Personally, I would like to see a Joan of Arc type of story, but from another perspective. Say, Sally is dressing as a man to accomplish something or other. The book is told from Billy’s point of view (although to the reader it’s clear that this is Sally’s story, and Billy is just an onlooker.) Billy has no idea that Sally is actually a woman. It’s part of the big reveal at the end of the book, after readers have had a chance to bond with boy!Sally. Then they have to confront the fact that they liked these kinds of qualities in a female character. Really, you could even do it as the beginning of a series, so that after people have come to know and love boy!Sally, they get to continue loving her as she really is. Though I feel it would be vitally important not to involve her in a romance, for perspective issues.

Mind you, I have no idea what this book would actually be ABOUT. I’d write it if I could, but I’m not an author. I’ll leave it to those that are as a jumping off point. I’d like to read it, and I think other people would to.

Kenneth Pike: But I worry that they spend too much time extolling the finish line and not enough time detailing the track. If subversion of stereotypes is what we’re after, it’s not enough to preach to the choir. One must reach out and win converts–and tell stories, not about strong women, but about average, unremarkable women who become strong. I don’t want my daughter to mistake attitude for independence, or sass for being well-spoken; but that means she needs to be able to see not only the promised land, but also the road that will take her there.

I completely agree with this. To use the example that Justine gave, while Isabelle from MI was my favourite character, I had problems understanding or even liking Clary. Both girls start off from the same position as the only girl in a group of boys and used to having all the attention on herself. But it is Isabelle who grows out of this mindset and embraces Clary as a friend.

Diana Peterfreund: I think there’s definitely a double standard when it comes to girls’ reading material — and has been since the invention of the novel. Girls are so weak-minded and impressionable. Giving them books, books that might put *ideas* in their empty little heads… well, it’s a dangerous proposition

I remember thinking this when I come across another nasty little dig on Twilight, or its author or its fans in the blogosphere. The word “twifan” is synonymous with “stupid teenage girl (or bored, stay-at-home middle-aged mom) who can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality”. No one ever seems particularly concerned when comic books or superhero movies portray unrealistic expectations in life and romance for little boys. But when a female wish-fulfilment fantasy is written, a fatwa is declared on the author for putting feminism back by a century.

I suppose I may be in the minority, but I prefer characters (both male and female) with flaws. Makes them more human and much more interesting. (Which is why I could enjoy the HP series without being overly fond of Harry himself…)

I’d like to make a parallel with the television world, where we’ve seen a bunch of kick-ass heroines that have caught the imagination of both girls and boys. Think Harriet Potter can’t exist without being loathed? I present you Buffy, a beautiful girl (she’s blond AND has blue eyes!), popular with the opposite sex, who can kick major ass, has saved the day numerous times AND is a the Chosen one. Remind you of someone? And what about Max, in Dark Angel? And Sydney Bristow, of Alias?

I’d like to point that all these characters have been written by men.

I think part of the girls problem in the literary world come from the fact that the publishers don’t know how to market books about girls in ways that will appeal to an audience of both boys and girls. It’s still a very old fashion industry.

So I think what writers can do is continue to write kick-ass heroines, the world will eventually follow Also, I’d like to read more deep and sisterly friendship between girls. I like to read about girls who admire and respect each other (instead of envying each other). I’d like to think enough of myself to be able to do that naturally… That’s one thing I always found beautiful and touching: male friendship (I started to like war movies for this reason alone).

Finally, I’d like to add that one thing I like about Buffy is that she is a girly girl. I like tomboys, I was one when I was young, but I wouldn’t want little girls to think that the only way for a girl to be cool is to be “like a boy” and do “what boys do”.

That’s it, thanks for this great discussion

I finally got around to reading The Shadow of the Wind which is a fun puzzle about books and an unexamined look at the Patriarchy. The whole gothic aspect is based on males being sexual actors and females passively remaining virginal and owned/protected by their male family. But no where is this acknowledged or clarified by any character. The contrast between males seeking love and sex and the females passively awaiting love/sex is striking.

