There are a lot of times I feel like we’re not having enough of the “right” conversations regarding representation, and one of most frustrating things to me is the way we discuss feminism in YA. While I do appreciate that sex-positivity is such a big part of the conversation, as it is something I am very pro, I’ve spent a lot of the past couple years feeling like that’s almost all of the conversation. (YA Feminist Chat, run by Justina Ireland, did cover several of the below topics; I definitely don’t want to erase that!)
(I also have a problem with how tremendously heteronormative* that conversation has been. Not only does that make it something that revolves around something requiring a guy**, but I also found when I wrote a post on YA Romances that pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test that I had to go through waaaay more m/f romances to find ones that passed than I did f/f. And before you say, “Of course, because the MC and LI conversing in that case would help them pass,” I only used books in it that passed via the MC and a non-love interest.
*And, as author Laura Tims pointed out when we discussed this on Twitter, allosexual-normative, as it leaves asexual feminists out in the cold as well. She also made other really great points, such as how sex-positivity benefits guys, so it’s not exactly shocking or super-impressive when they’re on board with this particular trait of feminism.
**Except when we’re talking solo sex, which is definitely a conversation I support. Was gratified to see it prominent in three YAs I read this year: The F-It List by Julie Halpern, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler, and Even When You Lie to Me by Jessica Alcott.)
PS: read Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, because we shouldn’t be having any conversations about sex-positivity in YA without it.
I also think it means there are far too many things we’re not talking about, and therefore are not acknowledging are also parts of feminism.
Why aren’t we talking more about supportive girl-friendship in YA, and how few books feature it centrally?
(Some Existing Examples:The F-It List by Julie Halpern, Open Road Summer by Emery Lord, Just Like the Movies by Kelly Fiore, The Revenge Playbook by Rachael Allen, Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee, Run by Kody Keplinger, and, not to be a tool, but Just Visiting by me)
Why aren’t we talking more about how few YAs feature girls with particular passions in STEM fields, or business, or any other fields we see are still very much struggle with accepting women?
(SEE: Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky, Nearly Gone by Elle Cosimano, Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee)
Why aren’t we talking more about how few sports romances in both YA and NA feature female athletes?
(SEE: Most of Miranda Kenneally’s books, Being Sloane Jacobs by Lauren Morrill, Game.Set.Match. by Jennifer Iacopelli, Scoring Wilder by R.S. Grey, The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen, and Kulti by Mariana Zapata)
(This, by the way, is why I love ballet books despite having no interest in ballet – I think they absolutely kill it across the board in terms of showing raw ambition, power, and endurance in girls in a way we don’t see with any other occupation.
SEE: Pointe by Brandy Colbert, Second Position by Katherine Locke, Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton, The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma, Up to This Pointe by Jennifer Longo, How it Feels to Fly by Kathryn Holmes)
Why don’t we have at least one major cheerleading book in YA or NA, something that takes a female-dominated sport stereotyped as fluffy and shows how much strength and endurance it really requires, a la Bring it On or Sweet Valley High books 112-114?
Why aren’t we talking more about the stunning lack of support for f/f books, despite the fact that they revolve entirely around girls?
(SEE in YA: If You Could Be Mine and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan, Far From You by Tess Sharpe, pretty much everything by Malinda Lo and Robin Talley, Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley, Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow, The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie, Georgia Peaches by Jaye Robin Brown, Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst)
SEE in NA: Black Iris and Cam Girl by Leah Raeder, The Good Girls by Teresa Mummert, Take Them by Storm by Marie Landry, The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer)
Why aren’t we talking more about different kinds of mother figures in YA and what their choices mean for the female main characters?
(SEE: The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding, The Right Side of Wrong by Jenn Marie Thorne, Me, Him, Them, and It by Caela Carter, How to Love by Katie Cotugno, Life By Committee by Corey Ann Haydu, The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos)
Why don’t we have more books in which girls embrace their body type, including when that type is fat?
(SEE: Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy, This Much Space by KK Hendin)
Why do we so strongly embrace Fantasy with physically powerful girls, but not contemporary?
(SEE: Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley, Bruised by Sarah Skilton, The Distance From Me to You by Marina Gessner)
Why aren’t we screaming about titles featuring intersectionality from the rooftops?
(SEE: Pointe by Brandy Colbert, Vanished by E.E. Cooper, Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton, Black Iris and Cam Girl by Elliot Wake writing as Leah Raeder, The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie, Huntress by Malinda Lo, Far From You by Tess Sharpe, If You Could Be Mine and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan, Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace, Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz)
Why do we think “feminine” is the opposite of “fierce,” and “feminist” the opposite of “soft”? Why do find characters who wield a sword but have a soft side to be unbelievable? Why do girls have to be all one thing to believable? Why do they have to have masculine traits to be bought as powerful?
