Interesting Articles on the Twilight Phenomenon

I loved Twilight until I threw it across the room.

- someone, somewhere

1. If Famous Authors Had Written Twilight… how would the story have been different? (I wonder what Stephanie Meyer makes of such speculation!)

2. Erika Kristakis On The Harsh Bigotry Of Twilight Haters from Time Ideas… A different take which challenges some of the hatred directed towards this series:

Why is it that female fantasies are such a source of derision and fear? The male species is allowed all manner of violent, creepy, ludicrous and degrading movie tropes, and while we may not embrace them as high art, no one questions them seriously as entertainment, even when sometimes we probably should. 

3. The ‘Twilight Belt’ in America… which closely resembles The ‘Bible Belt’. An infographic. (Stephanie Meyer has said that she finds the terminology ‘twi-hard’ condescending.)

4. Stephanie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling? Lev Grossman must have been one of the first to link the phrase ‘the erotics of abstinence’ to the Twilight Saga; I’d never heard the phrase before. It has since been used in reference to Twilight numerous times, including in one local newspaper article which so brilliantly captured my niggles about the series that I wish I had kept it. I can’t even remember who it was written by, but I’m still looking.

5. Twilight As A Cautionary Tale About Traditional Gender Roles, via Feministe

6. List of Articles About and Including Twilight at Feminist Frequency

7. A disturbing rapey interpretation of Bella and Jacob’s first kiss (which happens in ‘Eclipse’, which includes a clip of the scene from the movie followed by the even more disturbing excerpt from the book, from Some Notes On Rape Culture at the Racialicious Blog.

See, this is the sort of thing which manages to put into words why I find this series creepy. That’s not how first kisses go. If you want to know the prerequisites for kissing anyone for the first time, that kiss does not cut it. See here, especially the bit which says, ‘Humans associate a good kiss with trust, so wait until it feels comfortable. Never pressure a partner, as it can raise the “stress” hormone cortisol. Kissing and cortisol don’t make good chemistry’, and also the bit that says, ‘Anticipating something makes obtaining it more satisfying — partly due to the neurotransmitter dopamine. So, if you dream about how the kiss will happen, the actual moment is likely to feel more romantic.’ In other words, if someone doesn’t want to be kissed, you can’t force it onto them, and even if you do, they’re not going to enjoy it.

This rule applies in real life, but not in Twilight, as it turns out, where you can force a kiss onto someone and they will respond as you wish. Because Jacob and Bella share a consensual kiss later in the story.

In an excellent article on YA, Romance and Rape Culture, Twilight is summed up like this:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: Let a guy push you around all the time, watch you when you sleep, and stalk you. It’s all good romance. Also, fall into depression and then jump off a cliff if he breaks up with you.

That’s pretty much it. If you know a teenage girl who loves Twilight, I’d highly recommend she reads that article, if only so it might open up a discussion about rape culture.

8. Here’s a take on Twilight from a vampire fan of yore.

9. You may have already heard what Anne Rice had to say about Twilight in an interview.

10. Actors of the Twilight saga were contractually obligated to stay out of the sun to stay pale, from OMG Facts

11. Reasoning With Vampires – a Tumblr blog which pokes fun at the series

12. Teenage Dating In A Twilight-Hunger Games World from The Good Men Project

What is YA chick-lit doing to our girls?

First, a disclaimer: There is a lot of great YA fiction. Terry Pratchett, Melina Marchetta, John Marsden, Geraldine McCaughrean, etc. etc. It’s out there for young adults to cherish, if they know where to look.

Then there’s another kind of YA literature, heavily marketed at adolescent girls. Much of this is extremely popular and widely enjoyed. I’m not disputing that.

I’m talking about a subcategory of indulgent proto-chick-lit, whose main characters are pseudo-kiss-ass girls, but who pedal several very scary ideas about Beauty:

Rule 1. Heroines are Beautiful

For a definition of Beauty, I am not talking about the kind of beauty which is common to young, healthy people. I mean the capitalised “Beauty” found inside speech marks: the Naomi Wolf sense of the word — that which is held up as a platonic ideal in Western culture, and which only a small number of women can ever achieve.

A modern YA heroine is indeed allowed to look ‘average’, but her lack of Beauty is so often not the case. So often, the character undergoes a makeover. Take Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games, a tomboyish, muscular, kick-ass girl. Yet when she gets her makeover scene – right before the hunger games, it turns out she was a Beautiful girl after all, hidden under ordinary garb.

Glasses don’t make a Beautiful girl any less Beautiful. I’m sick of that trope. Oh, and what happens when she gets a make-over? The glasses go. As observed by Natalie at her youtube Community Channel. (A great channel, by the way.)

Perhaps more damaging, especially for Beautiful girls, is the idea that beauty is the one real thing you have, and that ‘being’ is more important than ‘doing’. Caitlin Moran summarises her own teenaged self succinctly when she writes:

As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13^th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all I could imagine was someone thin, and smooth, and calm, to whom things… happened. Some kind of souped-up princess, with a credit card. I didn’t have any notion about self-development, or following my interests, or learning life’s big lessons, or, most importantly, finding out what I was good at, and trying to earn a living from it. I presumed that these were all things that some grown-ups would come along and basically tell me what to do at some point, and that I shouldn’t really worry about them. I didn’t worry about what I was going to do.

What I did worry about, and thought I should work hard at, was what I should be, instead. I thought all my efforts should be concentrated on being fabulous, rather than doing fabulous things. I thought my big tasks were discovering my ‘Love Style’ via questionnaires in Cosmopolitan, assembling a capsule wardrobe, learning how to go from day to night with the application of heels and lipstick, finding a signature perfume, planning when to have a baby, and learning how to be mesmerically sexually proficient – but without getting a reputation as a total slag.