My eldest daughter was speaking of magazines at the school. While there are magazines aimed at a boy audience, apparently being a boy is so easy a default, that there are no magazines specifically telling boys how to fulfill their cultural role. There are at least two magazines however devoted to teaching girls how to be the right sort of girl. The feminine is so harshly judged by our society, and always found lacking, that it takes two magazines devoted to explaining the problem in elementary school. It’s a wonder girls find the time to do anything, although it’s not surprising that they would judge fictional females as strongly as they judge real ones.

I’ve noticed the double-standard in judging male and female characters, too. Partly from hanging around with romance readers who will frequently complain about the heroine for being “too bitchy”, “too feisty”, “too shallow” or “too stupid to live” and lament how they are sick of all those kick-butt women in urban fantasy, yet who will put up with absolutely horrible behaviour from heroes, sometimes even down to rape and abuse.

I’ve also noticed this phenomenon in a lot of fandoms, where female characters are automatically disliked and sometimes rapidly hated for doing exactly the same things that the male characters do. There is one fandom I actually left because the majority’s rapid hatred of a main female character became too much for me, particularly since the hatred suddenly seemed to vanish once the hated female character started feeling really sorry for her sexual transgressions (which were no different from what any male character had been doing) and became the utterly devoted and codependent girlfriend/wife of a boring and unlikable male character. Yet that Stockholm syndrome relationship was somehow seen as a happy one and the best the female character could aspire to.

I am not immune from the double-standard myself and sometimes find myself irrationally disliking a female character in situations where I probably wouldn’t have disliked a male character. What is particularly troubling to me is that it seems to happen frequently with female characters of a certain ethnicity. I suspect it’s due to a bad childhood experience with a real life woman of that ethnicity which left me with a subconscious prejudice. But if you recognize personal biasses, you can at least try to combat them.

I loved Mary’s drive. Loooooooved it. Some might see it as a flaw, but for me it was her best feature and elevated her above the boring, predictable, “Is ‘ambition’ the name of a perfume?” girls you see in so many books.

DianaP: RAMPANT takes virginity head on as a theme, doesn’t it? (I’ve only just started it, so don’t know the answer.) I imagine that gets a lot of readers thinking the writer is either pro-this or anti-that because in some minds just *mentioning* the virginal status of a girl is equated with being political and trying to push/promote an opinion about girls having sex. Meanwhile, very few writers that I’ve read answer the question of whether or not their male characters are virgins, and even when they do, how often does the reader care?

“Oh, he’s a guy. Of course he’s ‘done it.’”

“Oh, he’s young and dorky or too busy defending the universe so I see why he’s still a virgin, but that won’t last forever. Whatever.”

How many books center around the loss of male virginity and make it the cause of an epic battle? “Oh noooo, if Fred has sex, we are all going to dieeeee! Oh, and he’ll be ruined so no one will want to marry him.”

Justine: Re: guys wanting to talk about male characters/writers/issues when the subject is female characters/writers/issues. I know a lot of great male feminists, but I also know a lot of guys who think that proffering advice to the female sex is the same thing as feminism. I also know guys who take a conversation about writing for females or female characters and try (often subconsciously) to change the subject to men by insisting that men “also have problems” or that male writers “also write great female characters” — both of which are true, but which have a way of sidetracking the subject and making it all about, well, men.

When you’ve been in the treehouse for so long, it’s hard to make room for anyone else. Or to realize that maybe they don’t even want to be in your treehouse.

(I should probably emphasize that those comments are not aimed at any person or post in this conversation, but are based on some non-internent memories that popped in my head while I was reading Justine’s comments. My brain, er, wanders a lot.)

I don’t know and I prob won’t know. Should it change the way I approach writing characters in the future? I don’t know that either – I just wrote Mary the way she was, flaws (perceived or real) and all.

ithiliana: So pleased you liked Liar. I’d love to know how you go about teaching it and how your students responded.

Laurie: As someone pretty deeply involved in fandom, this double standard ends up coming up around me on an almost daily basis . . . I have never, ever encountered the person who gets this pointed out to them and realizes their error. Defensiveness and justification rule the day. (Although to be fair, I have met a few people who said, “Yeah, I used think stupid things like that, but now I know better.”)