Why don’t we talk more about internalized misogyny and the ridiculousness Cool Girl expectations so beautifully delineated by Gillian Flynn in Gone Girl (and shown excellently in its teen girl evolution in Love and Other Theories by Alexis Bass)? (Also expressed in this really great post by Meagan Rivers.)
Why are we not having all these conversations nearly enough, and yet expecting things to get better?
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I actually wanted to start a discussion regarding Firsts- I have so many things to say about it. I’m not one that usually brings up feminism or sex significance in books, but I thought that Firsts brought up so many questions that it just couldn’t be ignored. Like, why was Mercedes being blamed when she wasn’t cheating on anyone? And why was Faye’s “mistake” completely understandable, and not at all to the magnitude of Mercedes’? There’s a lot to talk about, but I was wondering if I could do that when I rated it so poorly.
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One point I’d add to the “supportive female friendships” point is “supportive sisterhoods,” whether biological or not. One book I published a few years back, Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, isn’t about romance at all–it’s about 5 sisters and their relationship with each other as they take an epic road trip to return a dead man to his family in Mexico. One critique that book got in a few corners (thankfully not too many) was that it felt more MG than YA because there was no romance. Well, no. The main character, however, was 15, and had other things on her mind at the moment, such as making sure her little sisters weren’t killed by lechuzas or a chupacabras. Some books *should* be more about those female relationships than about romance, and that’s okay. YA has room for books that don’t involve romance.
i find it strange that people categorize books based on “what they should have eased on the genre” rather than the truth of the story at hand. Yes, young adults do experience romance, but that’s not the entirety of their teen story. Shoving a romance into a book where it doesn’t belong is how we get bad writing. I just don’t get it.
I think it’s important to have more representation of all the things you mentioned because EVERYONE likes to see themselves in a book, no matter what their interests are. I’m seeing more and more variety in YA, but I also find myself frustrated that it can be so badly represented (I have yet to read a book that was about a female MC in fandom culture that didn’t end up portraying her as a harpy or her interests as a horrible phase).
Ohhh I really hope you pick up GENA/FINN when it comes out in April; I think it will make you so happy.
We need more masculine girls who are just emotionally distant, can swing around a sword, but are otherwise gorgeous, destined for a pretty ball gown scene, and the source of all the male characters’ desire. I would like to see some truly gruff female characters, short hair, athletic, and yes, perhaps liking girls, perhaps being proudly butch. I never see butch lesbians in even LGBT YA because people think it’s “stereotypical” which isn’t fair at all to real life butch girls …
Anyway, yeah, people say female protagonists are all masculine but that’s not really true…female protagonists tend to not be masculine or feminine, but like the perfect doll girl who doesn’t act like a real human being. Feminine or masculine or in between I would really just like to see girls who act like human beings rather than concepts like “Badass Strong Female Character.”
YA needs way more f/f romance and friendship, too, agreed. So much more. WELL-WRITTEN f/f. Again, not existing as token concepts, but reading like real people. More trans girls, more lesbian and bi trans girls. More asexual girls. More nonbinary girls. More…LGBTQ girls.
I think we need more serious artist/writer girls just as we need more STEM girls and athlete girls.
(Oh, and thank you for pointing out how so much sex-positive feminism is catered to guys…Ahem.)
You raise some great points. We need to broaden the YA spectrum.
This is such a great post and I agree so much with it, especially the part about female friendship. It does usually stand out to me how few books I read with very strong female friendships. The ones I do read are usually really great (with Just Visiting being one of my favorites). Also, as someone who is a biochemistry major, I would also like more books with people interested in STEM. Also, what you said about ballerina books is interesting, since I did ballet all through high school. I just did it mostly recreationally and for fun, with no intent to do anything with it after high school. But what you said about the ambition involved in it is something I definitely see in my sister, who is a very motivated ballet dancer. So it’s interesting that you see that in the books about ballet too.
Beautifully said. Thank you.
~SAT
Why aren’t there more books about girls who are actively engaged in the feminist movement? Who are writing feminist essays, doing feminist art (full disclosure:my book Audacious is about that) or starting feminist campaigns?
Why do more girls in books not take down misogynists, point out their flawed thinking, their offensive rhetoric?
As for supportive female friendships, that was not my experience in high school, nor was it the experience of many feminists I know. So some of my books reflect that.