- Catilin Moran, How To Be A Woman

 

Rule 2. Heroines obsesss over physical insecurities

Heroines are far more likely to worry about their Beauty than about their brains. The more beautiful a heroine, the more insecurities she must harbour. This echoes real life.

3. other Characters will respond positively to a heroine’s physical Beauty…

…even if the heroine doesn’t realise she’s Beautiful. Especially if she doesn’t realise she’s Beautiful. So many heroines don’t think they are attractive to others, even when the reactions of others – namely boys – show that others obviously don’t think so.

This is an especially dangerous interplay, because on the surface it doesn’t seem wrong. An optimist might say of such storylines, ‘Well, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s entirely possible that a heroine does not fit the Western Beauty Ideal, and that other characters are responding to her inner beauty instead.’

I’m no optimist, because I don’t think that’s how it’s interpreted by adolescent girls. You see, in their lives, they know damn well it’s the Beautiful girls who do get the attention, and you can’t easily change their minds about this, especially when they go to watch the movie adaptations of stories about ‘average’ looking girls in books.

It’s significant that the movie adaptations of ‘average’ looking characters such as Mia, from The Princess Diaries, are portrayed on the big screen by the Ann Hathaways of this world, and the Hermiones by the Emma Watsons.

Now for some examples.

This sampling is by no means broad, but I did pick it off a shelf sort of at random – based on the fact that I’d heard of these books before.

First, the opening of the All New Nancy Drew, #9 of a series. It is called Secret of the Spa. This is a New York Times Best Selling Series, according to its cover, and was published 2005. I would like to draw your attention to the amount of airspace devoted to Beauty. (Bold, mine.)

“Nancy? Nancy? Earth to Nancy Drew!”

I blinked, snapping out of a daydream as I picked at some lint in my bedroom carpet. “Sorry, Bess,” I said, swallowing a yawn. “What were you saying?”

Bess Marvin, one of my best friends, dipped her nail polish wand into the bottle of pink liquid on the desk in front of her and studied me. She propped one bare foot on the edge of my desk.

“Weren’t you listening to what I just said, Nancy?” she demanded.

My other best friend, George Fayne, smirked and rolled over on my bed. “Poor Nancy had probably passed out from the nail polish fumes.” George waved one hand in front of her face and wrinkled her nose.

Bess rolled her eyes. Even though she and George are cousins, they couldn’t be more different. If Bess is everyone’s idea of the perfect girl, with her blond hair and pretty, feminine dresses, George defines the word tomboy. She keeps her dark hair cropped short — wash-’n-wear hair, as she calls it — and lives in jeans and sneakers.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the two of them. I’m nowhere near as interested in clothes and makeup as Bess — I’m lucky if I remember to dab on a little lip gloss most days. And I occasionally might even forget to comb my hair before leaving the house. On the other hand I don’t mind doing a little shopping now and then, or putting on a pretty skirt and some makeup for a special date with my boyfriend, Ned.

Somehow, though, despite all our differences, our three-way friendship works. George and I do our best to tolerate Bess’s incurable love of clothes, Bess and I try to look interested when George starts rambling on about the latest computer gadget she wants to buy, and the two of them are always ready to help out with my own favorite hobby — solving mysteries.

What are girl readers to think, when the most important thing about Nancy Drew and her friends is the way they look and dress? I’ve quoted from the opening passage, which is significant, because the underlying message is clear: Nancy Drew may be an intelligent, shrewd detective, an improbable role-model with many talents, but the most important thing you must know — before you know ANYTHING else, is that Nancy Drew is sort of interested in clothes but not enough to make her one of THOSE girls, all beauty an no brains, but not tomboyish enough to make her a proto-Lesbian called George — strangely reminiscent of a character in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series.

On my own bookshelf, I also have one of the 1970s wave of Nancy Drew mysteries. Here is the opening to The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (1973):

“What else does Ned say, Nancy?” Mr Drew asked. He was listening intently to a letter his daughter was reading.

“Ned likes being a college exchange student in Hong Kong, and he has actually learned to speak some Cantonese, Dad!”

“Excellent. That, together with his study of Chinese culture, should make him very valuable in a number of fields,” Mr Drew commented.

Nancy nodded. “He’d like to go into the United States Intelligence Service.” Suddenly her serious mood changed. “Dad, listen to this.” She read, ” ‘Nancy, can’t you find a mystery to solve in this far-off colony, so I might show you around?’”

Mr Drew’s eyes twinkled. “Mystery or no mystery, Nancy, you just might get to Hong Kong sooner than you think!”

“What!” the attractive blue-eyed girl exclaimed. “You mean–?”

Before Nancy could finish the question, the telephone rang and she went to answer it.

“Aunt Eloise!” Nancy cried out. “How super to hear from you! Are you in New York?”

“Yes, right in my apartment. I want you to rush here. A most peculiar thing has happened. A real mystery for you to solve.”

The young blonde detective was intrigued and could hardly wait to get the details from her aunt.

As you can see, it was important in 1973 that Nancy Drew was ‘attractive’. We can’t have a YA heroine who isn’t attracive – not in 1973 and not now.

In 1973, it was also significant that Nancy Drew’s hair was blonde and that she had blue eyes, and I do believe race relations have improved since then. (A bit. Thanks to Oprah et al.)

But has feminism done its job? I don’t think so. In the 1973 version, the book opens at least with a functional conversation between Nancy and her father. The reader is plunged straight into the action of the story, which suggests the story itself — what Nancy does, rather than what she looks like — will be the most important thing about her.

