GIRLHOOD
In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.
When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations.
In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.
When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.
Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.
Written with Febos’ characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Paperback
- May 2022
- 336 Pages
- 9781635579314
Buy the Book
$18.00
About Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart, the essay collection, Abandon Me, and a craft book, Body Work. She is the inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The BAU Institute, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Foundation, and others. Her essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Granta, Sewanee Review, Tin House, The Sun, and The New York Times. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.
Praise
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
National Bestseller
Lambda Literary Award Finalist
“Febos’s own voice is so irreverent and original.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“By following Febos’ distinct paths between the past and present, we might realize there’s room to forge our own, and that we’ve just been handed a flashlight that helps illuminate the way.” ―NPR, “Books We Love”
“The harrowing nature of transformation is Girlhood’s core subject, and in seven chapters Febos explores the interconnected aspects of patriarchy and the marks that they’ve left on her.” ―The New Yorker
“I wish I could have read Girlhood when I was young . . . Febos illuminates how women are conditioned to be complicit in our own exploitation. Like much of her scholarship, it begins with somatic knowledge of the self.” ―The Washington Post, “Best of the Year”
“In eight haunting essays, Melissa Febos unearths the trauma of her adolescence as she picks apart the burdens that accompany being a young woman.” ―Time, “Must-Read Books of the Year”
“Febos is an intoxicating writer. . . I never once needed trigonometry and I couldn’t find Catullus in a crossword these days, but Febos’ education is a kind I surely could have used.” ―The Atlantic
“Febos combines personal, cultural, investigative, and scholarly passages to ferociously dissect the lessons that shaped her, and the result is a book that fills the educational void she’d noticed . . . A guide for women to redefine themselves.” ―Boston Globe
“Intellectual and erotic, engaging and empowering, Girlhood lays bare the process of unlearning the most deeply ingrained lesson of female adolescence-that we ourselves are not masters of our own domain-and offers us exquisite, ferocious language for embracing self-pleasure and self-love.” ―O, the Oprah Magazine
“To counter society’s patriarchal standards and stereotypes enmesh girls in a web of unreachable expectations of mind, body and soul, Melissa Febos offers ideas to disrupt the normative narratives surrounding girlhood and encourages us to recreate ourselves according to ourselves.” ―Ms.
“Drawing on personal history, cultural analysis, and investigative reporting, Melissa Febos interrogates the meaning of girlhood, the narratives we’ve been sold, and the realities of growing up a woman.” ―Buzzfeed, “Most Anticipated Books of 2021”
“Melissa Febos is a precise, visceral chronicler of what it means to be a woman in the world . . . [Girlhood] is fierce and lyrical, furious and tender; a vital read for anyone figuring out who they really are, and have always been.” ―Refinery29, “Best New Books”
Discussion Questions
1. Girlhood’s prologue is in the form of a list. What else is different about it? How does this unconventional prologue set up our expectations for what the collection will be?
2. Describe what was happening between Alex and Febos in “Kettle Holes.” How did it make you feel? Is this experience familiar to you?
3. Because Febos’s body developed before her peers’, she became a target of male advances. Why was this both powerful and dangerous?
4. In Febos’s interview with women who went through the same experience, what did she learn? How does this frame her own experience?
5. Why did the young Febos have such a tortured relationship with her body as she hit puberty? Why did girls her age treat Febos differently when they ostensibly wanted what Febos had?
6. What, according to Febos, are “events”? Why does she call them thus?
7. In “Wild America,” Febos writes about her relationship with her hands and how it changed. What made her realize the power and beauty of her hands?
8. In “Intrusions,” Febos confronts her own Peeping Tom. How did the man react? What can we conclude about this reaction?
9. The same essay also recounts various pieces of pop culture that figure a woman falling in love with her stalker. Why is this trope harmful?
10. What kind of relationship can we surmise Febos has with her mother, after reading “Thesmophoria”? What does this piece suggest about the relationship between girlhood and motherhood?
11. How did Febos finally tell her mother about her life? Why didn’t she feel like she could share things with her mother?
12. What is the main issue that Febos tackles in “Thank You for Taking Care of Yourself”? What are some of the ways that she approaches the issue?
13. What, in Febos scholarship and her essay, is lacking in the current conversation about consent?
14. The final essay in Girlhood deals with two separate trips to France. Aside from geographic location, what else do these trips have in common? How do these two events strengthen the argument of the essay?
15. Febos’s essay collection spans her childhood up to her thirties, yet it is titled Girlhood. Why is this so?