I know what you mean. Though I do think defensiveness is the automatic first response. I have been extremely defensive many many times when called on my own bad behaviour and unconscious prejudiced thinking. I’ve learned each time it’s happened but it takes me awhile. I have great hopes that that’s how it goes for many people. They’re errors are pointed out to them, they react badly, but then they go away and start thinking about it.

Diana Peterfreund: A NYT bestselling romance writer I know once said to me that she could have her heroes do anything — absolutely anything — and the readers (overwhelmingly female) would forgive him and love him. But have her heroines make any mistakes at all and she would be deemed unworthy.

*Sigh* That is depressing. But, hey, at least the writer has noticed and is figuring what to do about it. And a lot of people are reading her. Maybe she’s slowly slowly part of breaking down the double standard?

Kel-wa: I am curious if you have noted a trend in these comments to be from girls vs guys. I feel like this trend has a lot to do with sex appeal vs self imaging, at least from the female perspective.

I think most of the comments are from women but I can’t always tell judging from people’s pseudonyms. I did notice that a couple of the commenters I know to be male were more interested in talking about male characters & writers than the topic under discussion, which is why I love Tim & Benjamin’s comments—they never do that.

I think you’re right that straight female desire has a lot to do with this dynamic. I suspect that as you suggest lebians and bisexual women are less likely to have the same responses. Though this comment thread shows that plenty of heterosexual women are not falling into this double standard either. Yay, all of us fighting double standards!

AudryT: Girls get their impressions of “sluttiness” from the world around them, from how boys brag about conquests (real and imagined) while girls have to hide their sexual activity or be ostracized by both boys and girls.

Yes, indeed, that dynamic remains ridiculously strong. It’s so hard to combat. *sinks back into despair*

Holly Black: Wow. Great comment. I especially agree with this:

The aforementioned The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is a wonderful example of a book with a girl who knows she’s beautiful and becomes aware of the power that comes with beauty, who that power comes from, and the cost to her. Beauty, for women, is seldom uncomplicated.

Julia Lawrinson: I wonder if the same happens in the US?

Actually in the last few years the Printz & the National Book Award have been pretty awesome on that front. But those committees change every year. That may have a lot to do with it. I get the feeling that there’s been a lot of effort to have a more diverse range of judges in terms of genre familiarity (so fantasy & sf don’t keep getting overlooked), age, background etc. I may be wrong about that but the last few years lists have been really cool and interesting. I can’t wait to catch up with this year’s National Book Award shortlist.

I get that it was oversimplified for the purpose of argument, but if HP were described to me like that and written like that, then no. I wouldn’t want to read the books (whether her were a male or female protag) at all.

I do have a friend who says she hasn’t read HP because she’s read lots of fantasy and the idea of another coming of age of a boy through magic doesn’t appeal to her at all. She would be much more interested in the series if it were, indeed, about Harriet Potter instead.

Probably, sometimes. But at least one study suggests that Newbery Medal winners have achieved relative balance in terms of protagonist gender. Though (somewhat off-topic but apropos of Justine’s recent experiences) Newbery race issues appear to persist. Of course it is possible that a wider survey of YA awards would yield different results, but perhaps the same could be said for an evaluation of Australian awards?

I wonder if the same happens in the US?

…the writer is tasked with exploring what it means in our society.

Perhaps now it is my turn to misunderstand, but are you suggesting that the mere presence of an attractive character forces the author’s hand in some way? “Tasked” is a slippery word but typically imperative. The word I use for books that put ideology over art is “preachy.”

Maybe I’m not sure what you mean here by “okay to be stereotypical” – I think as writers we have to write about real women and real women are never stereotypes.

I mean “be” as an active-verb rather than in some identity-engulfing sense. Perhaps it would have been more clear to ask, “is it ever okay to make the stereotypical decision?” Sometimes the road more traveled is more traveled for a reason. Is it ever okay for a character to realize that?

I think that it might be more useful–although possibly less comfortable–to first look at some of the explorations of this particular subject written by women.

While I see no need to discount explorations of the subject written by women, by giving female authors primacy on the question you’re playing right into the problem, viz. “men and women are perceived differently even when they do the same things.” Your stated position is that women who write about gender perception are (or at least “might be”) “more useful” than men who write about gender perception. Perhaps even regardless of the quality of their work, as you appear to also appreciate Stephenson’s work.

