Today’s “About the Girls” guest post is from author Elana K. Arnold. She’s here to talk about the idea of “appropriate literature” and how that applies to girls, girls reading, and feminism.
Elana K. Arnold has a master’s degree in Creative Writing from UC Davis. She writes books for and about young people and lives in Huntington Beach, California with her family and more than a few pets. Visit Elana at www.elanakarnold.com.
A few days ago, I got an email. This is what it said:
“My 13 year old daughter is interested in reading your books. I research novels before she reads them to ensure they are age appropriate. Can you please provide me with information regarding the sexual content, profanity, and violence so I can make an informed decision.”
The subject of the email was: Concerned Mother.
I’m not proud to admit that my first reaction was a twist in my stomach, a lurching sensation. Was I attempting to lead her daughter astray, were my books nothing more than thinly disguised smut, or pulp?
And I wasn’t sure how to respond. Yes, my books have sexual content. They have profanity. There is violence. But my books—like all books—are more than a checklist, a set of tally marks (Kisses? 6. Punches thrown? 4.)
Then I began thinking about myself at thirteen, about what was appropriate for me in that year, and those that followed.
When I was thirteen, I read whatever I wanted. No one was watching. Largely I found books in my grandmother’s home library. I roamed the shelves and chose based on titles, covers, thickness of the spines. I read All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (But were afraid to ask). I read The Stranger. I read Gone with the Wind. And I read at home too, of course, and in school—Anne of Green Gables and Bridge to Terabithia and Forever.
Those early teen years were steeped in sex, even though I wasn’t sexually active. In junior high school, there were these boys who loved to snap the girls’ bras at recess. I didn’t wear a bra, though I wished desperately for the need to. I was sickened by the thought that one of the boys might discover my secret shame, reach for my bra strap and find nothing there.
So one day I stole my sister’s bra and wore it to school. All morning I was aware of the itch of it, its foreign presence. I hunched over my work, straining my shirt across my back so the straps would show through.
At recess, I wandered dangerously near the group of boys, heart thumping, hoping, terrified. Joe Harrison did chase me—I ran and yelped until he caught me by the arm, found the strap, snapped it.
And then his words—“What are you wearing a bra for? You don’t have any tits.”
The next year, there was a boy—older, 15—who didn’t seem to care whether or not I needed a bra. We kissed at a Halloween party, just days after my thirteenth birthday. I was Scarlett O’Hara. He was a 1950’s bad boy, cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of his white T-shirt. He was someone else’s boyfriend.
The next day at school, a well-meaning girl whispered to me, just as class was about to start, “If you’re going to let him bang you, make him finger bang you first. That way, it won’t hurt as much.”
Later that year, before I transferred schools when my family moved away, my English teacher told me I was talented, and that he would miss me. Then he kissed me on the mouth.
The next year, a high school freshman, I was enrolled in Algebra I, and I didn’t think I was very good at it. Truthfully, I didn’t pay much attention to whatever the math teacher/football coach was saying up there, preferring to scribble in my notebook or gaze into half-distance, bringing my eyes into and out of focus.
On the last day of class, the teacher called me up to his desk. “You should fail this class,” he told me. “You went into the final with a D, and you got less than half of the questions right.”
I had never failed a class. I was terrified.
“But,” he went on, smiling, “I’m gonna give you a C-, because I like the way you look in that pink leather miniskirt.”
At fifteen, a sophomore, I took Spanish. I raised my hand to ask a question, and the teacher—who liked the students to call him Señor Pistola—knelt by my desk as I spoke. When I finished, instead of answering me he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear a word. I was lost in your beautiful eyes.”
I wasn’t having sex. I had only kissed one boy. But still, I was brewing in it—sex, its implications, my role as an object of male desire, my conflicting feelings of fear and excitement.
Recently, I taught an upper division English class at the University of California, Davis. The course topic was Adolescent Literature. Several of my book selections upset the students, who argued vehemently that the books were inappropriate for teens because of their subject matter—explicit sexual activity, sexual violence, and incest. The Hunger Games was on my reading list, too, a book in which the violent deaths of children—one only twelve years old—are graphically depicted. No one questioned whether that book was appropriate. Of course, none of the characters have sex. Not even under the promise of imminent death do any of the featured characters decide to do anything more than kiss, and even the kissing scenes end before they get too intense.
So I think about the mother who wrote me that email, asking me, Are your books appropriate for my daughter? I think about the girl I was at thirteen, and the girls I knew. The girl who told me about finger banging. The other girls my English teacher may have kissed. The girls who had grown used to boys groping their backs, feeling for a bra strap, snapping it.
