Lili Wilkinson

Meg Rosoff has shared some of her thoughts on the Queen of Teen book award.

Bags or shoes?? Why, people, WHY? Why is so much marketing to girls swaddled in sparkly pink and demeaning language?

I think there’s a few steps in between talking about shoes and becoming entirely imprisoned by the male gaze. I like shoes. I like to look pretty. I’m not ashamed of that. I don’t let it dictate how I live my life, or how much I eat, or inform any of my life decisions.

Here are some thoughts by other people.

So, how demeaning is that Bags or Shoes question? In a culture which makes a fuss over the Prime Minister’s answer to the searching question ‘What is your favourite biscuit?’ I can’t get too worked up about it.
-When I Was Joe

It is all [Jane Austen's] fault: just substitute snogging for marriage, and you have Louise Rennison. OK, also take away the subtle and complex language, the wit, the brilliant structure, etc etc, but thematically, it’s all there. Sorta. I think it’s interesting that popular fiction for boys – from Muchamore to Horowitz is more feminist, albeit in the slightly crap way that the female characters tend to be just as skilled at kung fu etc as the boys.
-Anthony McGowan

(I’ve already made my views on the anti-pink and uninformed McGowan clear here and here.)

Boys are perfectly capable of reading books with pink covers (just as girls are capable of reading books with blue covers). The issue is that they won’t because society has convinced boys/men that anything targeted towards girls/women isn’t worthy of their time. That’s not the fault of book covers, is it?
-Keris Stainton

AGREED.

The point is, by covering books in pink and sparkles (and websites), we’re making them what David Fickling calls Readermakers. A teenage girl who isn’t a very confident reader might pick one up, because it doesn’t look intense or threatening. But once she opens the covers, she will almost certainly find characters who are flawed, human, thoughtful, funny, who make mistakes and learn from them, who are curious about the world. And if a pink sparkly cover (or website) with shoes and bags gets them to open that book, then bring on the glitter. It’s what’s inside that counts.

And frankly I’m far more concerned about books that are black or red on the outside. I’d much rather read books about girls who are flawed, honest, occasionally ditzy, and are interested in shoes (as well as other stuff), than books about girls who are only interested in being messed around by passive-aggressive, distant, abusive vampire boyfriends.

So there’s been a bit in the media lately about women writers and some other related bits and pieces. And I know this is a soapbox that I’ve jumped up and down on before, but I’m going to have to keep jumping for now.

First, there’s an article in the Telegraph about the Orange Prize, a literary award for women writers:

Given that women have won five out of the last six Whitbread/Costas, does the level of injustice remain enough to justify the Orange?

Women are predominant, in terms of numbers and power, in most of the major publishing houses and agencies. They sell most of the books, into a market that largely comprises women readers. They are favoured by what is overwhelmingly the most important publishing prize (the Richard and Judy list), and comprise most of the reading groups that drive sales. Girls in schools are more literate than boys, and pupils are taught reading mainly by female teachers promoting mainly female writers.

Well. A few points, if I may.

• Six out of the last 20 Booker Prize Winners have been women.
• Two out of the last 20 Booker Prize Winners have had a female protagonist. That’s 10%.
• Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2010 list are all by men.
• Our own Miles Franklin longlist features 3 women and 9 men.
• There are more women working in publishing than men, more women write books and more women read books. This is all true. Yet capital-L-literary awards are undeniably skewed towards men.
• There are more female teachers because teaching continues to be a low pay, low status job.
• Despite this, the vast majority of class texts are by men, and feature male protagonists.
• In VCE this year, there are 9 texts available by women, and 27 by men.
• I know of a local private girls’ school where, from Years 7-10, not one text is studied featuring a female protagonist. NOT. ONE.

What this is telling us, and the message we are sending to young people (both male and female) is this: despite the fact that the majority of people involved in the publishing industry are women, our society as a whole deems women’s stories as unimportant (at least as far as capital-L-literature is concerned). Female authors only get recognised when they write about men. And I am not in ANY way blaming men for this. It’s something we’re all doing together. As a whole literary culture. Here’s Lizzie Skurnick:

“I just want to say,” I said as the meeting closed, “that we have sat here and consistently called books by women small and books by men large, by no quantifiable metric, and we are giving awards to books I think are actually kind of amateur and sloppy compared to others, and I think it’s disgusting.”
Our default is that women are small, men are universal.

