Fresh Air, John Matisonn and Mary Pipher

By: Terry Gross

Narrated by: Terry Gross

South African journalist John Matisonn and psychologist Mary Pipher on this archive edition of Fresh Air. Matisonn is white and grew up in the suburbs in Johannesburg. His grandparents emigrated to South Africa at the turn of the century. Matisonn covered South Africa from 1986 to 1991 for NPR and worked in Washington, D.C. He's now the head of elections for the South Africa Broadcasting Company, SABC, (which before the end of apartheid, broadcast purely government propaganda). He also co-founded the PBI, Public Broadcasting Initiative, to train and recruit South African journalists for the SABC to teach them about balance and fairness in the media. Mary Pipher has worked mostly with teenage girls for over 10 years. She's witnessed the "oppression" of teenage girls today, more pronounced than that of their mothers because of the "more dangerous, sexualized, and media saturated culture." She argues also that something happens to girls when they reach adolescence, that they lose their "assertive, energetic, and 'tomboyish' personalities" to become "more deferential, self-critical, and depressed." She is the author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. (Original Broadcast Date: May 28, 2001)

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