The teenage wasteland

Earlier today (OK, technically yesterday), an Ebon Butterfly asked me a relatively simple question that sat me back on my heels for a minute, pushed me into memory lane and then sucker-punched me with a sharp jab to my sense of equality in literature. It kinda hurt. And I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I’m passing on my pain on to the rest of you. Two for flinching!

The question asked was: (And this was paraphrased and distilled from several e-mails and clarifications.) Do you remember reading any books aimed at, say 10-20-year-olds featuring a female protagonist who wasn't too flirty/teenager-y or who wasn't too boyish?

The short answer- no.

But here’s a looooooong explanation behind what I DO remember and why I think that is. It is way more info than could be contained in an e-mail, and it isn’t what she was asking for, pre se, and it probably won’t really help her in her current pursuit. But it’s where memory lane dumped me out, and since I was still winded from the trip I decided to look around a bit before wandering on….

What I remember from my middle-to-high school reading adventures was mostly mass-market gender bias and genre pigeon hole-ing.

Guys got the action-y, power-laden fun adventure stories.
Girls got the "Walk in the Park"- types. (You know, the popular/cute guy falls for the outsider girl and she dies of cancer at the end. Or outsider girl comes back to become prom queen.)
There were the cautionary tales starring girls, a la "Hello, My Name is Alice" (drug addiction).
There were the after-school specials like, "The Face on the Milk Carton."
The only real adventures with strong female characters were the detective dramas (a la Nancy Drew, but they were skewed a bit older) and the outright fantasy/horror dramas, think, R.L. Stine, or a PG-13 B-grade horror movie in print.

But while the females were the heroines, they were also mostly damsels in distress, and they were RE-acting; they were fighting off psychos, and they only very rarely proactively went after the "bad guys" or went on solo adventures.

Series books were also popular. Sweet Valley High, The Babysitter's Club, the aforementioned Nancy Drew.... Yes, I read them avidly, and remember them fondly, but after awhile it was like there was a random plot generator somewhere just spitting out various combinations of the same characters, swapping out plots, locations and villains.

When I really wanted a female lead with real power and the wherewithal to use it, I headed straight into the classics (tinged with whatever gender prejudice was popular the decade/century it was written) or to the adult fantasy/sci-fi section. I was tired of being talked down to, so I traded up.

And here’s why I wasn’t finding anything “my age”…

It’s easier to win the lottery, than write a book that hits the best-seller lists.

When it comes to that particular age group, genre often determines gender in whatever you're writing but money talks. Genre books are “safe” and reliable performers in their demographic market, because people know what they are getting and they know already if they like it. It’s the allure of the Brand Name.

So when a publishing house finds something that sells, they ride that horse ‘til she’s dead (and then they usually beat her a few times after that ‘cause they can.) The genre guidelines are tight, because if you stray from the base, you’ll loose your audience. We don’t want new Coke, we want our Classic Coke. After all, Nancy Drew is still solving mysteries, folks. She hasn’t changed a whole lot over the years, but the changes that are made always cause a stir, and some of them have been rescinded because, well, they’re changes, darn it! (Boy, we’re whiny consumers aren’t we?)

Say you're aiming for the middle, the 15-yr-demographic. Mass-market appeal is what's on the TV, in movies, and in the music surrounding us/them everyday. And most kids outside of Hogwarts don’t have spell books, cursed amulets, or evil sorcerers in homeroom with them. (Hmmm, maybe they should.) Most of the teen genre books are basically the author taking what's hip and on TV, and distilling it down to the salient elements. I'm surprised they don't sell product placement in those pages. (Or maybe they do, it's been awhile since I strolled down the teen aisle.)

Pop Culture, not the One Ring, rules them all.

Forget books for a second, look at just the products that are marketed to teens today. It's really gender-biased, all the way down the line. Boys in commercials have cars/bikes, action and sports stars, video games, angst-ridden comic book heroes and powerful anti-heroes. Girls are targeted for make-up, cheerleading, pop starlets, teen hunks, and ultra-cool, omni-texting cell phones so they can gab all the time and everywhere. And never underestimate the power of peer-pressure and the “I-want-what-they-haves” in this age group.

Eowyn who? I wanna be like Paris Hilton, she has cool stuff!

And adult fiction is much the same, don’t get me wrong. You have the wildly popular Chick Lit genre. (See Bridget Jones in all her Ya-Ya glory!) And there are the wildly popular action/thrillers. (Paging Mr. Tom Clancy, the President would like you to tell him how to stop the terrorists now.) There is the legal/medical/cop genre, but as those jobs are gender-biased to begin with (an entirely different rant altogether), it’s obvious who the majority of those protagonists are going to be.

The powerful, female, solo adventurer is still mostly constrained to the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. They can get away with greater gender equity because the characters are placed in un-reality where the "normal" rules don't apply. But sci-fi/fantasy doesn’t (and unfortunately never will) have the audience to be economically anything other than a niche product.

And adults are usually targeted for niche products, not teens. We control the income, and we demand the supply, and we don’t care what the other kids are reading.

There are exceptions that prove the rule and smack everyone upside the head, and say “Look at me! You don’t see me often, but I’m really fun at parties!”

Harry Potter took off in the teen/adult world, and, strictly speaking, it shouldn’t have. Initially at least, it was exclusively distributed as a kid’s book, and so far as kid’s books go, it was a very depressing premise. Can you imagine the full series pitch? “Orphaned boy with a horrible family makes some new friends at a new school, but a savage murderer comes back to life, and he kills lots of people. The lead character will get a Godfather, but he’s gonna have to go on the lam- he’s a convicted murderer who turns into a dog occasionally. You like it?”

But the kids weren’t scared of it, and the darkness that would have killed most any other book in the kid’s section, saved it because it made it palatable to adults.

People who might not normally pick up a "kids book," grabbed this one by word of mouth. (I know I did.) The marketing folks picked up on this quickly, but it was (and actually still is) marketed mostly to the kids. It’s the same with the “Series of Unfortunate Events” books. (Or the Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Narnia….)

It’s a very sticky wicket. These genre-busters, the ones that light the world on fire, they all pull elements from all over the board; they have to, it’s a matter of literary survival. Male/female, happy/sad, action/emotion, it’s all there. What would be the kiss of death and a betrayal of their home genre becomes their only salvation by pulling in the readers of other genres. And the further away from your genre, the wider you have to cast your net for replacements. The hitch is to pull enough from the outside to replace what fell off behind you. And for every successful Harry, there are hundreds of Toms and Dicks out there that have fallen by the wayside.

I think it’s what Neomoniker was referring to about the darkness, Butterfly. The character concept is solid and definitely not cliché. But because it’s not what you normally see, the darkness would pull in some boys to replace the girls who won’t care for an adventuresome heroine.

Soooo, the answer is still, no, I don’t think there are any/many examples of the type of character you’re looking for, at least not that have hit big in the world as it is now. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t think there can’t be, or that there shouldn’t be.

People do win the lottery, after all. It’s what keeps the rest of us playing. So if you need any help scratching off any tickets, let me know.

The Peeps Must DIE!!!!!!

I AM NOT ALONE!!!!

More artsy stuff to look at.

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