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Feminism in Contemporary YA Fiction: Guest Post by Trish Doller (Where the Stars Still Shine)

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With all of the talk of gender and feminism over the last year and some change here at Stacked and in other venues, it seemed only fitting we’d have a post about feminism in contemporary YA fiction. Because Trish’s latest book Where the Stars Still Shine hit on many things I’ve been thinking about when it comes to female sexuality, autonomy, and more, I had to ask if she’d write about this topic. So she’s here today to talk about what it is to be a feminist writer and what it is to tackle feminist topics within a realistic novel — and maybe even beyond. 

We’ll have one more guest post tomorrow as our final piece in the contemporary YA week-and-a-half series, and it is in great conversation not just with Trish’s piece, but with many of the other posts that came through the series — and beyond.

Trish Doller is the author of Something Like Normal, Where the Stars Still Shine, and the book formerly known as Arcadia Falls. When she’s not writing, she’s goofing off on tumblr. But don’t tell her publisher, okay? 

A couple of months ago, Lauren Myracle and I did a chat together on twitter and during the chat she asked me if I considered myself a feminist writer. The question took me aback because I’d never really thought about it. I wasn’t sure. In Something Like Normal, Harper isn’t the main character but a love interest who can stand up to a broken boy. She is kind––both to herself and others––but also not afraid to say what needs to be said. 
So I thought…maybe I am a feminist writer? 
Then I considered Callie in Where the Stars Still Shine, a girl who is openly reclaiming her sexual agency in the aftermath of abuse. It contains the sexiest scenes I’ve ever written and I was worried because what kind of message would I be sending to teenage girls? But here’s the thing: that is the message. Sex is for girls, too. Where the Stars Still Shine advocates for sex that is responsible, but also enjoyable, especially when it’s a partner who is respectful of your boundaries and thoughtful of your needs. And I’m never going to apologize for that message.
So, yeah, I am working my way toward being a feminist writer. 
Except in my upcoming novel, readers will meet Cadie, a girl who––in the wake of her mother’s death––has spent a good portion of her teenage years looking after herself and her home, and raising a little brother. Cadie is a resourceful girl, a brave girl––the kind of girl who passed her Wonder Woman doll on to her brother, along with a conversation about how all toys are for all kids. She knows her mind (see above: agency) and she fights her own battles––even when her life is at stake.
So, yes, Lauren Myracle! Yes! I am a feminist writer.
But honestly? I didn’t set out to write this post about me. I set out to write about authors like Lauren Myracle, whose The Infinite Moment of Us is a brilliant example of feminist young adult fiction. It’s probably one of the sexiest books I’ve ever read, but Charlie and Wren discuss condoms and HIV testing as part of a bigger conversation about the what, when, where, why, and how of their first sexual experience together. All while wrapping it in a breathtaking, swoony romance. I joke that when I’m nervous about what I’m writing I’ll ask myself What Would Lauren Myracle Do? and then I do it. But it’s not really a joke. When you’re caught in the thrall of first love it’s so easy to get swept up in the moment (no pun intended) so I love the deftness and sensitivity Myracle employs in handling responsibility and waiting for the right time. 
Another of my favorite feminist authors is Siobhan Vivian. The List is a thoughtful examination of beauty and how perception––external and internal––shapes self-esteem in teenage girls. While I think Vivian didn’t have enough page space to delve deeper into each character, I think the book makes a great springboard for further discussion––something I plan to do with my young adult book club. I also loved Vivian’s Not That Kind of Girl, which not only takes a hard look at slut shaming, but also overturns the idea that a strong girl isn’t made weak because she falls in love. 
There’s been a lot of controversy over Bennett Madison’s September Girls is feminist or misogynistic. And I’ll admit…when I first read it, I was put off by the sexist behavior of virtually guy in the book and the way DeeDee called every girl a ho. Except these are the messages bombarding teenagers daily, telling them what it means to be a man or a woman. The pressure is immense and, like it or not, these messages shape them––shape us––into imperfect and sometimes terrible beings. I think the genius of September Girls is the way Madison’s characters navigate their way through the false messages to discover on their own what it means to be a man or a woman. Or, a mermaid? Of course, the other debate here is whether or not September Girls is actually contemporary or paranormal because the summer girls are mermaids, right? Or are they metaphor? 
One of my favorite books––feminist or otherwise––is Simmone Howell’s Everything Beautiful with a main character whose weight problem isn’t solved by the end of the novel. Riley owns her fat body. She loves her body. She falls for a boy who thinks she’s beautiful. (Who, by the way, is in a wheelchair. You go, Simmone!) And while Riley begins the story with a prickly personality––rooted in her mother’s death two years earlier––as she slowly lets down her guard, she realizes other people love her, too, fat body and all.
Finally I really can’t write about feminist books without mentioning E. Lockhart, whose entire body of work is supported by a spine of feminism. While I’m eagerly awaiting her upcoming We Were Liars, I’ve been re-reading some of her backlist, including The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks, which gives readers so much to think about when it comes to class and gender privilege. And I think it looks at feminism in a realistic way as Frankie learns feminism means more than just having what boys have––and eschewing “girly” pursuits––and that the road to social justice can be pretty damn frustrating.
Very soon––I hope––I will be finished with the book formerly known as Arcadia Falls and when that happens I’m going to need some great feminist YA reads. Any suggestions?