Here’s a (relatively mild) comment from that article about the Orange Prize:

I am a life long reader and have read thousands of books, however I have read probably less than 20 books written by women. Women write differently from men and I feel their efforts appeal mostly to other women.

Which brings me to our friend Nicholas Sparks. Nicholas is the author of The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe and Dear John, among others. First, I have to admit that I’ve never read any of his books, nor seen any of the film adaptations. But I’ve seen the previews, and that was enough to know that it isn’t really my thing. On the whole, I prefer my rom to also include com.

So Nicholas recently gave an interview*.

If you look for me, I’m in the fiction section. Romance has its own section… I don’t write romance novels. Love stories — it’s a very different genre. I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels…
There’s a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It’s a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it’s very rare that it works. That’s why I tend to dominate this particular genre. There is this fine line. And I do not verge into melodrama. It’s all drama…
I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophoclies and Euripides.
A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms.
There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do.

Apart from, hmm, I don’t know. A WHOLE BUNCH OF WOMEN.

Hmph.

Thanks to Karen Healey, Meanjin and Bookslut for bringing all these articles to my attention.
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*Did I mention that the interview was a joint one? With Miley Cyrus?

Last week the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Shortlist was announced. There were sixteen books on the Older Readers Notable list, with six books on the actual Shortlist. Of the sixteen Notables, four books have female protagonists. On the Shortlist, there’s just one.

Firstly, congratulations to all the authors on the lists. Please don’t think for a moment that what follows is a criticism of your work. You’re all awesome and totally deserve to be there.

But where are all the girls? Where is Simmone Howell’s Everything Beautiful? Or Joanne Horniman’s My Candlelight Novel? Or Michelle Cooper’s A Brief History of Montmaray? Or Julia Lawrinson’s The Push?

If you take a look back over the years at the books that have won and been shortlisted in the past, you’ll notice that there aren’t many girls at all (Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca are among the handful of girl-protagonist books awarded the gong in over 60 years).

And it’s happening everywhere! Today the Miles Franklin shortlist was announced. How many women writers on the shortlist? NONE. Ironic, huh? For a literary award that was named in honour of a woman who had to pretend to be a man in order to get published. A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

What’s going on? Why, as a society, do we privilege stories about boys and men? Why are their stories more Literary? Is it because people figure that girls will read books about boys, but boys won’t read books about girls? Is it because girl-stories are often focussed on an emotion-based arc, rather than an action-based one?

I’m currently in the very early stages of thinking about The Next Book. And I wanted to try writing a book for girls, but with a male protagonist. But now I’m not so sure. More girl books, I say! More spunky girls being awesome! Awards be damned!

(for more on this, check out Kirsty and Adele and Judith)

Let me tell you a story.

It starts with philosophy, and then moves through feminism, politics, graveyards, literature, monsters real and imagined, syphilis and ends up with, of all things, the humble computer. And it’s ALL TRUE.

So there was this guy, right? William Godwin. He was a political philosopher and novelist in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. He wrote a book called Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, which is said to be the first mystery novel.

William married a lady called Mary. Mary Wollstonecraft, to be precise. You may have heard of her. She is one of the pioneers of modern feminism, and wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, where she argues that women aren’t inferior to men at all, they are just not as well educated. And wouldn’t it be nice, if everyone were treated as rational people and our social order was founded on reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary had a few children (some illegitimately), but we’re going to focus on her namesake, Mary Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft died when baby Mary was only ten days old, so little Mary was brought up by her father and given a somewhat eccentric education. The story goes that William Godwin taught her to read by tracing her little pudgy fingers over the letters on her mother’s tombstone. He said, of Mary:

“She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible.”

