Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture

by Lauren D Sawyer

208 pages, Hardcover

Published December 9, 2025

About the author

Lauren D. Sawyer is an ethicist and educator living in Seattle, Washington. She is affiliate faculty at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology where she teaches graduate courses in theology and develops trauma-informed curriculum for the Allender Center. Lauren earned her Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Drew University, and she serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Lauren is the author of Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, & the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture (New York University Press, 2025). She enjoys a well-brewed cup of coffee and chilly swims in Puget Sound.

Reviews

[Grace Brindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing Up Pure is a book of invitation. Dr. Sawyer holds the tension of the harm that purity culture has caused while asking for those of us, specifically those who identify as cisgender and white-bodied, who have grown up within the "Purity Culture" system, to also allow ourselves to be accountable for the way we have been complicit in its harm.

"And if we fail to see average girls as complicit, then we might be tempted to think that liberation looks only like undoing sexism, not also dismantling the deeper entanglements of white supremacy and antiqueerness at the heart of purity culture." (p. 111)

Dr. Sawyer's book will challenge you and invite you to identify how "Purity Culture" has harmed you while gently asking you to name a truer story of your experiences, allowing us to each live a life more honest and full.