When We Talk About “Girl Problems”

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My problems might be superficial on a global scale, but they’re real to me. 
— Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
One of my favorite quotes in YA fiction is the one above. It’s one I’ve thought long and hard about, and part of the reason is that it captures one of the reasons I love realistic YA fiction so much. On the global scale, problems about boyfriends or about parents or even about the “tougher” stuff — drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and so forth — are fairly superficial. Few of the stories presented in realistic YA make a huge impact globally. They’re in the here and now, but that doesn’t at all discredit their importance and immediacy to the characters who are telling the story.

Amanda Nelson wrote a really great post over at Book Riot recently about her conflicted feelings for Elizabeth Gilbert (most well-known for her Eat, Pray, Love) that struck a chord with some of what I’ve been thinking about lately in regards to YA fiction and more specifically, the problems that girls encounter in YA fiction. It’s a short post, but the heart of it for me was this:

I have CONFLICTED FEELINGS about Elizabeth Gilbert. I read Eat, Pray, Love, and while I thought her actual putting-words-in-sentences-in-nice-and-interesting-ways WRITING was really good, the subject matter was so annoying that I ended up turning my nose up at the book. A wealthy American white lady complaining about…what, exactly? The spirituality-lite? Leaving her husband because she doesn’t want to be married, then spending the rest of the book talking about men? Ergh.
Except I could deal with it, apparently, because I didn’t fling the book away in disgust or even irritation. I finished it, thought about it, talked about it with other readers. Realized that judging the seriousness of someone else’s problems and the sincerity of their spiritual expression was probably a personality flaw of mine. Changed a little–all because of a book I kinda sorta didn’t even like.

What the wealthy white American lady complains about is the heart of the book and the heart of the criticism people have for this particular book. Gilbert’s memoir is about how she was working through the spiritual and personal aspects of a changing relationship that had, at one time, meant a lot to her but now had left her feeling something different. Amanda nails her own biases here in a way that many readers don’t or don’t think about when they approach a book like Gilbert’s — she judged the seriousness of the problems in the book, rather than reading and considering the book on its own merits.

This is where I see a huge link to what many readers do when it comes to YA fiction, particularly realistic fiction about teen girls. Their problems become disposable, collapsable, and easily judged by the reader. Their problems aren’t considered as global or with any heft. They’re seen as silly and it’s almost an insult to even be compared to a teen girl. Because whatever they’re feeling or experiencing isn’t legitimate or worthy of consideration or attention.
This video is a shining example of what I’m getting at. The standout moment for me is what she has to say here:

People don’t wanna be compared to the teenage girl; the teenage girl is hated, teenage girls hate themselves. If you listen to a certain kind of music, or if you express your emotions in a certain kind of way, if you self harm, you write diaries, all those kind of activities are sort of laughed at and ridiculed because they’re associated with being a teenage girl. Even just things like being cripplingly self conscious or overly concerned with our appearance, that’s considered like a teenage girl thing and therefore its ridiculous, it’s stupid, it’s not relevant or legitimate, and you know, what we needed at that age was legitimisation and respect and support but all we got was dismissal and “oh you’re such a teenage girl.

This is precisely what we do when we’re reading about teenage girls as much as when we’re actually interacting with teenage girls. We call their problems — the real, honest, painful, tough things they’re experiencing — “typical girl problems.”

What does that even mean? What’s a typical girl problem? What’s a typical girl? What’s a typical problem? What puts the line between a “typical girl problem” and a book that’s published featuring a male main character going through “typical boy problems?” What’s a “typical boy problem?” And why is it that “typical boy problems” are considered Literary as opposed to throw away, fluff, or otherwise light reading that “just some book about typical girl problems” can be?

I’m not sure I have answers to any of these questions. And I know for a fact that I’ve used lines like “typical girl problems” in my own reviews to describe what’s going on in a character’s life. But the longer I think about it and consider it, the less that line makes sense and the more it sort of frustrates me as someone who not only loves books about “typical girl problems,” but as someone who loves working with teen girls. I think about this in light of what it might mean to be an unlikable/complicated female protagonist in YA and what it means when a girl learns about her own ability to make choices for enjoying her body and sexuality.

Are we scared that by legitimizing the issues girls face that they might learn to like themselves or that they might find themselves valuable and worthwhile despite not having global problems to work through? 

Rather than offer up answers — I can’t — I thought instead it’d be worth looking through some of the common criticisms leveled at books featuring female main characters and why those perceptions are problematic. As Hubbard notes in that quote from Wanderlove — a book about a girl who needs to travel in order to sort out what’s going on in her own personal life and her own relationships — while the problems may be trivial, they’re very real to the character experiencing them. That doesn’t make them less challenging or less important. 

In many ways, it’s that very thing which keeps girls coming back to YA. They’re seeing themselves in the fiction and they’re empathizing and relating to the problems in these stories. These are their stories and their challenges, and for once, they’re finding a place in the world that not only understands them, but accepts them and loves them through it. 

These books remind teen girls they are perfectly capable, lovable, and valuable as they are right now.  

Keep Calm, Keep Silent 

There are so many books about teen girls and silence. About what happens when something terrible happens to a girl and she isn’t invited to speak up about it or when she tries to, she’s brushed off as being just some girl who doesn’t really know what’s going on.