In the 2005 version, Nancy’s main concern is how she looks for her boyfriend: “I don’t mind doing a little shopping now and then, or putting on a pretty skirt and some makeup for a special date with my boyfriend, Ned.’

I find that sentence pretty offensive, myself, especially in a best selling story published 2005. I prefer that the 1970s version opens with a conversation between Nancy and her father. Perhaps more girls had great relationships with their fathers back in the 1970s. I do wonder.

Just in case I picked an especially bad example from the All New Nancy Drew Series, I picked another at random. This one is called Mardi Gras Masquerade, published 2008, and it opens like this:

“Ow!” I shrieked. “You’re killing me!”

“Chill out, Nancy.” My friend Bess Marvin tugged at the zipper on the back of my dress. “Now, hold your breath.”

I sucked in my stomach. Bess gave one last yank, and the zipper slid up without pinching any more skin.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, I turned toward the full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom.

“Okay,” I said, surveying my reflection. “That was worth it. This dress is totally amazing.”

Bess came over and stood beside me. “We could both pass for Mardi Gras queens,” she said with a smile.

Blech. The not-so-sub subtext reads: It doesn’t matter how brilliant a girl is at solving mysteries, women must suffer to look good. Even if she exudes the natural beauty of youth, she must suck in her stomach and put on a pretty dress. Only then may she look in the mirror and be pleased with what she sees.

And what about that last line? Is that a wink-wink to any adult readers, hinting at some sort of lesbian relationship between Nancy and her friend? Is the ghost writer of this series a man, by any chance? I’m seeing a flamboyant gay queen, myself, who fancies he identifies with adolescent girls.

*

Next, The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.

This time I give excerpts, all from the first few pages:

Page 1 I’m practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean let’s face it: I’m five foot nine, flat-chested and a freshman. How much more of a freak could I be?

P3 The truth is, when he’s away from Lana and all his jock friends, Josh is a totally different person. The kind of person who doesn’t care if a girl is flat-chested or wears size eight shoes.

[Here we have the first mention of our protagonist’s major insecurities. Ok. Fine. I accept that this is to help ordinary teenage girls identify with Mia. After all, every girl has to have something physically wrong with her. It’s a Western Beauty rule.]

P4 [on a to-do list] Number ten: measure chest

P5 …then Lana Weinberger made that sound she always makes and leaned over to me so that all her blonde hair swished onto my desk. I got hit by this giant wave of perfume and then Lana hissed in this really mean voice… I don’t understand what Josh Richter sees in her. I mean yeah, she’s pretty. But she’s so mean. Doesn’t she notice?

[Here we go, is this the set-up of the classic beautiful but nasty character? Please, please tell me it’s not. Because beautiful girls who KNOW they’re beautiful have to be nasty, right? That’s another rule about Beautiful girls in YA chick lit. If they're too Beautiful -- and know it -- then they are mean.]

Still on p5: Today I noticed that Mr Gianini’s nostrils stick out. A LOT. Why would you want to go out with a guy whose nostrils stick out so much?

[Of course, when girls are encouraged to spend so much time obsessing over their own looks, they’re not going to turn off their criticism when judging other people, including their teachers and mothers’ boyfriends.]

Okay, I haven’t read on. I find this a little painful, to be honest but to give this hugely popular series the benefit of the doubt, I assume some sort of character arc takes place throughout this novel, and that by the end of it, the Princess is feeling far more secure about her own looks. So I skip to the next book in the series and open it up.

Here’s what I find:

THE PRINCESS DIARIES TAKE TWO

P1 [The very first paragraph includes a beauty judgment:] OK. So I was just in the kitchen, eating cereal – you know, the usual Monday morning routine – when my mom comes out of the bathroom with this funny look on her face. I mean she was all pale and her hair was sticking out and she had on her terry cloth robe instead of her kimono which usually means she’s premenstrual.

So I was all, ‘Mom, you want some aspirin? Because no offence but you look like you could use some.’

[While I have had a bit to do with teenage girls and recognise the sarcastic voice, I am tiring of it a little. In general. Hell, no wonder our girls are so proficient at it! It's already a bad idea, the way our society is set up, to stick a whole lot of teenagers of the same age together in a year group and have them spend all day in each other's company, making each other more homogeneous. It is surely a truism that when you're surrounded by a certain culture all day, you tend to absorb the ideas purported by that culture. When adolescent girls are constantly bombarded with Beauty talk, is it any wonder that neurosis over their looks is taken as a universal given during the teenage years? It is not for YA authors to write didactic sap and get preachy. Yet I wonder, where exactly does author responsibility begin and end? I'm talking here about the responsibility to send affirming messages, rather than simply milking the widespread insecurities of readers, as a cheap -- and very effective -- means of creating instant reader identification.]

P2: [Another list, this time of her biggest problems:] I am the tallest girl in the freshman class. I am also the least endowed in the chest area. (Number seven is: I don’t have a boyfriend.)

[I’m sorry, but in the scheme of things these are not big problems. While I can see, from my adult perspective, the white middle-class irony of this, I’m not altogether convinced it’s HELPFUL, including such things in a list of massive problems. On the other hand, Beauty is so important in our culture (Western culture, and every country affected by the West) that for girls with small breasts, indeed, this insecurity is felt keenly.]

P4: I can’t help staring at Mr G and wondering what my new baby brother or sister is going to look like. My mom is totally hot, like Carmen Sandiego, only without the trenchcoat – further proof that I am a biological anomaly, since I inherited neither my mother’s thick curly black hair nor her C-cup. So there’s nothing to worry about there.

