Don't Call Me Princess by Peggy Orenstein

Don't Call Me Princess by Peggy Orenstein

The New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays--funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls' and women's progress (or lack thereof) in what Orenstein once called a "half-changed world."

Named one of the "40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years" by Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls' sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.

In Don't Call Me Princess, Orenstein's most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless--they have, like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate.

Don't Call Me Princess offers a crucial evaluation of where we stand today as women--in our work lives, sex lives, as mothers, as partners--illuminating both how far we've come and how far we still have to go.

This vital collection of social commentary tackles the urgent questions women are still asking:

• Investigative Reporting & Personal Revelation: Go behind the scenes of Orenstein's groundbreaking work, from her early days interviewing teen mothers to taking on the editors of Ms. magazine.
• Princess Culture: Explore the rise of the "girlie-girl" and unpack the complicated messages we send to daughters in a world of Disney heroines and toddler tiaras.
• The Politics of Motherhood: Dive into the tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, the complex journey through infertility, and what it means to be a modern mother.
• Women's Health, Unfiltered: Read Orenstein's candid, taboo-breaking writing on her own experiences with breast cancer, miscarriage, and navigating the medical establishment.

Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap is Peggy Orenstein's first book, and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World is her second. Her work has also featured in The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Elle, Vogue, Discover, MORE, Mother Jones, Salon, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Her husband, Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy Tomoko, live in the San Francisco Bay Area.