But this is a perfect inverse of Justine’s dilemma! For ideological consistency, you cannot preach “equal perception” only when one sex or the other is disadvantaged.

Anyhow, it turns out I was not actually suggesting that Neal Stephenson’s portrayal of female characters teaches us much about stereotypes. Rather, I had in mind a certain passage. When one of the girls, now grown, is asked whether she will “conform or rebel,” she answers, “Neither . . . . Both ways are simple-minded–they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”

Justine appears to lament that she cannot seem to fully jettison her (or her readers’) stereotypes, even in the act of subversion. But a stereotype is just a heuristic gone bad, and heuristics are part the scaffolding we use to build ourselves as people. (Borrowing my own metaphor, here.) You can never really escape your foundations, as a person or as a society. But you can excavate them, some, so long as you don’t undermine the structure entirely, and you can make above them grand edifices to human achievement. In other words, I think Justine contributes marvelously, even if she struggles, at times, to reach the cheery conclusion she craves on the matter.

One other thing, forgive the absence of a graceful transition. I have read a lot of “strong” female characters, and not just in young adult fiction. Many of them were even written by female authors, and (if you can believe such a thing) it wasn’t even uncomfortable to read them. d^_~b I think a lot of authors are very, very good at delivering supremely “kicking” female protagonists, showing our young women exactly how strong and independent they can be. But I worry that they spend too much time extolling the finish line and not enough time detailing the track. If subversion of stereotypes is what we’re after, it’s not enough to preach to the choir. One must reach out and win converts–and tell stories, not about strong women, but about average, unremarkable women who become strong. I don’t want my daughter to mistake attitude for independence, or sass for being well-spoken; but that means she needs to be able to see not only the promised land, but also the road that will take her there.

Of course, such books do exist. But I don’t think they represent a majority, certainly not in contemporary YA literature, and I’d like to see more of them.

I would argue that many, many female protagonists are beautiful. What I think is more controversial for readers is a female character who is self-aware of her own beauty–in part because vanity is something that readers accept in male characters but judge harshly in female characters.

Once a character knows she’s beautiful, the writer is tasked with exploring what it means in our society. The aforementioned The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is a wonderful example of a book with a girl who knows she’s beautiful and becomes aware of the power that comes with beauty, who that power comes from, and the cost to her. Beauty, for women, is seldom uncomplicated.

But–to really compound the problem–is it also not okay to be stereotypical? The trap of “bucking stereotypes” in your work is that in our postmodern world, even bucking stereotypes has become clichéd. Girls are presented with an impossible challenge: to be sassy, yet demure; to be unbending, yet pliant; to be a revolutionary nonconformist, just like everybody else.

Maybe I’m not sure what you mean here by “okay to be stereotypical” – I think as writers we have to write about real women and real women are never stereotypes.

So if I might suggest a moderately cheering conclusion, then: read carefully Neal Stephensons Diamond Age and contemplate the three girls-then-women who receive the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.

While I love me some Neal Stephenson, I think that it might be more useful–although possibly less comfortable–to first look at some of the explorations of this particular subject written by women.

I think you really nailed the challenge when you noted that “readers put them [stereotypes] back into the text.” Continuing with the example of Laurel, with the pervasive YA trope of “homely intelligent girl beats the vapid pretty girls at their own game… and then becomes pretty herself,” how do you write a beautiful female character who readers won’t reflexively hate? Is it not okay to be beautiful?

But–to really compound the problem–is it also not okay to be stereotypical? The trap of “bucking stereotypes” in your work is that in our postmodern world, even bucking stereotypes has become clichéd. Girls are presented with an impossible challenge: to be sassy, yet demure; to be unbending, yet pliant; to be a revolutionary nonconformist, just like everybody else. (And though it is not the topic at hand, I can assure you from experience that males–real or written!–face analogous, if less well-explored, challenges.)

So if I might suggest a moderately cheering conclusion, then: read carefully Neal Stephensons Diamond Age and contemplate the three girls-then-women who receive the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Rarely in fiction will you see such an astute evaluation of the relative values of conformity and rebellion–which, I believe, is where all struggles against stereotypes must inevitably lead.