Yes, consent is sexy, as the now ubiquitous saying goes, but as Melissa Fibos writes in her new

essay collection called Girlhood, Consent is also extremely complicated. When Melissa turned 11 and her

body began to develop, she says she could instantly feel her value changed to the world.

And talking to people throughout her life and for the book, it became clear that her experiences

in girlhood, the darker ones that aren't as readily acknowledged, they weren't unique or

individual only to her. You know, in recent years, we have had this massive hardware upgrade as a culture

with the Me Too movement and other things about just how complex it is when we talk about

asking and giving consent, how different power dynamics playing to things, and just the gray

areas of it all. So, just a heads up, there is some discussion of unwanted touching, sexual abuse.

We don't get into any specific details, but I did want to tell you just in case that's something

you don't want to hear today. From The Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, I'm Jeffrey

Masters, and this is the author Melissa Fibos, whose new book Girlhood is out on March 30th.

I want to start off by talking about consent, which all of the stories deal with in some way.

You know, when it comes to sexual consent, we tend to say things like,

yes means yes, and no means no, which really oversimplifies things. This book captures what a truly,

shockingly complicated thing, consent is. And I don't think we talk enough about that.

Actually, I think we talk about it quite a bit, but we talk about it

within a particular set of terms that in the process of writing this book and reflecting on it,

I realized don't leave a lot of space for sort of the gray areas in between. And I had this

experience where I went to a cuddle party,

which I'm sure some of your listeners will be familiar with. Others not so much. It's pretty much

what it sounds like. It's kind of like a sex party, but just cuddling, no sex. And what happened was

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