually marking up pages and asterisking sections as they described situations I had lived through but could not articulate. I found this book to be incredibly insightful. Finally a book that discusses how it feels to be a young woman, struggling with her burgeoning sexuality, in a world that denies and degrades female sexual power. While Wolfe's perspective on this issue is largely white, middle class, and could have included more ethnic attitudes of female sexuality, this book is a starting point on a discussion that needs to continue. I found this book to be fascinating and will return to it.

Naomi Wolf strikes home here with a book that will resonate with a lot of people, especially those born between 1960 and 1970 and raised on one of the coasts. Unlike her past works, Promiscuities is a very personal story; she has a lot to say about her own experiences and those of the girls and women she grew up with. The earlier parts of the book are stronger than the finish, but it's worth getting to the end anyway.One problem: the tagline used for the paperback edition ("The Secret Struggle for Womanhood") might lead the reader to expect a book with answers rather than questions, more like Ms. Wolf's previous books. The tagline of the hardcover edition ("An Ordinary American Girlhood") is better, though it perhaps misleads the reader about the universality of her experiences.