[Still rambling on about looks. Have you noticed we’re still on page four? This book has wide margins, by the way, and the sheer amount of space spent on criticising looks – both her own and those of others – is worrisome. And typical of YA fiction aimed solely at girls.]

But Mr G, I just don’t know. Not that Mr G isn’t good looking. I guess. I mean, he’s tall and has all his hair (score one for Mr G, since my dad’s bald as a parking meter). But what is with his nostrils? I totally can’t figure it out. They are just so… big.

I sincerely hope the kid gets my mom’s nostrils and Mr G’s ability to divide fractions in his head.’

[Finally, the scrutiny of looks comes to a temporary end. Next chapter.]

P7 [Description of self.] Sex: Haven’t had it yet. Ha ha, just kidding Mrs Spears! Ostensibly female but lack of breast size lends disturbing androgeny. Description: Five foot nine. Short mouse brown hair. (new blonde highlights) grey eyes, size eight shoe.

[‘ostensibly female’… There is nothing in here to reassure any small-breasted girl reading this book that actually, owning small mammaries does not make her any less of a woman. Can someone who has read this entire series kindly let me know if there is EVER any clarification of this point? I believe the male equivalent is worrying about penis size? Yet I don’t see endless rambling in YA fiction about that sort of insecurity. Boys, unlike girls, are not having it shoved in their faces when they pick up a popular YA novel. For boys, novels -- as opposed to the screen -- are one welcome respite from the world where Beauty is all. What about our girls?]

So should I read on? Princess Mia is hardly an example of a strong female character, though I have heard her described as such. She is positively neurotic about two things – her lack of breasts and her height. At what point should this character stop reflecting the real-life neuroses of teenage girls, because all this emphasis on looks is actually INFLUENCING the young female audience? I remember this time in my life. I know how obsessed girls get over their looks, and how scathing they can be of other people’s.

If this is what they’re reading, then no wonder.

Next, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

by Ann Brashares

(How much did Levis pay for that product placement?)

The first chapter consists entirely of a group of teenage girls trying on jeans, obsessing about the size of their backsides and being magically transformed by a pair of pants.

Here are some excerpts:

Carmen glanced at the structured canvas bag splayed wantonly in the middle of her bed. Suddenly she wished she had all-new underwear. Her best satin pair was sprouting tiny ropes of elastic from the waistband.

[How terrible for her.]

“Don’t you think you should try [the jeans] on?” Lena asked practically. “If they fit Carmen, they aren’t going to fit you.”

Carmen and Tibby both glared at Lena, not sure who should take more offence.

[Does this sort of interaction in books reflect real life cattiness, or does it encourage it? I think it's a matter of balance, and I believe the balance in this particular YA fiction goes too far. Do teenage girls themselves not tire of this constant bitchiness in books?]

Tibby had narrow hips and long legs for her small frame. The pants fell below her waist, hugging her hips intimately. They revealed a white strip of flat stomach, a nice inny belly button.

[We get a run-down of the 'physical highlights' of each character in this first chapter, in the same way pay-TV makeover programs such as What Not To Wear' go out of their way to highlight 'positive' features and 'minimise' negative ones. The message here is that 'All bodies are beautiful.' But what's the other message? That the cut of the jeans performs some sort of magic trick, all in aid of making the girls look more like that one Western Beauty Standard. Can anyone else not see the irony in this message? Note how the phrase 'a nice inny belly button' is not simply a reflection of this character's attributes - the author may as well say 'inny belly buttons are more beautiful than outty ones', thereby influencing the Beauty ethos in Western culture. Why not just stay out of it?]

I wonder if the lives of these characters are going to change because the pants make them look better. Nothing can make me read on.

Then I picked up Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas, where we’re on to page two before the first application of mascara and dissing of an ‘unattractive’ (lesbian) PE teacher.

Etcetera, etcetera.

*

Then there’s Twilight.

I can hardly talk about influential YA heroines without a passing mention of Isabella Swan.

These days it’s hardly worth making a distinction between a ‘character as portrayed in a popular novel’ and the ‘actress who plays her on the screen’. However, I won’t make any comments about Kristin Stewart, apart from to say that she is obviously inoffensive to the eye.

In the books, Stephanie Meyer goes out of her way to stress that Bella does not consider herself attractive. Of course she doesn’t. There’s no better way to create reader identification with teenage girls than by creating a main character who is insecure about her looks. Girls are cultured into finding something wrong with our bodies. It’s a rule. The more closely a girl fits society’s image of Beauty, the more effort she must go to in order to deny it. Say it often enough, and beautiful girls — in real life, as well as in Twilight – actually don’t see the Beauty that they do have.

This is a great shame.

Is it possible for a YA heroine to be at least ambivalent about her own appearance, by not really mentioning it at all?

Is it possible to write a YA heroine in which other characters respond to her brains, her wit, kindness or cunning, in the same way that other characters respond to Harry Potter; to the boy characters portrayed in Paul Jennings, Andy Griffiths and Morris Gleitzman’s books, and any number of mystery/detective novels aimed at YA boys, in which little to no mention is made of their looks?

*

Then we’ve got another subcategory of YA novels which do, indeed, follow the lives of teens who are not even close to the Western model of Beauty. In this case, the hero(ine) is not a beautiful character, but there’s hardly any question why: The theme requires it.

I’m talking about:

• Cookie by Jacqueline Wilson, in which the heroine is overweight. The main story is about how how Cookie and her mother might escape her father, but weight is hardly a non-issue, as it might be in an ideal world where YA Beauty were less important.
• The DUFF by Kody Keplinger (in which DUFF stands for ‘Designated Ugly Fat Friend’)
• Uglies by Scott Westerfield
• Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan, discussed very intelligently (as ever) on Radio New Zealand by the wonderful Kate de Goldi.

