(no subject)

[skygiants]

So, o learned flist, once again I have a query for y'all.

While doing research for my thesis, I came across an article, written in 2000, discussing the reading habits of adolescents. It was talking about encouraging kids to read more fantasy lit, and claimed that research had shown that while adolescent boys read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, adolescent girls read more romance or historical romance, "which are also referred to as bodice-rippers."

My knee-jerk reaction to this claim (aside from irritation at the condescension in that paragraph) is an immediate feeling of "that can't be accurate." Now, I was around adolescent-aged in the year 2000. Most of my reading at that age was, in fact, YA fantasy books, and while I definitely don't claim to have been the poster child for an Average Adolescent Girl, I don't remember many of the girls I knew toting around nothing but 'bodice-rippers' either - I'm not ragging on the romance genre, but if my friends were reading, they were going for fantasy books, historical fiction, or realistic coming-of-age type stories, or any mixture of the above. As for today, seven years later, my general impression is that most YA fantasy authors are women, and most of them are writing as much or more for adolescent girls as for boys. Am I looking at a biased sample here? If you were an adolescent or acquainted with adolescents in the year 2000, I would love to hear your opinions on this.

(I have to admit, I am also somewhat prejudiced against the article on the grounds that their recommendations for great fantasy books for young readers included Piers Anthony and Terry Goodkind, but that's another story.

ETA: And in the interests of fairness, I probably should add that when I was an adolescent, my reading did include Piers Anthony and Terry Goodkind. It's just later I wished that it hadn't . . .)

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Roommate says, "That is such a lie! That is a lie!" and contends, "Women read more fantasy, hands down."

Oh dear, regarding the suggested reading material. I wouldn't place too much trust in that article.

[skygiants]

It cited its sources for this research!

. . . so I looked them up and found that two of said sources had disappeared from the internet. Which, admittedly, seven years, so not surprising, but . . .

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Have you tried the Wayback Machine?

[skygiants]

I know not of this Wayback Machine of which you speak!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/index.php) saves old images of webpages. It often loses pictures and links and things, and its database isn't universal, but it really is a useful resource.

[skygiants]

- and it actually had it! :D! Awesome! Thanks for the help!

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

I've never read a bodice-ripper in my life D:

OK, based on myself and adolescent girls I have known, reading material is indeed much more of the fantasy/historical fiction/YA fiction of the Georgia Nicolson -- Gossip Girl (aggh) range. (This last having previously been the almost uncontested domain of Judy Blume.) I did have one friend who was super into Lurlene McDaniel, but not to the exclusion of fantasy, in which we shared an interest.

Relatedly, if I ever meet Lurlene McDaniel, I will be forced to give her cancer. You can do that with blood transfusions, right? Like on TV?

[skygiants]

I read a book in which there was actual bodice-ripping! I felt like my life was not complete until that point.

- okay, that's a lie, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

(Fun fact: did you know that Judy Blume wrote the very first YA novel about losing your virginity? She literally invented the field! This is a thing I never would have suspected while reading, say, 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing'.)

I think that regardless of whether it is possible for anyone else, if Lurlene McDaniel ever gets a blood transfusion, it will magically turn to cancer in her veins. She has those skills.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

SOTL has bodice slashing with a sword. Does that count?

Oh God, that book made me so uncomfortable D: I was an extraordinarily prudish child. And adolescent. And teenager (for a while).

[skygiants]

I don't know - can you accurately use the sentence "Mad with passion, he rent her bodice?" I guess it applies in a sense . . .

I never read that one! I don't think I ever realized when I was a teenager that Judy Blume wrote things past the reading level of 'Are You There God Etc.'

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

I think he got more passionate after the rending had happened.

[skygiants]

Maybe he rent Thom's bodice once while mad with passion offscreen . . .?

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a whole different genre!

[skygiants]

I believe as a subgenre it's actually reasonably represented . . .

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

...

and you linked to it with the HRG icon.

I think something in my brain has gone to feed the roses.

[skygiants]

. . . that was semi-unintentional! Um. Only meant in the way where HRG is generally smug?

[vivien]

Yeah, Judy Blume wrote some quite "scandalous" stuff. I lapped her books up!

Now, I am a generation or two earlier than you, so I do remember some of the girls my age reading "bodice rippers" - Harlequins, and the like. But all my friends were either reading fantasy, scifi, or realistic YA.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

I spent most of my childhood pathologically avoiding all other girls, so I might have just missed things :/

[skygiants]

Yeah, I'm sure there were some girls reading Harlequins, too, but if they were I'd have no way of knowing - because my friends weren't, and I feel like no other girls would have been caught dead toting them around the high school, even if they were reading them in secret.

(I also remember my brother's best friend having to cover up his Piers Anthony covers to save himself embarrassment, but that's a whole different issue.)

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

>.>

<.<

*may have read Lurlene McDaniel books when in middle school*

[minkhollow]

Fantasy and sci-fi, totally. This being the time period I got into Hitchhiker's Guide.

