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Restless Virgins book cover

Restless Virgins

Love, Sex, and Survival in Prep School
by Abigail Jones
🏢 Harper Collins 📅 2009-10-13 📄 356 pages
An honest, intimate look at the lives of today's teens—told through the true experiences of friends at a New England prep school Established in 1798, Milton Academy has a proud history of achievement. It has educated artists and CEOs; it has produced a long line of distinguished scholars and dignitaries; and it has shepherded students through the world of high-pressure academics for generations. Since its founding, the public face of Milton had always been one of integrity and pride . . . until a sex scandal rocked the campus and made headlines in the spring of 2005. The offense? Teenagers doing no more than what others had done before them—except this time they got caught. Restless Virgins is the riveting real-life story of a group of seniors who were there as the "incident" (as it came to be called) unfolded: Whitney, the athletic and sensual beauty every girl wants to be; Annie, who craves acceptance but is torn between the desire for peer approval and musical success; Jillian, the smart one who is sick of high school drama and desperate to go to college; and Reed, a "hockey god" who has it all but whose charisma masks a secret insecurity. From "friends with benefits" to STDs, today's teens face a wider array of social and sexual opportunities—and pressures—than ever before. Through its eye-opening yet sensitive depiction of a group of normal kids with normal struggles, Restless Virgins offers an important look at contemporary adolescence no teen, parent, or educator can afford to miss. And it is written by two recent Milton graduates who know this world—and these students—like no others.
ISBN-13: 9780061873898
ISBN-10: 0061873896
ASIN: 0061873896
Abigail Jones
About the Author

Abigail Jones

Abigail Jones is an American journalist and author who writes on adolescence, sexuality, education, and the social pressures shaping young women's lives. Her best-known work, Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School, co-authored with Marissa Miley and published in 2008, drew on more than a year of reporting inside a private New England boarding school to document the sexual culture, social hierarchies, and emotional realities of female students at an elite American secondary school. The book was widely reviewed and discussed at the time of publication for its frank portrayal of teen sexuality in privileged environments, and was adapted as a Lifetime television film in 2013. It joined a small group of late-2000s long-form journalism books — alongside titles by Caitlin Flanagan, Peggy Orenstein, and others — that pressed mainstream audiences to take seriously the gap between cultural assumptions about teenage girlhood and the realities reported by teenage girls themselves. Jones has continued to write feature journalism on women, religion, education, and culture for outlets including Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Glamour, Marie Claire, and the New York Times. Her reporting often examines institutions — schools, religious communities, families — from the perspective of the young women navigating their unwritten rules. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, gender studies, and narrative journalism, and is regularly assigned in undergraduate courses on adolescent development, gender, and media studies.
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