I think, What is appropriate? I want to tell that mother that she can pre-read and write to authors and try her best to ensure that everything her daughter reads is “appropriate.” But when I was thirteen, and fourteen and fifteen, stealing my sister’s bra and puzzling over the kiss of the boy at the party, the kiss of my teacher in an empty classroom, what was happening to me and around me and inside of me probably wouldn’t have passed that mother’s “appropriate” test. Still, it all happened. To a good girl with a mother who thought her daughter was protected. Safe.
And it was the books that I stumbled upon—all on my own, “inappropriate” books like Lolita and All You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex—these were the books that gave me words for my emotions and my fears.
Maybe the books I write are appropriate. Maybe they are not. But I think it should be up to the daughters to make that decision, not the mothers. Censorship—even on a familial level—only closes doors. We may want to guard our daughters’ innocence, we may fear that giving them access to books that depict sexuality in raw and honest ways will encourage them to promiscuity, or will put ideas in their heads.
I don’t think our daughters need guardians of innocence. I think what they need is power.
Let your daughter read my books, Concerned Mother. Read them with her. Have a conversation. Tell her your stories. Let her see your secrets, and your shames. Arm your daughter with information and experience.
Give her power.
***
Infandous is available now.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this. You have said everything I haven't been able to figure out how to say to concerned parents, particularly mothers. I am a Teen Librarian at a very busy public library, and I get so many questions from mothers of young girls, particularly those reading at a level far above their age, about the mature content of YA books. I want to tell them to not hold their daughters back, to let them explore and experience through the books they're reading – because it's happening in their lives, anyway.
Do you have any advice for librarians having these kinds of conversations? Ways to encourage daughters to explore and their mothers to let them go, just a little bit, just for the length of a book? The ever-present book challenge is like an axe looming over my head, but is the threat worth it, if a few girls can find the words for what they are already experiencing…?
I'm so glad this piece is meaningful to you.
One thing I tell my own young friends is that a book is a wonderful, safe place to practice saying "No." If a girl is reading something that feels icky or overwhelming or unsafe, she has the power to close the book and put it down. She says, "No." Maybe she will come back to the book later and try it again. Maybe she won't. She has power, and she can choose. No one gets hurt; no one says, "But, really, it's okay, let's keep going, I promise you'll like it."
The girl alone, as Reader, has agency and complete power. Isn't that a practice we all want our girls to develop?
I love this response. Love it. I would insert all my clapping gifs here but the comments are being fussy with my html tags. :/
This is an amazing post. My eternal thanks. I would like to print it out and hand it to parents who ask me this question. No matter how much parents want to protect their children from sex (and you know, further question, why protect instead of educate?), it's all around them in society. I'd rather you, as a parent, have a conversation with your child about sex and dating and all that jazz because of a book than after the fact when something happened and she was scared.
As the unofficial teen librarian, I too have been asked "how much swearing" or "how much sex" and I honestly cannot answer those questions, because when I read, I don't tally them up. I only notice sexual scenes if they seem to me to reflect unhealthy behaviors or beliefs about relationships. Otherwise, it's a part of teen life, and therefore a part of their literature.
My parents were awesome. They told me that they trusted me to read what I thought was right for me. And I felt powerful because of that.
As a parent, I want my kids to have the opportunity to dip into situations and develop a sense about whether it feels safe and good, and to opt out when it doesn't. As a writer, I create these opportunities (whether or not that is my intention). Thanks, Pamela, for reading my essay and responding to it.
This is so fantastic. Thank you for writing it. Phenomenal.
I'm so glad that people are reading this. These are all secrets I've kept, all these things that happen. They erupt occasionally in my fiction, but to name them as my own experiences brings a sensation of rawness and, even, guilt.
Thank you!!
Yes to all of this. Thank you.
Excellent essay. Thanks, Elana.
In my annoyance, I probably would have just said, "If you have to ask, then the answer is no." Thank you for taking that deep breath and saying what really needed to be said.
I love this, thank you.
Great piece. Reminds me of the moral of Rapunzel: You try to protect your daughters from the world, but the world will always get to them. Will they be ready?
Thank you for this. As a librarian one of my greatest frustrations is when parents try to monitor what their children read instead of reading with them or starting conversations. My mother always let me choose what I read as soon as I was older enough to pick out books from the library. I think I'm a better reader for it!
BRAVA, Sister.
"I don’t think our daughters need guardians of innocence. I think what they need is power."
Thank you for this important article. I include approximate age recommendations in the book reviews on my blog, but I also believe that it is vital for tweens/teens to be exposed (safely) to information that encourages them to ask questions and form opinions. These types of discussions ideally should take place with parents and caring teachers. I experienced similar sexual harassment as a child, even up through university when my presentation was interrupted by my professor who thought it was okay to ask me about birth control options (seriously, right in the middle of my presentation that had nothing to do with sex/birth control…what is that all about?).
