These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.
Melissa Febos’s 2010 debut memoir Whip Smart, about her time spent working as a dominatrix in Manhattan, placed her immediately in the ranks of the women writing best about sex, bodies and power. In this year’s best-selling essay collection Girlhood, Febos looks further back, digging into her experience as a girl who’d gone through puberty by the time she was 11, but also broadening her scope with cultural analysis and reporting about the realities of growing up female. In essays exploring childhood teasing, college cuddle parties and a whole spectrum of ambivalent consent, Febos traces the inheritances of womanhood—the meanings and functions ascribed to the female body, and how we defy them.
Buy Now: Girlhood on Bookshop | Amazon
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Cybersecurity Experts Are Sounding the Alarm on DOGE
- Meet the 2025 Women of the Year
- The Harsh Truth About Disability Inclusion
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Michelle Zauner Stares Down the Darkness