Girls by Freya India is the wake-up call every Christian parent needs

From beauty filters to relentless comparison, modern girls face unprecedented pressures. Nay Dawson considers how Christian parents can nurture resilience and real identity in a culture obsessed with perfection

A friend recently asked me what I thought of Girls by Freya India. I paused before answering. Reading it felt rather like watching a disaster film: each chapter reveals another layer of damage affecting today’s girls, until the scale of the problem becomes difficult to take in.

Freya India offers a compelling and deeply troubling account of what it means to grow up female in the digital age. Her observations are both perceptive and unsettling, not only for girls themselves but also for the parents, carers and youth leaders who love them. She writes: “This was the story of how my generation became a trademarked product and how companies commodified the collapse of everything that once made us human.”

India argues that girls are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as projects in need of constant improvement

It is a sobering claim. Throughout the book, India argues that girls are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as projects in need of constant improvement. The result is a generation searching for confidence, identity and happiness through products, platforms and trends that can never truly satisfy.

Yet despite its often-bleak diagnosis, Girls is not a hopeless book. In fact, its greatest strength may be its insistence that ……