She spoke of women’s lives, and they listened.

Mary Pipher, clinical psychologist and author, spoke to a predominantly female audience of around 400 Wednesday night. Pipher discussed the challenges of growing up female in a media-saturated culture.

“We move among strangers, and we have one way we can make judgments about them, and that’s how they look,” she said. “The media teaches us over and over again that that’s what matters, especially with women.”

Pipher compared her small-town Nebraskan childhood to the intense pressures facing adolescent girls today.

Pipher’s best-selling book “Reviving Ophelia” discusses problems adolescent girls dealt with in therapy sessions with her, such as eating disorders, suicide and sexual abuse.

“These girls were intense, angry, and full of contradictions,” she said. “Many of them were previously the best and brightest in their class. The dysfunctional models of family didn’t match these girls.

“Rather than a dysfunctional family as a problem, the girls were dealing with a dysfunctional culture.”

Children make decisions about sexuality, drugs and alcohol at 11 or 12, when their emotions are turbulent and insecure, she said.

Pipher said “Ophelia” caught the wave of globalization.

“Parents everywhere were feeling that they lost control of the socialization process in their own communities,” she said.

Adolescents need a village to tend to them, but have only an electronic community of movies, music and video games, Pipher said.

They know movie stars better than neighbors, she said.

Pipher said she encourages socializing with people of different ages, creating a “north star” to follow in decision-making and cultivating quiet time.

“We’re in a very noisy culture right now,” she said. “The most radical thing you can do is to slow down.”