amazon forums

[rm]

So I've been participating in the Amazon forums a bit over the last couple of days, mostly in the HP topics for reasons that should be obvious, but also, because it shows up on the page for my book, on requests for reading recs for teens. Most of the requests are either from teen girls themselves looking for more challenging books and apologizing for seeming bratty for saying they have a high reading level or from parents emphasizing the need to find SAFE and CLEAN books for said teen girls.

All of this makes me by turns unspeakably sad and angry. Because books are always safe and never safe. And I think people are afraid not that these girls will discover ideas and characters which are foreign, adult and theoretically disturbing, but that in reading these girls will find out that they are not singular, defective or naughty, but capable and covetous.

I am SO GLAD I grew up without the Internet and clear backpacks and cell phones and everything having to be checked and cross-checked for the so-called safety, cleanliness and morality of my private thoughts.

Comments

[tearsinger.livejournal.com]

"Safe and Clean." Loaded words.

I have become very close to a tweleve year old girl and I have to say I really wish there was a lot more in the market for her because the books she reads, such as Gossip Girl are not safe or clean. They teach awful things about women, girls, men, boys and what the reality of sexual connections and what to expect of relationships and highschool. So 'safe and clean' to me is something that tells her something other than she is defined by who she dates and how the years between 13-19 are for her.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Hey tearsinger. I'd never heard of Gossip Girl before, so I bipped over to Amazon to check it out. I love a good soap opera myself sometimes, but wow. These books sound appalling. I'd pretty much let any daughter of mine read what she liked (because I would be an active presence in her life and discuss what she read with her), but ew. The summary of the first book alone kind of makes me feel like I need a shower or twelve.

[tearsinger.livejournal.com]

I am telling you we are teaching the most horrifying norms to young children who don't know better with these things. Television is just as bad, speaking of, they are making a TV show out of it.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

They are? Dear God.