Empowering Girls

"You're trying to get your hunger needs met," Dr. Smith tells Melissa. "What are you hungry for? To be loved? To be cared for? To feel special? These are not things to be ashamed of. You're asking a great question: 'How can I stop this?'"

Dr. Smith says that a lot of young girls are treating their bodies like trash cans. "Trash cans for what? For boys' sperm. For boys' insecurities. The boys come and drop their trash in our bodies. … It keeps going until we decide that we aren't receptacles for garbage. That my body is a temple; it's sacred. … I'm not the place that boys come and drop their sperm, their insecurity so they can pump their muscles up as I shrink down into nothing."