Chick Lit. Jr. Mean Girls' Style
When I was growing up, I was a nerdy scrawny kid with glasses. I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction: Harry Potter, Garth Nix, Animorphs, Diana Wynne Jones, Eloise McGraw, a lot of books with princesses, aliens, petticoats, etc. When I was finished with the two shelves of books in the children's section, I went upstairs and started reading adult books.
Now I review young adult literature for a website and most of the titles are fiction, with a disturbingly large number of what can be described as "Chick Lit Jr." Of course, as a teenager I had noticed the increasingly number of book covers with pretty girls with great hair, or black stockinged legs in mini-skirts, but I just walked past them and got to the good stuff. After listening to a paper titled "Gossip Girls and Shopping Princesses: Clique Lit and the Book Packager That Created the Genre," I'm beginning to get worried about the documenting and packaging the horrors of junior high. Horrors that have somehow become something exciting and to be endeavored for.
Is this genre creating an increasingly shallow, manipulative, and materialistic young people? Or are there just more shallow, manipulative, and materialistic young people reading? *hurray* Has the book industry finally caught on to a cultural/ social trend? Should we rejoice that these terrifying or would-be terrifying girls getting a constructive Mean Girls outlet, that they are getting educated? Or have men and women in power suits created a primped and pretty army of monsters who would eat a younger me with a Starbucks non-fat triple shot caramel latte?
I read a lot about dragons and elves as a child, but I don't think it had an adverse effect on me. I never had the misconception that fairies were real. I don't do real life dungeon and dragons role playing. I am not delusional and I think I have pretty firm grip on reality. Can we transfer this idea, the idea that it's just not real, to books about power structures in junior high and high schools? Perhaps the belief that the corrupting power of books like Gossip Girl is an unfair intellectual assessment of today's youth. Perhaps young girls are smart enough to know that this isn't real, that this is just another fantasy.
I don't think so. I had real life to counteract orcs. What do girls have to counteract the ideas of Best Friends For Never? The TV? School? Real Life? Clique lit imitates a slice of real life and elevates it to de rigueur. OMG.
Now I review young adult literature for a website and most of the titles are fiction, with a disturbingly large number of what can be described as "Chick Lit Jr." Of course, as a teenager I had noticed the increasingly number of book covers with pretty girls with great hair, or black stockinged legs in mini-skirts, but I just walked past them and got to the good stuff. After listening to a paper titled "Gossip Girls and Shopping Princesses: Clique Lit and the Book Packager That Created the Genre," I'm beginning to get worried about the documenting and packaging the horrors of junior high. Horrors that have somehow become something exciting and to be endeavored for.
Is this genre creating an increasingly shallow, manipulative, and materialistic young people? Or are there just more shallow, manipulative, and materialistic young people reading? *hurray* Has the book industry finally caught on to a cultural/ social trend? Should we rejoice that these terrifying or would-be terrifying girls getting a constructive Mean Girls outlet, that they are getting educated? Or have men and women in power suits created a primped and pretty army of monsters who would eat a younger me with a Starbucks non-fat triple shot caramel latte?
I read a lot about dragons and elves as a child, but I don't think it had an adverse effect on me. I never had the misconception that fairies were real. I don't do real life dungeon and dragons role playing. I am not delusional and I think I have pretty firm grip on reality. Can we transfer this idea, the idea that it's just not real, to books about power structures in junior high and high schools? Perhaps the belief that the corrupting power of books like Gossip Girl is an unfair intellectual assessment of today's youth. Perhaps young girls are smart enough to know that this isn't real, that this is just another fantasy.
I don't think so. I had real life to counteract orcs. What do girls have to counteract the ideas of Best Friends For Never? The TV? School? Real Life? Clique lit imitates a slice of real life and elevates it to de rigueur. OMG.