I’ve been thinking about this since I finished Julie Berry’s All the Truth That’s In Me (September). There’s nothing spoiler in saying the book is about what happens when a girl comes back from being kidnapped. She’s lived in a cult/Puritanical-like world, and that world values a girl’s virginity above all else. When the nameless main character is kidnapped but returns home from where she was taken two years later with her tongue removed — a literal statement — no one wants to listen to her. When she wants to go back to school to be educated, she’s met with sexual advances on the part of her teacher. 
The assumption is that when she was kidnapped, she was made unpure. And as an unpure woman, she had no value to society anymore. She’s not entitled to an education. No one wants to hear her speak up and no one will help her meet her own desire to do so. 
Even though the book is set in a historical time frame, what made it standout was that it was so much a reflection of our own world as it is right now. We silence teen girls and belittle whatever their experiences and opinions and insights might be about what’s going on around us. The main character in this book had the answer to a major crime in town, but no one wanted to listen to her. No one wanted to find out why her tongue was cut out because by virtue of her being a teen girl, the town had already metaphorically removed her ability to speak. 

The girl knew what was going on. And part of her motivation for coming back home was to help people understand what happened to her friend. To make sense of a senseless crime. But no one would listen to her. It wasn’t simply that she had no tongue, making her voice impaired — remember, she wanted to go back to school to learn how to communicate — it’s that no one valued her voice enough to want to help her get to that point. Part of it was her perceived impurity, but a bigger part of it was that she was a teen girl. 

Silence has played a role in the lives of girls in YA for a long time. That was the whole premise behind Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. It played a huge role in Colleen Clayton’s novel about sexual assault, What Happens Next. It certainly played a role in Courtney Summers’s Cracked Up to Be. In all four of these cases in particular, that silence revolved around sexual assault or sexual impurity or at least perceived sexual assault or impurity on some level. 

Which is interesting because for whatever reason, sexual assault and rape and the notion of sexual purity are “girl problems.” 

It’s interesting too, how many parents in these stories don’t exist. Whether that’s by design — they aren’t there — or by perception. Whatever the case is, the truth of it is the adults in so many of these stories aren’t there. 

Girl voices aren’t valued. Girl voices are written off as unimportant, and even when it’s clear there is a girl in trouble — a girl who maybe even knows the key to something bigger — she’s seen as a devalued member of her world. She’s troubled and has problems and needs help but no one actually reaches out to her and sees her through it. Or worse, they do but they’re doing so not because they care about her, but rather, because she’s causing a scene or a fuss and needs to be silenced again. 

In many ways, it’s because of the culture of being undervalued, for being seen as not having something worth sharing, that these girls internalize. They don’t choose silence. It’s not a choice at all. 

The Love Triangle


I’m not the biggest fan of love triangles in YA fiction, but they serve a purpose and do reach a number of readers. But responses to love triangles in YA are fascinating and I think speak to what I’m working at here, too. 

Love triangles are about not just the romance — though that plays a valid and important part. They’re about choice. They’re about making choices among people who a girl wants to get to know better and they’re about making choices regarding time and energy. They’re about following one’s heart and one’s mind in pursuing relationships. 

Responses to love triangles? They’re lame or overdone or tired or stupid plot devices. They’re boring because who cares about romance? 

The girl in the story cares about the romance or else she wouldn’t be struggling with which boy or girl she wants to pursue. Just as fairly, the girls and boys reading the story care about the romance. They relate, even if it’s in their own personal fantasies, of having to make a choice between two people who want to be involved with them. 

Do you see that?

A love triangle is, in many ways, where the girl at the center of the story is able to not only make a choice, but she’s making a choice among two pursuers who are interested in HER. Who want to get to know HER. Who care about who SHE is as she is. 

These sorts of responses don’t get leveled at books where there a male at the center of the story, though, quite in the way they are when it is a girl choosing between two romantic partners. Andrew Smith’s Winger features Ryan Dean West, who has a choice between two girls. But the responses to his pursuits aren’t met with nearly the same vitriol a novel which features similar set ups but with a girl choosing between two boys (and here is my bias, since I haven’t read enough YA where a girl is choosing a non-heterosexual partner). It’s not that Ryan Dean is seen as a hot shot who can get all of the ladies — he’s not! — but rather, his pursuit of romance and physical intimacy and enjoyment isn’t met with the cries of boredom or triteness or the phrase “who cares about the romance?” And while the girls in his book get to make a choice too, about whether or not he’s the guy for them, because the book’s in his voice and through his perspective, we don’t get to know what it is that’s driving them or why it matters to them. 

Boys in YA novels are allowed more choice when it comes to pursuing romance. And in many ways, there’s a special novelty granted to stories where the boy pursues romance in the way that when a girl at the center of a YA novel pursues it, she’s judged for doing so and in many ways, the strength and value of her character are determined based on this decision. 

Dismissing the love triangle trope in YA and complaining about how it’s lame and boring undercuts the value of choice, of independence, of romance, of making tough decisions about relationships to pursue and relationships to drop that teen girls do experience. Though the girls in the real world don’t always have two boys seeking their love, they do deal with tough choices similar to these choices. They have to make choices between activities to engage in. Between friendships to hold onto and those to break. Between making choices about the futures that send them down one road or another. The love triangle in YA is both the literal choice among two romantic paths and the metaphorical choice. That sometimes you simply have to make tough decisions between two appealing but different things.