I would love my daughter to be reading books in which Beauty is a non-issue, but unless there is a shift in YA publishing  in the next ten years, I’ll be steering her towards books such as above.

I have met parents who would have been happy if their daughters were reading anything at all, including Dolly and Girlfriend magazines. I’ve met girls who read nothing but this kind of thing, and novelised versions of it, and I do think YA literature is influential in forming girls’ self-image, along with the combined influence of peers, parents, teachers, advertisements, TV series, movies, magazines and everything else that makes up this thing called Culture.

I do think adults need to look carefully at the books being marketed to the YA girls in our lives. It would be easy to gift an All New Nancy Drew and assume a strong, if old-fashioned, role model.

I don’t think that YA proto-chick-lit is quite the same as chick-lit aimed at 20-something women. Grown women are able to see the spoofy nature of female insecurities in a way that adolescent girls cannot. I’m not having a go at chick lit here. There are plenty of others who’ll do that.

It’s not just proto-chicklit fiction which does this, anyway. Take a horror story – sort of Twilight, but from when I was at school:

She had bought a new bathing suit for the party. To compete with Clair, however, she should have purchased breast implants.

[This may be thought in jest, but unfortunately it goes unchallenged.]

She couldn’t wait to see the rest of that hard body. She was already investigating types of contraceptives…But there was still that big question – when Bill asked her out. When was that going to be?

[This girl is one of the 'tough' characters in the story, who's not afraid to snub her nose at authority. She knows she wants sex, and will even organise contraception, but she still has to wait for the boy to ask her out.]

- Christopher Pike, The Party (1988)

Girls are particularly vulnerable to the idea that Beauty is All, which is pedalled, sometimes overtly, more often covertly, in much of the literature milking their dollar, in the same way those Dolly magazines milk them, exploiting their insecurities, stroking their egos with one hand and slapping them down with the other.

Related Links:

Talking about how fat we all are contributes to eating disorders.

Here in Australia, eating disorders are at an all time high. 2 % of the population will have an eating disorder at some point. 90% are women. Also in Canada, apparently. Even in India, among upper-class girls.

2 to 5 percent of college students are Bulimic. The ratio of females to males is 10:1.

The “Alternative” Female Actress, and why Hollywood has so few of them.

Do Parents Teach Girls To Worry?

Surprise, surprise, Women Have Fewer Speaking Roles But Show More Skin In Movies

Anxiety Gender Gap: Girls don’t start out more anxious than boys but they usually end up that way.

Sexism In Publishing: It’s about more than just numbers.

Glamour vs Greatness – two books compared, one for boys, one for girls.

Blokes and Books

“I don’t read books. Last shit I read was Goosebumps.” – amazing stud on The Real World

- tweeted by @diablocody

Do teenage boys skip young adult fiction and jump straight to the adult section? It seems that way. Either that, or they often stop reading fiction altogether, never to return.

Why is that?

For those who keep reading, that may be because many boys are into science fiction, in which case they might as well be reading Asimov and Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. There’s little need for specifically YA science fiction. Or is there?

Is it because the young adult genre is romance heavy? Is YA literature really a misnomer? Should we call it ‘teenaged-girl-thru-soccer-mom’?

I’d really like to know what proportion of boys and men are interested in the YA genre. I suspect it’s very low. If boys are reading young adult fiction, it seems to be the heavy reading boys, who are reading YA from about age eight, then moving on to adult fiction as soon as their reading age allows.

Just a hunch.

Related Post: Writing for reluctant readers from Chris Morphew

What Not To Say To YA Authors

There is one question guaranteed to draw a stern response from most people who write for children and young adults:

“Do you have any plans to write a real book?”

It’s not always couched in those words. Sometimes it’s a little more subtle: “Do you plan to write a book for adults at some stage?” Implicit in this is the misconception that writing for younger audiences is not only easier than writing for grown-ups, but that any writer for young people who has aspirations of being taken seriously will, at some point, need to come to grips with “proper” themes. You know, grown-up stuff.

My answer to this question varies, depending on how charitable I’m feeling at the time, but usually I smile and shake my head and answer in the negative. “Writers are like cricketers,” I sometimes elaborate. “You have fast bowlers, leg-spinners, off-spinners, medium pacers, opening and middle-order batsmen, all-rounders, wicketkeepers, each with unique and common skill sets, but every one a cricketer.”

That’s when the questioner usually backs slowly away, murmuring something about it being “just a question”.

- James Roy, from the NSW Writers’ Centre Newsletter

On Exclamation Marks

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.

- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

It makes the writer’s day if he or she can include the opinions of a truly stupid character or text in the story, punctuating those announcements with exclamation points, which are the icing on the cake. This situation is to be found in novels, too, but novelists are less likely to be immensely flattered if you have noticed their needle in the haystack(!). For particularly adept and judicious uses of the exclamation point, see the works of Joy Williams and Deborah Eisenberg.

- The Book Bench

The problem with exclamation marks is that they often have the opposite effect to that intended. When you’re aiming for tense! or amazing! what you end up with is, quite simply, friendly.

pic by Daniel1977

That’s because these days, across the interwebby, exclamation marks are most often used to express friendship, not drama. Especially between women. This open letter to McSweeneys explains it so very well.

One thing is clear

Writers cannot rely soley upon exclamation marks to heighten drama. One writing ‘rule’ I often hear is ‘stay right away from exclamation marks’. But that’s not necessary, nor is it even desirable. Some sentences just don’t hit the right tone without an exclamation mark.

