Girlhood

 Book 64 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read on September 1

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

published 2021

Summary (via Goodreads)

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.

My Opinion

4 stars

I checked this book out from the library after seeing it in Bookpage.  I read it in chunks over the span of an entire day but it's Labor Day so I had the whole day to sit and read.

It's a very high 4 stars for me.  Her writing was weighty and meaningful but still accessible.  I understand and can relate to the matter-of-fact ways some situations are described that could use more reflection and therapy in hindsight but it sounds like the author is working through things and I hope she has found happiness and comfort.