Further reading on the love triangle and why it is valuable can be found on Angie’s blog in relation to Katniss in The Hunger Games titles “Why Team Peeta is a Feminist Statement” and on S. E. Sinkhorn’s post “Love Triangles: Why? – A List.”  

The Every Girl


There was a really interesting comment last year over at the Someday My Printz Will Come blog about the Sarah Dessen formula. And it’s a comment that’s appeared in more than one review of a Dessen book. While I definitely agree there is something formulaic in Dessen’s writing — all of her stories feature an average girl dealing with challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship — the writing is always top notch. But more importantly . . . 


All of her stories feature an average girl dealing with the challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship. 

The Dessen girl is the every girl. She is, if you will, often much like Elizabeth Gilbert. She is worried about her own life and the tough things she’s going through at the time. Yes, this often revolves around a boy. Sometimes it revolves around a good friend. Sometimes it revolves around a family that’s not necessarily 100% whole and intact. 

The Moon and More debuted at #3 on the New York Times best sellers list. Dessen isn’t a stranger to this list, and her books are among the first associated with realistic fiction. She’s been around for a long time, and her books are always highly anticipated when they come out every couple of years. Readers love Dessen because they know what to expect of her stories: a girl working through her life’s challenges, with the hope and promise of a satisfying, honest, and real ending. There’s also hope for a little romance and an adventure or two — however small — along the way.

Dessen writes books that readers relate to because they’re their stories. And in many ways, Dessen’s books are criticized for that very thing: for being formulaic and for being predictable. But the truth is, that’s the bulk of a teen girl’s life — it’s formulaic and predictable. That is not a slight on teen girls but rather, a window into the truth of what their every day experiences are. They find themselves drawn to stories like Dessen’s or Susane Colasanti’s or Deb Caletti’s or Jessi Kirby’s or other similar writers because they understand these girls because they are these girls. 
They’re finding authors who completely understand them, but more than that, who want to tell their stories. These authors respect and cherish teen girls and do so by illuminating their worlds in ways that readers (and I don’t leave out boys here!) completely understand because they are living these stories every single day. Contemporary YA authors do this in their work, but there’s something even more intimate and personal about the authors who are so focused on these stories about girls working through their every day challenges. 
The characters in these books? They’re living the problems their readers are. And these books respect that. These are not grand, end-of-the-world problems. They’re real world problems. Today’s teen girls are told over and over their problems don’t matter. They’re trivial. They’re not global.  
But these same teens are buying these books and caring about these stories because they’re finding here that their problems DO matter somewhere.

What’s Scary For Teen Girls To Know?


In 2006, John Green’s Looking for Alaska won the Printz Award. It’s a book which features an oral sex scene. The book is considered literary despite that.

I talked at length about female sexuality in YA already and the positive, empowering portrayals of it in recent titles. But in many ways, I think that when we think about positive female sexuality in YA, it’s not given the same sort of merit or time or praise. Much of it has to do with the greater book, of course, which leads back to the idea that stories about girls, with girls at the center, aren’t received with the same seriousness and merit as literary as those with boys at the center. Yes, Looking for Alaska was primarily about Alaska. But it was about Alaska through the eyes of Miles. 

Coming back to this particular topic in YA is important because I spent a long time reading and considering the comments about my own post over at Dear Author. I wonder if it’s true that a sex scene as mild and implied — not explicit but implied — as the one noted in Doller’s book really and truly wouldn’t fly in some of the public and school libraries as suggested. 
Do these libraries not have Looking for Alaska on shelf? 

I think we come back to the same thing — when a girl is at the helm, the perceptions of what a book is or isn’t about comes through. A girl exploring and being positive about her sexuality is considered too much for some libraries, but a book about a boy doing the same thing is par for the course. It’s, in fact, literary, where the book about the girl is considered more disposable. And sure, there are books where girls who are sexually active or experience positive sexuality which merit the label literary. But I think there is a much quicker knee-jerk reaction to what a book is or is not when it is a girl having these experiences. When it’s a boy, it’s just a boy being a boy.

Are girls’ stories frivolous? Are they worth less than a story about a boy?
Is it scary to think about a girl who is in control of her life, her story, or her experiences, physically, mentally, and emotionally? Why do we bristle at a girl experiences? Why do we devalue it? Why is there a belief that sexual moments in YA books that are through a female main character are there as means of titillation? 
Of course, we know that Green’s book has been challenged. But I think there’s a difference between a book being challenged because it’s made it to the shelves and a book that never gets a chance because it’s not seen as worth the expense. 

So . . . what?


I don’t have any answers, but I have a lot more questions. 

We see girl problems in stories, and we call them out as much.

We dismiss girls’ feelings and experiences as “typical girl problems” and I think we often do it in a way that makes these palatable. But they’re palatable not to girls through this sort of language, but instead, they’re dismissed as a means of making the story palatable to boys. 