Instead, I think good advice sounds more like: ‘Make JUDICIOUS use of all punctuation – except full-stops, which are not optional.’

So, how to do exclamation well?

It’s hard to write an angry argument scene without any exclamation marks. Here are a few excerpts from the pros.

**SPOILER ALERT**

from Peeling the Onion by Wendy Orr

There’s usually at least one such scene in all young adult literature:

‘You took them out of my drawer! What happened to privacy – or did I lose that along with everything else?’

Mum flares as fast as me; suddenly we’re both screaming. ‘I’m worried about my child’s life and you complain about privacy!’

Then just as suddenly she’s crying. So am I. Crying with messy tears and drippy nose and lots of noise. Because I know which child she means. The one that can open childproof locks. The one who might have been looking for a way out.

And I know I can’t do it. I can’t hurt them that badly.

‘It’s okay, Mum, I promise. I won’t do anything. Promise.’

observations FROM THAT

1. Question marks seem to have an ‘exclamatory quality’ when mixed in with sentences ending in exclamation marks. I might try mixing them up. (Interestingly, an exclamation mark was used here where a question mark would have sufficed. An exclamation on the end of a question is effective too – probably because it’s less expected.)

2. The dialogue is minimal but powerful, and surrounded by dialogue beats which never seem to need exclamation marks, by the way. Modern exclamation only ever seems to be used in dialogue, not narrative).

3. There is a come-down. There’s always a cooling/settling period after an outburst, and the lack of exclamation marks in that piece following is all the more powerful because exclamation points were utilised earlier in the actual fight scene.

p.s. For anyone who thinks there’s a rule against using semi-colons in fiction, Wendy Orr’s book is an example of modern YA fiction in which the semi-colon is used extensively, even in dialogue. Semi-colons are to do with personal style. (And probably editorial style.)

Here’s another example of an argument in which non-use of the exclamation mark is effective:

“Snooping?” Clio repeated. “I went down to tell everyone that lunch was ready, and no one was in there. I walked into the room, I saw the computer, and I touched it. I didn’t use it. I touched it.”

“You expect me to believe that?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go and ask Aidan if there’s anything weird about his computer? And you know what? I expect you to believe me over Julia. I’m your daughter.”

Without realizing it, she had started to yell.

- from Girl At Sea by Maureen Johnson

The last sentence alerts the reader to the fact that the conversation was shouty rather than calm, and in this case telling rather than showing works better.

FROm two girls, fat and thin by mary gaitskill

Here’s a particularly tough scene to write if ever I heard one: A grown daughter tells her mother that she was raped by her father as a teenager.

“Mother,” I said. “I don’t want to go.”

She didn’t look surprised. Her body went into its habitual posture of readiness to receive pain, and then I saw her gather herself to argue with me. She began with the ‘difficulties’ between my father and me. We talked round the fact of what had happened; I felt angrier and angrier. I backed away from my feelings, using the conversation to parry and evade them. Unknowing, my mother cornered me, stripping away my defenses as fast as I could secure them. My feelings pressed against my control like the fists and feet of a baby trying to punch free of the womb.

We paused for a moment. There was a light sweat on my forehead. A thin layer of composure constrained my anger. If she had remained silent only a little longer, the layer might have thickened enough to protect us both, but she said, at that fragile moment: “Can’t you be big enough to forgive him, Dotty? Can’t you stop thinking of your problems just this one time?”

Her face recoiled from my expression, she put her hand to her throat as though in self-protection, and then my words garrotted her. “No mother,” I said, “no I can’t forget about everything but fuck me, again and again. You know, incest? You watch television, don’t you?”

Her face confirmed my worst fear; she was not surprised by what I’d said, but wounded to the death that I’d said it.

Whatever I noticed about Wendy Orr’s scene applies equally to Mary Gaitskill’s scene. In her book, Mary Gaitskill also makes much use of:

1. Detailed Description Of Body Language. Perhaps it is true of abused children that they tend to be hypervigilant of body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and so on. Dorothy Never (the first person narrator) is therefore a perfect example of a person who would be able to recall such details. The details themselves are gutwrenching, and their power would only be sapped by making use of exclamation marks.

2. Metaphorical Language. Here she makes use of an apt simile: ‘My feelings pressed against my control like the fists and feet of a baby trying to punch free of the womb.’

Later on, Gaitskill does make use of exclamation marks in an interesting way. One of the characters gets animated in a cafe, and embarrasses the woman she’s with with her enthusiasm:

“I’m not talking about that hippie free-love merde either. I’m talking about passion between responsible adults.” The shadows on the wall of teh Euella Parks Hotel! The traffic noise outside! The dark-haired girl stared at her as she got up to leave.

In this case, Gaitskill makes full use of the melodramatic qualities of the exclamation mark, which make one character seem crazy obsessive. The fact that the exclamation marks fall outside the dialogue somehow create more of this impact.

Related Post: Bang! How the Exclamation Mark Makes Us Into Comic Book Characters.

The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi

I love this cover. One big image, interesting texture in the background and handrawn-looking text.

In every junior high school class there is a boy — and if he’s very lucky, he’ll have a partner in crime — who is sensitive, intelligent, nerdy and innocent, even beyond his years. He cares deeply about his family and things affect him.

This is Kate de Goldi’s main character, Frankie Parsons, who asks his mother a deeply troublesome question every night at bedtime. You may know a Frankie yourself. He has a love of words, and has even made up a secret language with his best friend (the language is called Chilun) and he hears a constant ‘rodent voice’ which annoys him constantly by rattling away in his head about his daily worries. If you’re familiar with Kate de Goldi’s (actual) voice from her Radio New Zealand slot on Saturday Morning With Kim Hill, you’ll recognise her sense of humour in Frankie and you’ll also recognise that Frankie shares de Goldi’s love of language and literature.

