Here's a very interesting blog called Modestly Yours by a group of young women whose voices you will never hear in mainstream media. They are "good girls in hiding."
I mean where else will the cable channel Oxygen be called A Breath of Foul Air for its "edgy" entertainment that has most definitely been pornified.
But a considerable amount of the cable channel’s edginess no doubt consists in its unflattering depictions of women for women. Howard Stern does it and it is sexist; Oxygen does it and it is “intelligent.” You’d have to be breathing some pretty thin air to buy that.
Or in Are We All Girls Who 'Cain't Say No'
So there it was again, the "cain't say no" phenomenon. Only in this case it wasn't a simple matter of turning down yet another car pool stint. Grace was thoroughly uninterested in the guy, even a bit repulsed, but still giving him a spin in her bed-- and feeling guilty about getting out of it.
The blog is sponsored by Modesty Zone founded in 2005 by Wendy Shalit who wrote the well received A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. From a description of the book which I haven't read.
Beholden neither to conservatives who discount as exaggeration the dangers facing young women, nor to feminists who steadfastly affix blame on the patriarchy, Wendy Shalit proposes that, in fact, we have lost our respect for an important classical virtue -- that of sexual modesty. A Return to Modesty is a deeply personal account as well as a fascinating intellectual exploration. From seventeenth-century manners guides to Antonio Canova's sculpture, Venus Italico, to Frank Loesser's 1948 tune, "Baby, It's Cold Outside," A Return to Modesty unfolds like a detective's search for a lost idea as Shalit uncovers opinions about this lost virtue's importance, from Balzac to Simone de Beauvoir, that have not been aired for decades. Then she knocks down the accompanying myths one by one. Female modesty is not about a "sexual double standard," as is often thought, but is related to male virtue and honor. Modesty is not a social construct, but a natural response. And modesty is not prudery, but a way to preserve a sense of the erotic in our lives.
To me, this is edgy and intelligent thinking and writing, even more so, since the authors are young women, looking for what women of my generation discarded too quickly.
UPDATE:
The relentless pornification of our culture goes now goes beyond young girls and women and extends to, as Gail Sheehy calls them, "seasoned women". Ronni Bennett delivers Sheehy a well-deserved lashing.