Think about the books — realistic, in particular — featuring amazing male lead characters. Whether the book is written by a male or female, those boys are noted for having memorable and strong voices, often because they are boys. This is something someone pointed out to me in my own reviews and discussion of memorable voice. I’ve fallen into calling a voice memorable on the basis that the voice is a male’s. Even when I am conscious of my own thoughts on characters, on gender, and on avoiding conflating either or both of them, I find myself coding them together. This isn’t something I tend to do when talking about a girl main character’s voice.

Is it because I, too, have silenced her voice in my own reading?

Or is it because I’m trying to making statement about the palatability and the importance of problems in these stories, even though it’s far from intention on my part to do so? 

Many times I think we go much easier on our male main characters than our female ones. We don’t have an easily-created “unlikable male characters” book list. We forgive tragic back story much easier (note that male characters don’t often have a back story where they were a victim of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse — big, heavy, hard-to-take female back stories that are so often dismissed as “tragic” or “easy” or “lazy” back story). I’ve found myself thinking a lot lately about those books about boy main characters — those I’ve loved, especially — and wonder what the reactions would be toward the behaviors and stories would be if it were instead a female main character. Would they be memorable? Or would they be disposable? Or would they face harder challenges? Or would it be easier? 

There is a lot here, and there is a lot more I can’t say because I don’t have the words to sort through my thoughts on this topic. But I keep going back to the Hubbard quote, and I keep coming back to what Nelson notes in her post about Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Despite many of the books being about “girl problems,” there’s no such thing as “girl problems.” These are people problems. And if we keep devaluing people problems by calling them “girl problems” or “typical girl problems,” we inherently devalue the girl. We keep her silenced. We keep her from making choices and pursuing her destiny on her own terms. We make her an every girl. And we keep her scared that she’s always going to be just a teenage girl.

Profanity in YA: Research, Assumption, and Feminism

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I’ve mentioned that my educational background is in psychology. I love research and I love the idea of studying behavior to better understand it. Throughout my coursework, I had to do a lot of my own research and paper writing, along with a number of my own full-blown studies. I also had to take a course in research methods, and the professor I took it with had us work with him on his personal research. His project was utterly fascinating — he explored dating advertisements to see whether there was any sort of script to which those seeking mates sold themselves to the opposite gender.

The project involved reading a lot of dating ads and coding them (the ads were randomly selected). My partner and I in the project had to make hash marks for each time we read a word that fit a certain category; some of the categories included mentions of appearance, wealth, jobs and whether these mentions were in relation to the person writing the ad or the person they were seeking, along with the gender of each. The two of us coded each ad separately, then we checked with one another to verify whether we had the same number of coded terms each. This is standard research practice, as it helps eliminate bias or misinterpretation. We had a really strict set of parameters to follow in terms of what did and did not count as something worth coding.

At the end of coding, our professor used the information to figure out whether there was any correlation between dating ads and gender scripts. From his extensive research on gender norms and on relationship psychology, he had a solid set of hypotheses about the behavior he’d expect to see played out in the advertisements. Using the coded data we’d provided, he was able to determine whether his hypotheses were supported or not (note: supported, not true or false). From the analyses (we as students) ran on the data, he was able to write about what this support could suggest about behavior. And since he studied behavior via the advertisements, he could draw those sorts of conclusions.

The long introduction to this is necessary in explaining why I had such a fascination with reading the study being interpreted by media and bloggers about profanity in YA. I was interested in both what the study looked at and how it was presented, along with how it was being interpreted (spoiler: it was being interpreted and is STILL being interpreted wrong).

The thesis of Coyne et al’s “A Helluva Read: Profanity in Adolescent Literature” is not even a thesis. It’s a statement presented in research form stating that the study’s aim was to provide a content analysis. Content analysis means the researchers looked at something intensely in order to understand communication patterns, rather than draw conclusions. It’s sort of a pre-study, meant to be the first step in doing more in-depth studies, if that makes sense. For the purposes of this study, researchers looked at how often there was profanity in a set of books, who said the profanity, who the profanity was directed at, and what sort of characteristics were associated with either the swearer or the sworn at.

In the next section of the paper, the researchers discussed why they chose this topic to explore. They talked about how media can influence adolescent thinking, and they were curious why it had never been studied in print material the way it had been in television or video games. Other research somewhat suggested that reading has a greater influence on adolescent thinking by virtue of how reading impacts the brain and processing (it’s higher level in that it’s engagement with material, rather than being lower level and passive in consumption). The researchers’ final words in this section say that “it is important to examine negative content in print media, such as profanity, as it may represent a significant cognitive and ultimately behavioral influence on the use of profanity.”

From all of the research they cite, this sort of conclusion is wild. First, they slip in the word “significant” for no reason; in research, the word “significant” is related to statistical analysis, not behavior. Once you have found stat analysis to be “significant” when researching, you can explore the correlation among variables (i.e., if you are reading dating ads and notice a significant difference between the way men and women identify themselves with objects of wealth, you can correlate that perhaps men emphasize wealth as something women would find attractive in a mate). Likewise, if you read the sentence a few more times, you’ll note the only thing they believe is that if teens are exposed to profanity, they will think about profanity more. It doesn’t say they will use it more. Just that their thinking and behavior could be influenced.

Ahem.

The third section of the study lays out the exact questions the researchers were curious about:
1. How frequent is profanity use in adolescent novels?
2. What type of profanity is used most often?
3. Is profanity more frequent and intense in novels aimed at older adolescents?
4. Does author gender influence use of profanity in adolescent novels?

