I talked to a junior in college, and she was fed up. She said, "I'm not doing other girls any favours by faking orgasms and not calling out guys when we're having unequal experiences."

Parents tend to name all of baby boys' body parts, but with girls they go from belly button to knees with this void in the middle. That doesn't change as kids go into puberty.

My kind of nightmare quote is from Deborah Tolman, who does research on girls and desire and is, I think, brilliant. She told me that by the time girls are teenagers, when she asks them how sexual experience made them feel, they respond by how they think they looked; they think that how they look is how they feel.

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.

Sexualization is imposed from the outside as opposed to sexuality, an understanding of the body's responses and desires and ability to communicate that, cultivated from within.

One of the challenges is to create an equally positive, satisfying sense of femininity and feminine identity in a different way so that there are things you're saying yes to and satisfying that urge that your daughter has to be assert her girlness. The surface level of the culture, and really several inches into it, makes that very hard to do. I hate to put another thing on parents' plates. But the culture is very intentional in what it's telling your daughter and what it's telling you about the message of femininity. And if you're not intentional and conscious back, you lose.

The point of creativity is to express and challenge yourself, to make meaning, to embrace your life.