caitlin flanagan does not understand teenage girls

This weekend, read through Elaine Showalter's Hystories, making notes on multiple personality for Shadow as well as thinking of notions of contemporary hysteria for my Women and Madness class. Also ordered up a book about the Salem witch trials from the local bookstore, thinking about the possessed girls, thinking about The Crucible. This morning I read Caitlin Flanagan's op-ed in the NYT regarding the groups of girls ("cheerleaders" she distinguishes) who were diagnosed with hysteria in upstate New York. I began reading it and thinking, wow, weird, she is not, so far, fucking it up TOO MUCH. But then of course, whoops:

Much on their minds is their new potential for childbearing, an event that for most of human history has been fraught with physical peril.

 OMG Caitlin Flanagan you are too correct that is totally why teenage girls are fucked and freaky. Very observant. It's like the character in Wittgenstein's Mistress menstruating on every page. All I thought about as a girl was my new potential for childbearing.

No mention of course how iatrogenic (co-produced by therapists, media) hysteria has been historically, no distinction made of course that during the Middle Ages and then the witch trials there wasn't a medical notion of hysteria.

Seriously, why is Caitlin Flanagan now the authority of teenage girls? Those I'd rather see write a book on the teenage girl, off the top of my head: The Rejectionist, Marie Calloway, Kate Durbin, Kristen Stone, Mairead Case. I am maybe writing a book somewhat dealing with it. What is this thing now - that the only pop-culture feminists have to be in essentializing anti-feminists? I know this has been repeated ad nauseum, but what does this say about our culture?

It appears her general thesis is that girls just need to go to their rooms. 

(related: for an excellent takedown, heather havrilesky's review of caitlin flanagan's girly opus in the most recent bookforum)

Also, my ire against the CF has made me spontaneously launch a Twitter account - so far I'm following 7 people and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing - but follow me! @daughteroffury. More spontaneous rants from reading the New York Times, like that stand-up comedian Fred Armisen plays on SNL.