Let’s break this down a tiny bit. Their questions were mostly developed to help guide collecting raw data. They wanted numbers — frequency of profanity and types of profanity. Then they were curious whether profanity was more frequent in books meant for older readers. And then, out of the blue, is the final curiosity: does an author’s gender (note: they use the word gender, not sex) influence the frequency of profanity use.

Tied up in their interest in counting the instances of profanity, these researchers were attempting to draw conclusions about whether or not the gender of the author impacted the frequency of swearing. Their choice to include commentary on what impact the women’s liberation movement may have had on profanity in a handful of YA books baffles me. After the researchers presented the question, they offered a little more research. Their first study (1973!) talks about how men used profanity more than women; their second study (1997) said the ladies were using “coarse language more than ever before.” How many conflicting variables happened between 1973 and 1997?

Oh right.

The researchers then offer up a bit of research from 1991 that says there’s still a stigma for girls to swear in a way there is not one for boys. They then ran with the info of the 20-year-old study to make the leap that because the “focus of adolescent novels is on the adolescent characters, the frequency of swearing should be higher among male characters than among female.” After this line, the researchers then give a series of hypotheses about the information they expect to cull from their data coding:

1. Male characters will use profanity (especially strong profanity) more frequently than female characters.
2. Adolescent characters will use profanity (especially strong profanity) more frequently than adult characters.
3. Profanity will be more frequent in humorous situations than in non-humorous.

The researchers at this point slipped in another research question, but it doesn’t interest me as much as the gender ones do. The question, if you’re curious, is about whether social status had any bearing on profanity (i.e., do richer, prettier characters swear more?).

So far, we have a study that is going to count things. Then they’re going to look at the things they counted and draw some conclusions based on those numbers. Note: not a single one of their questions was about behavior, about influence of profanity, or any other measure of the impact of the profanity in adolescent lit. Since they had no way to run such a study without first understanding the prevalence of swearing in the lit, they instead chose to go after an odd factor and attempt to draw conclusions of no impact: whether or not the author’s gender or the character’s gender influenced profanity.

As for methodology, Coyne et al used the books that were listed on the New York Times Best Seller List the week of June 23, 2008 and the week of July 6, 2008 and pulled out the 40 most popular titles. Any books geared for those over age 9 were included, and books in a series were limited to just the two most recently published books in the series. They then divided the books up into age categories, such that 9-11 were together, 12-13 were together, and 14 and older were together. One of the books was an outlier in that it had so many instances of profanity they did a little statistical work to make it less of a problematic title in the sample (and the way they did this was legitimate, especially since the book wasn’t even a novel but a memoir).

In studying the books, the researchers used the same system of coding profanity that prior researchers who studied profanity on television used. There were 5 categories:

1. The Seven Dirty Words — things the FCC won’t let you say: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.
2. Sexual Words — things that described body parts or sex in a less-than-nice way (so, “dickwad” is their example)
3. Excretory words — anything describing poop. This includes the word “crap,” even if it’s used in a way to express frustration. I suppose that makes sense.
4. Strong others — words that are offensive and taboo: bitch being one of them.
5. Mild others — words that are only kind of offensive and taboo: damn being one of them.

They drew their list of words in the 4th and 5th category from a book called Cursing in America (1992) so they had an objective list. At least, I’m led to believe that. The study does not offer an appendix with the actual list of words they coded for (a huge oversight). However, a word like “hell” used in the right context was not considered profane. The researchers only coded each word once — but they put it in the highest level category first. So, if the word “piss” was used, it went to the Seven Dirty Words category and not the excretory words.

Gender coding was straightforward: they went based on names and pronouns. They didn’t have a big deal with non-gendered characters except in the case of aliens or robots, and they were just left as “unknown.” They also coded for age (who said the swear, who received it) and for whether it was uttered in a funny or not funny situation. Social status stuff was explored too, but again, doesn’t interest me. They used multiple researchers to code the data, did verification of the coding, and all looks pretty good.

Their methodology was solid, aside from the fact the sample was so tiny (2 weeks worth of books in the middle of one summer). Also problematic was that it wasn’t random.

But rather than dwell on those little facts, let’s talk about the results!

In regards to their first research question, the researchers found 1,522 separate uses of profanity in the 40 books. Only 5 books did not contain a single profane item they were looking for. And 4 of the 5 were for books in the 9-11 age group. In doing a little more number crunching, the researchers found the average adolescent reading and average size book would encounter 6.66 profane words per hour. Let that number sit with you a few minutes.

For their second research question, researchers found that 51% of the profane instances were mild profanity. The Seven Dirty Words made up 20% of profanity. The other categories were much smaller.

The next research question relating to target age of the book and instances of profanity includes a large table that, if you can get your hands on the study, is worth looking at. But some of the interesting findings included seeing that the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books had virtually no profanity, whereas Harry Potter, Pendragon, and Ranger’s Apprentice books were coming in with 20+ instances each. For books published with the 9-11 year group in mind, there were 166 instances of profanity total. Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother had 175 instances of profanity, whereas the Summer Collection of Gossip Girls books had between 16 and 70 instances. Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key had 53 instances. For books published with the 12-13 market in mind, there were a total of 654 instances of profanity. As for books geared for the 14 and older crowd, there were 1,522 instances of profanity, with The Book Thief having 101 instances of profanity, and the two Pretty Little Liars books having 40 and 80. Anna Godbersen’s The Luxe had 14 instances of profanity.