I highly recommend de Goldi’s children’s book talks — you won’t find a more enthusiastic  or articulate proponent of fiction for younger readers.

The 10pm Question is set in contemporary New Zealand rather than in 1970s North America, but reminds me of a Judy Blume novel. Blume also wrote a number of books which were a snapshot of one developmental stage in a teenager’s life. This novel begins almost as abruptly as it begins; we’re plunged straight in and pulled straight out of Frankie’s life, with the assumption that his life will continue, even after we readers have lost our hole-in-the-wall view of it.

Also, as in many of Judy Blume’s novels, Kate de Goldi’s Frankie Parsons struggles to reconcile family issues (illness — mental illness in this case), with problems in his own world of school and peer relationships.

Unlike many of Blume’s characters, Frankie has not yet reached the stage where he is confronted by his sexuality; the relationship between Frankie and Sydney is a platonic one.

At Frankie’s stage of maturity, he hasn’t quite got past the earwax and bogey stage, though by the end of the book he has started to move away from this and into another phase of his life, where a bf/gf sort of relationship with Sydney may or may not be on his mind.

The 10pm Question has recently been included on an American list of Outstanding International Books for children grades 6-8. And thoroughly deserves to be there.

A Cheap Trip Home

If you come from a big town in a big country (let’s say New York or London), you could spend your entire life reading nothing but books set in your own home town. I’m sure you don’t, but you could.

Certainly, if you come from America, you could spend your entire life reading American books and watching American TV, and although there are regional differences within America, those differences probably don’t constitute any sort of barrier.

Then there are those of us who come from very small countries. Those of us from New Zealand are rarely able to sink into a novel written in exactly our own culture. Instead, we develop the ability to deduce meanings from context. Sometimes I wonder how much harder we work. Sometimes I wonder how well I do.

Oh, there are a number of locally produced novels in my own home town of Christchurch, but not a lifetime’s worth. Only a subset of those are set in contemporary Christchurch, and only a smaller subset are grounded firmly in any particular setting. (I have blogged before about Literary Xenophobia.)

That’s why it is such a joy to read a book set locally. Kate de Goldi’s The 10pm Question is set in Christchurch; not only that, it’s set firmly in North West Christchurch, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything — ever — in which the main character follows the same route to school that I once followed to school. (Albeit 15 years ago. Albeit, I think de Goldi’s fictional school is made up.)

It was so nice to open the first page and read about a cat eating ‘Go Cat’ rather than ‘Azmira’, or some other foreign brand I’ve had to guess many times from context. Likewise, Frankie Parsons is eating Just Right for breakfast, and I know exactly what Just Right tastes like, because I have eaten it too. I have never eaten Quaker Oats or Go Lean Crunch; and Cheerios are small red-skinned sausages as far as I’m concerned.

Kate de Goldi’s characters speak like people I know. They use the same phrases. I can really imagine the intonation, not just guess at it from what I’ve seen on TV.

When the Christchurch city library crops up, I know exactly what it’s like to sink into a beanbag in the children’s section because I’ve been there myself:

That was the great thing about the library. It was both teeming with people and very private. Everyone was either busy selecting books or returning them or was sprawled in a beanbag, lost in their own reading world.

I’ve been to Sparks in the Park and I remember certain Christchurch personalities:

Transistor man was IH and listened all day to a large old-fashioned transistor radio held on his shoulder.

In fact, it’s as if I’m a character in the book:

He knew the name of every person they passed by and seemed always to have some connection with them, no matter how minute. He knew someone they played Touch with, or who went out with their cousin, or flatted with their sister or had just dumped their brother.

I know the landmarks, sometimes very well:

Between the College of Ed and the Postal Services Centre they went to Havana and sat outside the heater lamps, waiting for hot chocolate.

I don’t know Havana, but Christchurch weather is less suited to al fresco dining than to sitting hunched outside around heater lamps. I know that culture very well.

I know people who grow trees of ‘black boy peaches’. I come from a family who keeps ‘earthquake water bottles and the bird flu bags of rice and pasta’. I know this book. That’s why I enjoyed it so much more than usual. I didn’t have to do any work.

So last week, just as I was absorbed in a Christchurch-centred book, revelling in its familiarity, it was the opposite of serendipity (zemblanity?) to learn that so much of my beautiful home town will never be quite the same again.

On Smiling

I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.

- OSCAR LEVANT

Sometimes by coincidence you end up reading two books of a similar theme. Or perhaps, because you read the first one, you noticed corresponding themes in the next one that might have otherwise washed right over you.

Last week I read two books:

Peeling the Onion by Wendy Orr, an Australian YA novel, published 1996.

Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich.

This is an American polemic about the incessant pressure to display a positive attitude, and the detrimental effect this requirement can have on the seriously ill, the job-seeking and on the entire world economy. I first heard about this book because of an author interview with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand: The Cult of Cheerfulness. A fascinating listen. (Two astute and articulate older women in one interview. What more could you ask for?)

The theme of unreasonable positivity was echoed in the novel by Wendy Orr. Peeling The Onion, is about a 17 year old girl who is recovering from a car-crash, which wasn’t her fault. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another driver failed to give way, and she was ‘lucky’ not to break her neck. Although she will be permanently impaired, everyone keeps telling her how lucky she is to be alive. This, quite rightly, gets on her wick.

Jenny comes around with a stack of books from her mum: self-healing; do it yourself miracles. I flip through the first one: meditation; understanding your motives for not being well - motives? What kind of motive could you have for pain?