Thank you! Esp for reminding parents to have the conversation. Vetting books is useless. Ask any good girl;)
YES.
Great post!
Hi Elana!! The LIBR 1a class that I teach at a community college are discussing Banned Books and censorship this week, guess what I will be sharing? Thanks Elana!!
I have been stunned by the response I've gotten on Appropriate Literature, both here and elsewhere. Over and over, women have said to me, Yes, me too. Yes, this resonates. This speaks to me. Yes.
A man wrote to me to apologize on behalf of all bra-snappers, everywhere.
Some women wrote that when they were growing up, their parents let them read freely, and that the freedom they had in books armed them and filled them up. Some said their parents had NO IDEA what kind of books they were reading, but they snuck them and read them anyway. Some wrote to say that they started to read one book or another, and then set it down when it felt too scary or too heady or too whatever.
When I wrote this essay, one line troubled me… the last. Give them power. In an ideal world, power wouldn't have to be given. It would be a birthright. That's what I want for my readers and my daughter. For all the readers and all the daughters. Power that isn't given, or taken.
Thank you all for your replies, postings, and conversation. I feel hopeful and glad hearted.
Brilliant and so very true. I read what I wanted from an early age. Nobody vetted my books. Coming from an abusive childhood, the thing those books did for me: give me hope, remind me that I wanted to be a writer, remind me that other worlds, lives, possibilities existed. They gave me the power to keep going. They kept me alive.
Oh wow! I have absolutely no words, except to say I have no idea who you are but I *LOVE* you!!!!!! As the mother of a now 19 year old daughter, I *NEVER* made any book off-limits. NEVER. I might've made it difficult for her to get her hands on (i.e. 50 Shades of Gray when she was 15 or 16), but I NEVER censored her reading material. If I had been unsuccessful with being devious about keeping 50 Shades out of her hands, I would've taken a deep breath and then made myself available for questions. But I would NEVER EVER EVER tell my kids they can't read something. I also have a 10 year old boy, and same rules apply.
Am I/Was I uncomfortable with some of the things she read or that my son will read? YOU BET! And then I think back to what *I* read at that age. I was probably 14 when I read "Flowers in the Attic" and learned about incest for the first time. Yeeps! I think I was 15 when I read "Forever." My first smutty romance novel was at roughly the same age. Was I sexually active? Nope. Did it result in early sexual promiscuity? Nope. I waited until I was 19 for my first "complete" sexual experience and it (surprisingly) ended up being with my husband. Was I confused about any of this? Nope. In fact, like you, it gave me tools for understanding some of the inappropriate "contact" I had with creepy old men who should be ashamed of themselves. Yuck!
Education is power, and there's something to be learned in almost every book I've ever read. Yup…even the really smutty novels that you want to read on your e-reader so you can lie and tell your friends you're reading "War and Peace."
So… I have no idea who you are off the top of my head, but I'm off to google you and check out what you've written. I hope you've written something that appeals to boys, since that's all I have left in my household. 🙂
Oh, how I hate hearing that word, especially when people fail to recognize that it's dependent on a preposition to have any real meaning. "Appropriate" means nothing on its own. And also, to the piece as a whole, WOW. I cannot wait to read your book and then to give it to my students.
from USA, Three weeks ago I and my boyfriend had a conflict, so with that he broke up with me saying he no longer wanted to associate with me anymore, I never knew he was interested in working out his marriage with another girl, I was helpless because I loved him so much more than myself, after begging and pleading with him I realized it was out of my hands, he really was leaving me, I could not stay without him, I tried to figure things out with him but he is not listening me, he told me that he is no longer interested that I should look for someone else, I tried all my best but things were not working out, so I had no choice than to look around for help, I went into search of spell caster to help me bring him back to me with the help of spell and after searching I actually finalize to work with (maduraitemple@yahoo.com) in regards of my lover. after 3 days as Dr Madurai told that my lover will return. my lover returned in surprising way, I was chocked and was so happy I can’t say how much I’m grateful, My lover not only came back to me, but has left his other girl and now has engaged me, we are getting married next month, I don’t know what I would have done without this spell caster you can contact him today {maduraitemple@yahoo.com}. is spell is for a better life.
This is amazing/awful, thanks for sharing!
I was a fat kid, and boys didn't even like me until I lost the weight the summer before sophomore year. Even then, I was just the nerdy girl who guys were friends with, but never had crushes on. It was kind of awful, but I'm glad I had my awful instead of this. Why are people so clueless about what's appropriate? So, anyway. First kiss at 16, no sex until college. And I read VC Andrews starting at age 11, and Forever by Judy Blume around that time.
My eight year old is a really advanced reader, so sometimes she reads scary things, but then we discuss them. If she finds stuff she isn't ready for she tells me.