Looking at those raw numbers would suggest something, wouldn’t it? That The Book Thief is a terrible book because it has so much swearing in it, but that the Pretty Little Liars books were better because there weren’t as many instances? Or that Little Brother is the worst offender out there with its hulking 175 instances of profanity. But I’d say that The Book Thief and Little Brother are modern YA classics because I’ve read them and know the content, and I know as a reader that goes a lot further than the instances of profanity. Yet, researchers who are not invested in the content of the books are looking instead at word frequency, and in doing so, they’re intentionally developing a system of ranking the books based on it. But I’m not going to talk about this more because I think the YALSA blog post does a fine job expressing these things.

Of course the researchers found that there was more swearing in book for older adolescents than for those meant for younger ones. However, and I go back to my earlier discussion of the word “significant.” The research showed no significant difference in the instances of profanity for books published for those age 12-13 and those published for the 14 and older crowd. What that means is there cannot be any real correlations drawn. However, there was a significant difference in profanity between books aimed at those age 9-11 and those age 14 and older. To that I say, no shit. Oh, and books aimed at those for 14 and older were six times more likely to use the seven dirty words than those aimed at 12-13 year olds.

On to the thing that interested me the most in the results: gender. Again, gender. Not sex. There was no difference between the use of profanity in a book written by a male author and a book written by a female author. Even in terms of what kind of profanity was used (lady authors are using piss and fuck as much as the men are). The only differences found in the numbers came when the researchers looked at who was swearing in the text. Books written by females had more frequently swearing female characters than books written by males did, and vice versa.

When the researchers broke down the data they collected and explored their hypotheses, more things emerged worth looking at. First and foremost, gender of characters did not matter when it came to profanity use. In other words, female characters kept pace with male counterparts (the percentage break down was 49% of profanity came from a female character and 51% from a male). Likewise, there wasn’t a difference in the types of profanity uttered between the genders. And in results that aren’t surprising, adolescents swore a lot more in books than adults did. The researchers then drilled down even further and found that minor female characters swore significantly more than adult female characters except when it came to the seven dirty words (apparently adult females needed their fucks and cunts more than minor female characters did).

The other result I want to note was that profanity happened 23 times more often in non-funny books than in funny books. Again, a total no-brainer for anyone who has read one of these books in the last few decades.

My favorite part of any research study and the one I focused on most in this one is the discussion section. This is where the researchers have a chance to speculate upon the things they found. This is also where the bulk of misinformation about this particular study has stemmed from. The bulk of discussion in this piece boils down to this: while 88% of the books studied had profanity, some books had a lot of it, while others only had one or two instances (and I imagine many of those books were instances of saying “crap” or “damn” or other inoffensive, mildly profane words). They also state that in comparison to television, YA books aren’t pumping out more profanity. They’re on par with one another. And in an hour, the researchers found adolescents would hear 12 instances of profanity on television, as opposed to 6.66 in reading a book.

The researchers mentioned, too, YA books have more profanity than video games rated T for teen (this is based on a study they cite). But you know what they say about this? They suggest this is the case because most of the video games marketed for this age range are not heavy in dialog. And thus, when there is little dialog going on, then there’s going to be less profanity.

In their own research, they state that there is not more profanity in adolescent books than there is on television nor in video games.

More curious in the discussion, though, are the bits about gender. As the researchers showed, gender didn’t matter in terms of profanity use — that is, male and female authors wrote their swears equally, and they didn’t discriminate against the character’s gender either. But what the researchers had the gall to say here is what is worth thinking about. They write, “In previous years, women seemed to conform more to gender stereotypes, being kind, considerate, well mannered, and well spoken. In fact, it was often seen as a man’s obligation to protect women from profanity.” I want to note this was attributed to a source dating from 1975.

They continue with this, “With the women’s movement of the 1960s, however, activists challenged the idea that women should not use expletives. Later, women were encouraged to use expletives as a symbol of power they had gained through this movement.” Note, this was attributed to another source. Dated 1975 (not a typo — both sources are from 1975).

The researchers then dazzle us with this conclusion drawn from the antiquated research and their own work, “In books at least, it appears authors are moving with this trend and are portraying women to be just as crass as men.” 

Let that sink in a second.

Coyne and her associates explored how many instances of profanity appeared in adolescent literature. But their conclusions come to involve the notion that the loose lips (or fingers) of lady writers is thanks to the women’s liberation movement. Not even thinking about the fact their sources about dainty and demure women date 1975, this sort of commentary is mind-blowing and discredits everything else said in the study for me. Because men are no longer dominant and women have some equal rights, they’re mucking up books with their crass language? If women were demure and well spoken and kind, they wouldn’t be contributing to the downfall of our children? To me, the message is between the lines here that, thanks to women having the ability to do what they want to do without the guidance of men, they’re ruining the future. They’re swearing! And they’re letting their young people in fiction swear! And forbid it all, but those young people then might use a profane word here!