‘Everything that happens, happens for a reason,’ I read. ‘Nothing is an accident’.

So what the hell would you call it?

pp 117-118

Speaking of self-help books, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, was not published until 2006, but Wendy Orr must have seen this wave of Australian self-help positivity coming, from as far back as the mid-nineties as she was writing.

I find these themes really interesting. To what extent should anyone be grateful for what they have? Perhaps one role of prayer (whether you’re religious or not) is to count ‘blessings’ before they evaporate. (Because all blessings are ephemeral – as life itself.) But I’ve always been wary of what I say to someone who has had a spectacular stroke of misfortune. I try not to say ‘Well, it could have been worse.’ There are a whole list of ways in which something could have been worse. ‘You could be dead, for instance’.

Well, that’s never helpful, is it. And who says death is the very worst outcome? Don’t know until you try it. I suspect there are fates worse than death.

Another interesting RNZ interview: Richard Wiseman, author of 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot.

That one’s next on my non-fiction reading list.

SPEAKING OF SMILING

pic by Anemone Riot

Do you know what your face looks like when you’re thinking of nothing at all? Has anyone ever told you?

I’ve been told.

I’ve done several teacher training courses, where trainees are critiqued on everything from posture and enunciation to eye-brow raising, dress sense and whiteboard legibility. So, I have been told that when I’m deep in thought – and feeling neither happy nor sad – I look ‘bored’. This, apparently, is a bad thing and needs to be remedied.

Use a slight smile instead of a poker face. You’ll get further in this life. But if anyone else tells me it’s easier to smile than to look bored, I’ll slap them upside the head. I can tell you for a fact, it takes no effort whatsoever to look bored. Smiling is work. I have also done my time in the service industry, and I remember sore facial muscles after a long hard day of friendly customer service. I always wanted a job where I didn’t have to smile like a vacant fool. (Teaching, alas, is not one of those jobs. I remember sore smiling muscles after parent-teacher interview evenings.)

But, fortunately for me, my first boss felt the same way I did about this smiling matter, which may well be how I got a job in the first place.

My opinion is this: If a teacher strolls about the school grounds smiling, students know the exact moment the teacher’s mood turns. And moods do turn. Better to look permanently neutral and express emotion via words and other body language than to rely entirely upon the facial expression. You don’t want your most difficult high school class to know that exact moment you got angry. You don’t want them to know what sets you off.

Surely that applies in any work place. As much as I wish I were one of those fortunate people with naturally upturned lips, I’ll probably develop a furrowed brow and the permanent stink-eye as I age disgracefully. Thank god for the Barbara Ehrenreichs of this world.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

- Kahlil Gibran

Though I’m far from jolly, I suppose I feel, as I suspect many people do, that they have both had less than their due, but more than they deserve, and always, in my case, a lot of luck. These would nowadays, I suppose, be called ‘positive feelings’, the sort one is supposed to try and generate in ‘the battle against cancer’.

- Alan Bennett, Ups and Downs, Untold Stories

Related Links: Can You Imagine Cancer Away? from CNN Health; More Bad News For The Depressed from The Awl, The Optimism Bias from Time; Thoughts On Living With An Optimist from Persephone Magazine.

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”

— Jane Austen

Adult Characters in Young Adult Stories

“I was in England back [in the 80s and 90s] and you’d get these books for review, and they’re all about this 15-year-old boy who lived in this tower block in London, and his older brother was using drugs, probably heroin. But there was a teacher who believed in him, and even though things weren’t going very well, it was kind of bleak and miserable, but because the teacher believed in him, maybe by the end he was going to be okay, we sort of hoped … And if I read that book once, I must have read it 30 times.”

- Neil Gaiman, in this interview

The To Sir, With Love stories are a bit overdone, to be sure.

Has YA literature gone too far in the other direction? Here’s what makes me groan a bit.

1. UNPLEASANT Foster Carers

Foster care is a disproportionately common device in children’s and YA stories because it’s a good method for getting caring adults out of the way so that the young people can get on and exert some independence. Perhaps this is why, so often, the adults who work as foster parents are cruel and unfair. Even more evil are the people in charge of placing children in foster care. In reality, I think the proportion of warm people working in foster care would be higher than in real life. I’d like to see some well-rounded and caring foster parents in stories.

2. 2D Teachers

So often, teacher characters are either goodies or baddies: Miss Honeys or Trunchbulls. This is fine in Matilda, because Matilda is a children’s book and children see the world in black and white.

But surely young adults are capable of seeing shades of grey in their teachers? And if they can’t – okay, many teenagers can’t see their teachers as real people – is it because teachers are given an unfair treatment in most novels and TV programs?

To make a story, I don’t believe all characters have to be rounded and fully-fleshed. There is a time and place for a cliche/trope/caricature. But I would like to see teacher tropes developed into full characters more often than I do – and not just the young, good-looking teachers, Home and Away style – all teachers have a life outside the classroom.

3. Evil step-parents

I see lots of step-mothers, much younger than the character’s own mother, trying hard (and failing) to bond with the protagonist. Step-fathers are often abusive.

One thing I really liked about the film Juno (script by Diablo Cody, starring Ellen Page) was the character of Juno’s step-mother. Because of all the stories done before, the audience expects Juno’s step-mother to be tyrannical when finding out Juno is up the duff, but it’s the step-mother who gets out her sewing machine and resizes all of Juno’s jeans. It’s the step-mother who sticks up for Juno at the ultrasound appointment.

This is refreshing, because there are so many blended families around, and not all of them involve evil, uncaring, distant, incompetent or malicious step-parents. There are all sorts. Many step-parents play a very big role in the lives of other people’s children.