The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

Saying "yes" [to sexual activity] is a pretty low baseline for sexual experience and I wanted to write about what was happening to girls after "yes."

A lot of what happens in consensual encounters and in the way we talk to both girls and boys about sex creates a medium in which assault flourishes.

It's particularly important as parents in our conversations with our daughters and our sons to consider ideas intimate justice when we talk about and set them going on their early formative experience.

While I completely disagree with the "purity" concept, it was the only place I saw fathers talking to girls about their expectations and attitudes to sex and expressing love and support. I didn't see liberal dads having similar conversations with their daughters.

Sex-ed courses look at girl's internal parts: for boys it's about ejaculation, erection and wet dreams; for girls, it's periods and unwanted pregnancy. We never talk to girls about sexual self-exploration or self-knowledge.

I'll tell you what is insidious about the Disney Princess, besides the fact that if you look into their merchandise, the 26,000 items, you're always finding books that are about "my perfect wedding." It's what it puts girls on the path for. And that it poses as something that protects girls, or staves off premature sexualization, when I think it primes them for it. I don't know where to put that on the continuum exactly. I guess eight?