Segregated Readers?

Author Shannon Hale recently experienced sexist behavior from school administrators who allowed only girls to attend her author visit, based on the wrongful assumption that Hale's children's books were only appealing to girls and that boys have no interest in reading about girl protagonists. Hale expressed her fury over the inexcusable omission of boys from her program in a recent blog post:

I heard it a hundred times with Hunger Games: "Boys, even though this is about a girl, you'll like it!" Even though. I never heard a single time, "Girls, even though Harry Potter is about a boy, you'll like it!"

Hale decries "the belief that boys won't like books with female protagonists, that they will refuse to read them, the shaming that happens (from peers, parents, teachers...) when they do, the idea that girls should read about and understand boys but that boys don't have to read about girls, that boys aren't expected to understand and empathize with the female population of the world...." 

I read her blog post to my teenage writing students and evoked some poignant reactions:

Two boys admitted to reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars "kind of anonymously" because they read the book in public on e-readers. They said that kids generally considered  TFIOS a "romance," "an emotional book," or a "cancer book"--mainly for girls. But they both liked the story a lot and found it very touching, even though a bit "cheesy" in some ways.

One girl observed that every female protagonist read by the boys she knows "seems like a tomboy, never a girly girl." She cited numerous titles, all adventure stories, and pointed out that "some boys are okay with reading about girls as long as they're in an action novel."

Another boy declared that he likes well-written books with compelling plots and pays no attention to the sex of the protagonist, but he does admit that a book with a girl on the cover, or a romantic scene on the cover, is "kind of embarrassing to carry around. That's why I like my Kindle."

One boy recalled at least one teacher describing a book as "more of a girl's book." I asked how he felt about that, and he and the others joked that "some teachers think they know what we'll like, but they don't." I joked that I hoped I wasn't one of those teachers. They shook their heads (and I hope that meant I am not out of touch with their tastes!).

All of the kids agreed that the boy Shannon Hale wrote about in her blog, who approached Hale after her talk and asked for a copy of one of her books, and who was subsequently told that the only available copy of that particular book was now in the school's library, would "never check out that book unless no one was around." The title had the word "princess" in it, if I recall correctly. They all said that it was "sad, but true" that he would be too embarrassed to read her work openly.

We had a heated discussion of Hale's point about how gender-segregation in Young Adult literature teaches boys not to care about or empathize with girls so that they grow up into men who ignore or dismiss the feelings of women and, in extreme cases, abuse women during their adult years. Some thought that her connection was over-the-top, and that most of the negative brainwashing of boys and men with regard to girls and women comes from other media: rap and hip-hop music, advertising, movies, and TV. But the majority of these teenagers seemed to ponder this cause-effect concept seriously. The thoughtful looks on their faces indicated that they had never considered books a possible negative influence on sexist behavior.

The kids seemed to appreciate this discussion and the writing exercise on the topic. They always seem to enjoy when I share issues about writing and publishing that they, as nonprofessional writers (for now, anyway!), would not otherwise know about or have a chance to discuss. I think they consider my sharing of professional articles from my field as a kind of "insider information." Information that is, of course, non-gender specific!

Sharing Words from Teacher Heaven

I am in Teacher Heaven after reading an absolutely brilliant literary response to this quotation from H.G. Wells: "Advertising is legalized lying." This young author has been fascinated by our previous lessons on the subtleties of word-spinning, as seen in ads for products and political campaigns. He has synthesized much of our discussions in this lively, wry essay on advertising. And his essay structure outshines many high school, even college-age, writers. The only editing I did--I swear!--is to alter some misspelled words and delete one superfluous phrase. The vocabulary and information about obscure plants, etc., are all his! I provided nothing, in terms of the information he shared, except for the initial prompt by H. G. Wells.

Legal Lying

 by D.S., age 10 

H.G Wells once declared that advertising was simply legalized lying. In many cases, his statement is completely true, but to understand why, we will have to take a journey back in time to around 4000 BC, the time of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. In the large cities of these ancient civilizations, merchants crowded together in marketplaces and inevitably competition arose. This competition sparked the roots of modern ads. In an environment where people had their choice of where to shop, instead of depending on one sole shopkeeper, the merchants had to squabble over the stream of revenue that came into the marketplace. As the marketplace rapidly expanded, the merchants would have to convince shoppers to buy at their stall. Soon, shrewd shopkeepers found out how to present their product in the most favorable way possible, namely by omitting some important information. In this way, "Discounted Week-Old Cabbage" was discarded in favor of "Cheap Value Cabbage." Advertising, and its association with lying, was born. Meanwhile, in archaic England, the first advertising had taken a slightly different path. Shops began to hang wooden signs outside of buildings to publicize their establishments and to clarify what they did. For example, a wooden board with a drink on it would be a pub, or a hammer and nails would mean Carpenter, and so on, and so forth. The great-granddaddy of the classifieds in the newspapers of today were born.

Let us fast-forward now to the 16th century. The first paid ads are beginning to pop up in the newspapers of the time. The most shrewd of the advertisers have realized that the public believes that the newspapers are to be trusted and that many people read them, so, taking advantage of the lust for money that many people possess, they paid advertisers money in order to let their ads reach a wider audience. This was also when people began to realize that the products in ads weren’t exactly what they claimed to be. By the time Mark Twain rolled around, "quack" medicines featured in "quack" magazines and paid testimonials had already begun to crop up around the Western world. Admakers and entrepreneurs were really little more than scammers who took advantage of the public`s gullibility to sell products with grand names like Revalenta Arabica, which took advantage of the obscurity of the name in order to attract customers into thinking that it was some new scientific wonder, which was, in fact, simply dried lentil flour with the nutritional value of ground split peas. In the face of this, people like H.G Wells slowly began to realize the true nature of advertising.

Let us now move to the early 20th century. In the face of increasing public pressure, lawmakers began to take steps towards limiting and restricting advertising. Before the turn of the century, advertisers were required to state any harmful information or anything negative associated with the product. But once again, admakers found a way around the restrictions. At the turn of the century, we arrive at our predicament today.

Many of you, I am certain, have seen the fine grey print that seems to haunt the bottom of every ad site, or heard the speed-talk at the end of commercials. This is what has become of the efforts to stem the onset of false advertising. The truth is hidden away nearly out of sight to the common consumer. What is happening today is like governing mining with laws written when there was still a man shaking a pan over a stream--if you are an adult not in prison, you can stake a claim. Companies can comply with the law by hiding the information NEARLY out of sight, and still do perfectly legal actions. So, at the end of this long journey, H.G Wells turned out to be right. But all we can do for now is keep our eyes open and ears sharp for the legal lying all around us.