The following description comes from the event organizer.

What does it mean to be female? Is there a difference between having a childhood and having a girlhood? What do these definitions mean for women once they reach adulthood? In her fiercely personal and extensively researched new book, Girlhood, Melissa Febos reexamines the narratives women are told from an early age — and what it takes to be freed from them.

When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos immediately understood that her meaning to other people changed, as well. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into. 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 that she, and so many other women, had learned in girlhood did not prioritize personal safety, happiness, or freedom. She set out to reframe those values and beliefs and make room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.