That last point, the qualities a girl has, is something that grinds my gears too. (I have a whole blog post’s worth of thoughts on it so I’m not going to post them here…especially since I already wrote that post.) Honestly if we could get past the point where many writers find it hard to “write women” (and to be fair, there are a lot of other character types that are different than the writer that the writer has a hard time writing, including villains) because they think that a particular character is so different from themselves and don’t have the same basic human traits pretty much everyone has, this wouldn’t be such a problem…
Great post, Dahlia! So many questions, one simple answer: not enough women care! ‘Feminist’ is still a bad word.
I don’t think think that’s true at all in the YA community at all, actually; I think a lot of YA authors – the ones having these conversations – all very proudly ID as feminist. I think we’re just missing a lot of the points on what constitutes feminism, and it’s being bolstered based on a few unique ideals and not as many as it could be.
I think before you can truly ask these questions with a real answer in mind we have to separate books that are truthful (great books) and mass produced crap publishers push out riding on the coat tails of a hit.
Great books should not include anything that isn’t true to the character. So making the MC homosexual or transgender just to make readers feel included would be wrong. because then it’s pandering. However, making the MC straight because you’d have a wider audience is also wrong. Hell, including romance just because it seems to be the
“it” plot line is wrong if the story should and needs to do without it.
I just tossed a book with a MC that was a blogger, seemingly smart and well balanced—until she knocked on her (new) neighbors door and fell in “instalove” with a guy who was a “douchebag”. I mean he berated her treated like a dried up pile of dog crap and in less in 16 percent of the book she bashed her (obviously) sexually attractive looks, wore a tiny bikini to impress the guy who was taking her into a remote wooded location after repeatedly telling her he disliked her and making aggressive sexual innuendos. I screamed a real life set up for “date rape”. He was essentially grooming her for that. That was the real life story…but the book story of course dealt with the MC being in love with him and him continuing to emotionally abuse her in a way that has become socially acceptable (and lusted after) over the last few years.
I totally get what you mean. Why do we have books like this instead of a book where girls have self respect and work through a world where they demand others treat them with the same respect they intend to treat others. But I consider books like this a travesty, not because of the poor themes and the way this girl is represented, but because it’s bad writing. It wasn’t an authentic story…it was a mix between a fantasy and bad fan fiction. It wasn’t The honest or true story that should have been written on the page.
I don’t think we should ever have stories on shelfs that work to support any kind of theme or cause (that being feminism or any think fulfilling the authors/readers needs). We should only have stories that tell their truths. If that is centered around a transgender cool, if it’s centered around a girl who has issues with her body cool. As long as it is honest. Because through honesty we get true reflection and growth. If we just use ploys to support a cause, you get the random black girl character thrown in to who how “diverse” the author is being.
Anyway…there was a point somewhere in this mini novella. (haha)
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but I guess I’m not clear on how it applies to this post. Of course I think we have to separate out the good books; that’s why I recommended a bunch of them within. And none of this is about what I think people need to insincerely jam into their work; why would it be? This is about the conversations I think we need to have about what constitutes feminism, what books already exist/are coming soon that we don’t hail as feminist but should, and the way we have a certain conversation in general. It’s not even about diversity, specifically, and it’s certainly not telling anyone what to write.
Yeah, I was a little unclear. I was (poorly I really should have drinking my tea before reading anything) pointing out how hard it is to ask these questions of books without pigeoning them into a category they might bot have meant to be in, or without asking writers to start writing certain kinds of characters (or guilting them out of writing the “norm”).
I didn’t mean to imply you would or want to do that. I think I confused your meaning because you mean “lets take this book and ask these questions” vs “look at all these books that don’t have these qualities, why?”
I’m glad I came across your post though because I’ve been having a LOT of issues with the way girls are portrayed in my genre based out of formula rather than good story writing. And instead of just having bland characters I’m finding a lot of female MC’s with little to no self respect being regarded as the new “norm” of being, and as and author I want to change that, and as a reader I want books that show emotionally balanced girls. (Well there is always room for self doubt—but not to the extremes we see today.)
(^_^) sorry I’m usually a lot more concise, I swear today is obviously not one of those days!
Haha I know those days, and like I said, there’s nothing in your comment I disagree with. I think it’s important to take note of how girls are written in every genre, and also of how they relate to other girls. I see books and authors very loudly hailed as feminist and it honestly stuns me how often these books feature no positive female-female (or female-non-binary) relationships; they’re just very strong independent women, which, yes, is a kind of feminist too. But especially in YA, describing teen years, when friendships (or the sadness/confusion of NOT of being able to maintain friendships) are so vital, I can’t stand how we completely erase the importance. And I really do love the books I’ve rec’d here, so I hope those give people good ideas of how to do these things well!
I’ve definitely added quite a few of tour recommended books to my list (^_^)/