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Lately
there has been much ink (and pixels) devoted to the problem
of what boys will have to read once they've finished the final
Harry Potter book. Michigan bookstore owner Betsy
Philips whines, "Boys don't like to read books where a
girl is the main character." Writer and former elementary
school teacher Jon
Scieszka postulates that boys don't read because all their
teachers are women, and so they equate reading with being
a girly activity.
I pity
those boys. With all that coddling, they're likely to grow
up unable to pick out a carton of eggs if they're not in a
camouflage-patterned package. But who's wondering about what
the girls are going to read? There's an annoying trend among
publishers and booksellers—a mantra that they keep repeating:
"Girls will read anything; boys need to be courted." This
could result in more boring, cookie-cutter YA books with female
protagonists, as writers put more thought and energy into
books that will have a better chance of getting published—ones
with male protagonists. Why put any effort into a YA book
for girls when you can just rip off Jane Austen, add some
IM conversations, slap a pink cover on it, and call it a day?
Or a book in this case. Calling it a day would be crazy.
 But
what exactly qualifies me to have any sort of opinion on young
adult literature? It's because I came to YA as an outsider,
meaning I was way too old to be reading that stuff. I had
an all-access library card as a tiny child, so while my pals
were reading Beverly Cleary, I was reading Joyce Carol Oates.
I understood none of it, but golly, was it racy, in
a quiet, academic sort of way. Of course, that primrose path
eventually led to The Story of O, but that's for another
column.
When
I got to college, I realized I was sadly lacking a big chunk
of pop-cultural knowledge that was absolutely essential for
drunken flirtations and girly PJ parties. I could not identify
with Talk-to-God Margaret or Fuck-You Holden because I had
no idea who they were. So I started myself on a self-study
course of YA literature I was a YA scientist, studying the
genre as a botanist would examine man-in-the-moon marigolds.
But where
to get these books? I couldn't very well parade myself into
the kids' section of the library—I was 18! It would be
too mortifying. So I raided my brother's room on a weekend
home and emerged with The Catcher in the Rye, A
Separate Peace, and The Chocolate War. My brother
went to a private all-boys school, but you probably already
guessed that.
I loved
all of these books and felt as if I were gaining insights
into unknown worlds. The universe populated by rich, upper-class
white boys was very foreign to me, and I felt as if I were
reading an anthropology text book as much as reading a narrative.
Sadly, when I went looking for similar books about teenage
girls, I came up empty-handed. There were a few Salinger stories
(like the Franny part of Franny and Zooey), the Austen
pantheon, and Judy Blume's Forever, but, except for
"Franny," none of those really spoke to me in any meaningful
fashion. Maybe it was jealously, or maybe it was gender confusion,
but I liked the boy books more. Why weren't the girl books
more interesting?
 It
seemed like the boy books were dealing with issues that were
very important to me—spirituality and non-conformity,
for example—while the girl books were obsessed with relationships
(even Salinger's Franny suffers her spiritual crisis during
a big date). It was as if publishers felt that girls would
read any old crap, not caring that they were getting nothing
other than mindless entertainment and a push towards their
rightful place in the world as some guy's girlfriend. When
one thinks of iconic YA stories for girls, if it's not about
a boy, it's about a horse.
Maybe
the boys' books were actually better, or maybe I was just
reading the wrong girls' books. And, at 18 and 19, I may have
been the wrong audience for YA books for either gender; perhaps
my perspective as a quasi-adult was biased against what seemed
like rampant sexism in many YA books aimed at teenage girls.
As a 14- or 15-year-old, the idea of obsessing over and dating
a boy my own age would have seemed quaint, at best. But perhaps
if my 12-year-old self had read those books, I would have
been more comfortable with the idea of having a crush on the
dreamy boy in AP English.
There were
very few guys in my high school English class looking forward
to reading Pride and Prejudice—even my secret crush
wasn't too enthralled by that one. Maybe this was because there
is a definite thematic schism between the boy books and the
girl books. Boys have adventures. Girls have crushes. Even when
boys are not actively doing something, like in The
Chocolate War, they are quietly fightin' the man and getting
their shit together on the inside. Girls, they trade pants.
In books for girls, pants have more adventures than girls do.
Is it any wonder that books with male protagonists are read
by both sexes, while books with female protagonists are read
mostly by girls unless they are assigned in school?
If I were
paranoid (I call it realistic) I might think that the superior
writers might be spending their time writing about boys so that
they had a better chance of getting their books published. And
that brings us back to the current publishing conundrum—how
to appeal to boys, and how to get boys to read, and how to get
those pesky writers to write more books with male protagonists.
There's so much chatter about it that it could make a girl come
down with a bad case of cooties. In the UK, there is a program
underway so that every secondary school in England will have
a special boys' bookshelf. A recent round-up of children's books
in New
York Newsday were all male-centric books.
Traditional
book publishers are pushing aside girls as a less-desirable
demographic, which makes me pig-bitin' mad. But perhaps my
embrace of lad lit was part of the problem. If females are
willing to accept books with male protagonists, then they
encourage quality writers to write these boy books—they
have a better chance of catching the coveted boy market, and
so have a better chance of being published in today's market-driven
environment. Harry Potter is not intrinsically more interesting
as a boy than he would be as a girl. If these were Harriet
Potter books, you can bet your magic pants that many boys
wouldn't be caught dead reading them, no matter how chock-full
of wizardry they were. Yet girls adore the Potter books, and
never once (well maybe once) think about the message they
are getting—they could be boys' peers, but they could
never be the stars of their own adventures. And the male readers
get the message that the lives of girls are not worth reading.
Sadly, even Joyce Carol Oates has fallen into this trap—her
most recent YA novel, Sexy, is about a boy.
(July,
2007)
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