Stepping back a little bit further, I’d like to point out that this study was conducted at Brigham Young University, regularly listed as one of the top conservative universities in the country.  Moreover, the researchers were split between the department of family life and the department of communication. This is also an LDS university. Absolutely none of these things in and of themselves is wrong or questionable, but given what the commentary is in the discussion, the questionable research framing, and the topic at hand, it is hard for me to give this much credence. It is unabashedly biased and it is, without question, influenced by the source.

There’s more to the discussion section worth highlighting too. The researchers bring up the notion of social learning theory (we learn things via other people) and suggest that the more young people are exposed to profanity, the more likely they accept it. They become, in the study’s words, “desensitized.” That’s quite a leap to make, given that never once did this research set out to study behavior, but I suppose they’re pulling upon historical research on other, unrelated topics (they didn’t cite anything here though). But as much as I am giving this a hard time, I give the researchers huge credit when they state for themselves that they did not study behavior and that they were only speculating upon what the effects of reading profanity could do for cognitive and behavior of adolescents.

This is the line that those news articles everywhere failed to mention.

All Coyne et al’s study did was count instances of profanity and compare it to a number of other quantifiable variables like gender.

While the study talks about how finding books appropriate for adolescent readers can be challenging for parents, it states explicitly that the researchers do not advocate for a ratings system on books. They acknowledge that including a rating on a book is cause for hot debate and it is incredibly controversial.

What the researchers are curious about for future studies is how adolescents are using profanity in books. They set out believing that profanity would be used in humorous situations and were blown away to discover the bulk of swearing came in non-funny situations. As they state in the discussion, “Future research might more fully explore to what purposes profanity is used. Specifically, is use meant to exercise power, to assert superiority, to threaten, to warn, or to add emphasis or force to other utterances?” They also advocate for continued research of adolescent books in order to better understand it as a media form and to better learn about how it can impact behavior.

Okay.

Here is an idea that could help both future endeavors:

How about reading the books?

This is not a study about context and it is not a study about the impact of profanity in books on teenage behavior. This is also not a study about how important it is to label content nor does it even advocate for that. This is not a study about how women swear more now than they did in the past nor about how crass and filthy characters in books are. This is not a study about how books for 11-year-olds are going to ruin them for life. This is not a study about what does and does not make an adult uncomfortable reading in books meant for kids. This is not a study about how much better or worse books for young readers are than watching television or movies for that age group are nor is it a study about how video games and books compare to one another in terms of how they impact a teen’s mind. This is not a study written by the researchers meant to incite others to react and decry these books.

All they did was code data.

When I brought up the research project I helped out with, I mentioned that once we had coded the data, my professor was able to explore the statistical results and draw some interesting connections among the data. From there, he could suggest that men often spoke more to things of wealth in their dating ad while soliciting mentions of beauty in what they were seeking in a mate. He could then suggest that women made mention of their appearance in dating ads while their solicitations made mention of age quite frequently. In looking at this data, he could say that, in general, men are seeking mates who are good looking and do so by showing off the financial security they could offer and that women seek older, established mates while emphasizing their attractiveness. Through the research, my professor could draw these sorts of conclusions because he had not only the raw data, but he’d gotten it through the study of behavior (writing and submitting a dating advertisement), context (dating advertisements again) and through use of solid and up-to-date research done by others about intimate relationships and gender. It’s an incredibly careful methodology.

What Coyne and her team did was not this. They studied frequency of words in a non-random selection of books that were on the NYT Best Sellers list during two separate weeks. They studied those words out of context. They then went as far as to attempt to define behavior in a sexist and problematic way by looking at author gender and the number of profane words used in a book. Again, without context.

So what we should be making of this study and of the news articles that came out suggesting what this study said is this: nothing. What we should be doing when we attempt to describe what this study said is this: nothing. I will not be linking to any of the erroneous blog posts I’ve seen talking about this study because each time I saw one, I got a little bit more frustrated.

Misinformation is problematic. As much as this study in and of itself is silly, it wasn’t wrong and it didn’t actually suggest anything in regards to what we should be doing with profane teen books. It never once explored whether or not there has been an increase in profanity in teen books (that would have required them to study books over a period of time or from different periods of time and that is not what they did).

Part of being an advocate for books and reading and teenagers or, hell, anything worth being an advocate for, is being critical. It requires you go to the source material when you read a claim that feels outrageous or inflammatory. In this case, we’ve done precisely what the media, which didn’t even read the study correctly, has wanted us to do: panic. It’s caused erroneous stories to spread. Misinformation continues to be fed to people who take what they hear at face value. They then worry and fret about how everything is going to hell in a hand basket.

This is a non-story and a non-issue. But it has been a damn good exercise in critical reading, critical thinking, and, really, a damn fine opportunity to learn a hell of a lot about profanity and just what books are chock full of it.

It’s also been an opportunity to say thank you to authors for not censoring their stories and not conforming to gender roles. For pushing boundaries and challenging 1970s societal norms.

And the biggest thank you goes out to all of the women who pushed for liberation and for all of the men who have embraced equality.

Because, as I learned, feminism is about showing your power through one’s fucking words. For both men and women.

All data, citations, and statistics come from Sarah M. Coyne, Mark Callister, Laura A. Stockdale, David A. Nelson & Brian M. Wells (2012): “A Helluva Read”: Profanity in Adolescent Literature, Mass Communication and Society, 15:3, 360-383.