Some old, white male trained in two of the most modernist disciplines – Western medicine and psychotherapy – is concerned that teenage girls are postmodern. As quoted in this Macleans interview:

You’ve got 14-year-old girls essentially presenting themselves as a brand, trying to create a public persona, polishing an image of themselves that’s all surface: how you look and what you did yesterday, not who you are and what you want to be. And that leads to a sense of disconnection from themselves, because in most cases, these girls don’t even realize that their persona is not who they are. They’re just focused on striving to please their market and presenting the brand they think will sell.

This is coming from a guy who has been doing a speaking tour to promote his new book and who cites his own credentials to support his point! Why would what you want to do tomorrow be a more important part of your identity than what you did yesterday? Especially when the desires of teenagers are mostly externally imposed.

Girls who see themselves as brands will likely go on to be more successful than girls who want to be loved for their authentic selves. And having “anorexia of the soul” is at least as healthy as the chronic existential crisis that strikes the “authentic” people in our society.

Dr. Sax shows his hand by applying premodern morality and seeming hopelessly out of touch with the historical reality of being a woman:

I find it troubling that so many girls are using their sexuality in an instrumental way, in order to accomplish some other end such as raising their social status, but not as an expression of their own [feelings and desires].