[skygiants]

Oh, same here. - well, maybe younger even; I remember being fairly young when I first saw the (old) (ridiculous) (AWESOME) BBC movie, but that's because my parents have excellent taste in some things.

[ashen_key]

Oh, please.

I'm with you. When I was in highschool, the other girls weren't reading romances. If they were reading, they were reading, well, like you said. "Fantasy books, historical fiction, or realistic coming-of-age type stories, or any mixture of the above."

I always thought romances were either for the old ladies, whose doctors proscribed them to help them fall asleep without meds (I'm really not joking here), or the steerotypical bored housewife. Not. Teenage girls. Well, not as a full on pattern that can be said like that.

[skygiants]

Yeah.

I mean, recently I've been reading this website for the cover snark and gaining a tentative respect for some romance novels as a result, but they're definitely not anything I would have read as a teenager. Well, except in a pick one up, read the ridiculous parts aloud with friends while giggling sort of way.

I'm thinking maybe they're classifying all historical fiction books as historical romance/'bodice-rippers'? It's the only way I can think of to justify this at all.

[genarti]

Yeah, same here -- realistic coming-of-age primarily, and then fantasy and historical fiction. (And I definitely think of fantasy as something more girls read than guys. Not SF, but fantasy.)

Oh, and Goosebumps-type horror stuff, though that was more in 5th and 6th grade I think. And V.C. Andrews -- is that the name? I can picture the covers. Suspense stuff, with melodramatic skeleton's in every heroine's family's/boyfriend's/etc's closet; the more grown-up version of the same shivery-scary stuff, is what I thought of them, though I didn't read either.

I knew some people at summer camp who read romance novels. But I can't recall anyone carrying them around school. Certainly not the sort that look like bodice-rippers, with shirtless men and swooning women on the front.

[skygiants]

Same here. Although I wonder how recently it is that they've gotten sort of de-clumped together in most people's minds; like, I'd be willing to believe that twenty years ago, it was fantasyandscifi mostly aimed at boys.

V.C. Andrews! Yeah, I remember the covers of those books too. Flowers in the Attic - I never read it, but I remember vague knowedge that it was about incest. And there were a whole slew of - not Goosebumps, but other books by R.L. Stine for slightly older readers, too.

[bodldops.livejournal.com]

My sis was an adolescent in 2000, and wouldn't touch a romantic book with a ten-foot pole. She adored books about dragons (and vampires and things what go bump in the night), the Star Wars series (even that atrocious New Jedi Knights series ugh), and historical fiction, namely anything to do about the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.

[skygiants]

Yep, that sounds like about what I was reading at that point, too. - with the exception of the Star Wars series, which I never got on the bandwagon of; I left those to my brother (and paid in later years by getting consistently tromped by the kids I babysat for in Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.)

I'm honestly beginning to wonder what the writers of this article were on, or at least if they were stuck in the 1950s. 2000 is post-Harry Potter! Fantasy was thriving!

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

I was an adolescent in the early-mid nineties, so I probably don't qualify, but I think I read a combination of both. I definately read the DiR series back then, and that's also when I got into mythology.

Of course, that was also the era of the Babysitter Club and Sweet Valley High books, which I'm ashamed to say that I read. >< .

[genarti]

...Okay yeah. Also those.

And Piers Anthony and Mercedes Lackey, for me. (Mercedes Lackey I do reread still! As brainfluff and with certain mental edits to make her style less ridiculous, but at least she's no Piers Anthony.)

[skygiants]

I still have my Mercedes Lackey shelf for total comfort reading. And I am never getting rid of it!

. . . I still have my Piers Anthony shelf too, actually, but that's going as soon as I have to move out of my room at home.

[skygiants]

You definitely qualify - and oh, totally the Babysitter's Club. I mostly steered clear of Sweet Valley High books, but I think I still have a whole bunch of BSC that I stole from my then-BFF and never returned.

And, you know, my knowledge is rewarded now, because I can read things like the BSC-Buffy crossover and find it hysterical! So. >:D

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

For a minute my brain farted on maths and I was going "I was five, I cannot answer. *sadface*" and then "...wait, that was seven years ago and I'm turning 22 this year, 22 minus seven does not equal five, wtf" and worked out that I was actually thinking of 1990 when I was five.

ANYWAY.

Pointless story over - I read fantasy, science-fiction, some historical fiction and textbooks. I was the sad teenager who read textbooks for amusement. (Tangentially, The World's Most Mysterious Places or whatever it is called? Awesome book.) I can't recall all that many of my contemporaries reading bodice-rippers, either, although there were a few who read that certain class of fantasy that's basically bodice-ripping with swords and pointy ears.

[skygiants]

*giggles*

I was also five in 1990! Solidarity! BUT YES. I was never disciplined enough to read textbooks, though I did read War and Peace - mostly because I was the kid who was always reading, and EVERYONE thought it was funny to ask, "So have you read War and Peace?" and I just got so sick of it. *coughs, sheepishly* ANYWAYS.

. . . and ahahaha I remember those horrible fantasy covers. I read a few of those, too.