Mary Shelley

Mary, it seemed, was destined for great things. And here’s where it gets interesting.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was estranged from his aristocratic family and his pregnant wife, because of his interest in radicalism. He was drawn to William Godwin’s political theory, and offered to pay off Godwin’s debts. Then he met Mary, who was seventeen at the time (Shelley was 22). They began secretly seeing each other. When William Godwin found out, he was mightily annoyed (especially since the debt-paying-off never eventuated), and Mary and Percy ran away together to live in sin.

A few years and a miscarriage later, Mary and Percy found themselves in Geneva with their friend Lord Byron, who was having an affair with Mary’s stepsister, Claire.

They rented the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, and basically just hung out writing, boating and talking late into the night. Also there was John William Polidori, a romantic novelist.

One particularly wet and rainy afternoon, Byron suggested they all write a supernatural story to entertain each other. Polidori wrote a short story that is basically the reason why teenage girls go weak at the knees at the mention of Edward Cullen – the story, Vampyre, is acknowledged to be the beginning of the vampire genre.

Mary also started what she thought would be a short story, but ended up being Frankenstein.

We’re going to follow this story on a slightly different path now, for the final chapter. Lord Byron had two daughters. The second was with Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister. This illegitimate daughter, Allegra, died aged 5.

The other daughter was Ada, also known as The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron, or, later, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, or, now, Ada Lovelace.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace is perhaps best known as being the first computer programmer. Well, sort of. She worked with Charles Babbage on a sort of theoretical predecessor to the modern computer. She also recongised that computers were capable of much more than just calculating numbers, which was something that no one (including Babbage) had ever considered.

Ada’s mother was very worried that her daughter might succumb to the madness of her father (you know, the syphilis, incest, sexual promiscuity that Byron is famed for), so she had Ada privately tutored in science and mathematics for a young age (the best way to stave off madness, as I’m sure you all know, is quadratic equations).

She was good mates with Charles Dickens, and also with Babbage, who said this about her:

Forget this world and all its troubles and if

possible its multitudinous Charlatans — every thing

in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.

So here we are, at the end of our story. Or the beginning. Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and I have pledged to blog about women in science. Although I ended up blogging about women in political science and science fiction, as well as the ordinary kind of science.

I think perhaps one day I will write a novel about this strange dynasty of women. But in the meantime, if you want to hang out in Ada's world a little more, I can recommend Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine.

I’ve always appreciated Barbie. 

Barbie is the kind of woman who says ‘Hey, girls! You can be a surgeon or a sign language teacher or a UN Ambassador or an astronaught or a paleontologist. And wear a nice hat and pretty shoes.’ Barbie had careers. Barbie ran for President in 2000, long before Hillary or Palin came on the political scene. Barbie was never defined by her male partners. And Barbie showed us that deformity can be beautiful too. We don’t judge Barbie for her scary legs or her twisted pointy feet.

Barbie is equal opportunity. She has black and Hispanic friends, as well as a friend with cerebral palsy, who gets around in a pink wheelchair. She cares about the environment, and about children’s rights.

In the current billion-dollar lawsuit of Barbie vs Bratz, I am 100% on Barbie’s side.

And now, Barbie’s latest campaign is for the smart girl. She’s launched a web TV show with Amy Pohler (of SNL fame), called Smart Girls At The Party. It’s basically a show that celebrates smart girls – girls who write, read, play music and think. I highly recommend.

Remember this post about Anthony McGowan’s opinions on Pink Books?

Well the post received an anonymous comment that implies it’s from McGowan. If it isn’t, I sincerely apologise to Mr McGowan. If it is, he should maybe think about being a little less anonymous.

Anyway. I thought I’d just copy the anonymous comment, and my response. FYI*.

Here’s what he originally said:

The leathery-skinned hacks who churn out the Pink books present a vision of young people as self-obsessed, shallow, blind automata, swilling about in a moronic inferno. Reading these books will leave your soul as shrivelled as one of those pistachios you sometimes find, blackened, in the bottom of the bag. Teenage girls, read the Brontës, read Elizabeth Gaskell, read George Eliot, read anything else – even Jane Austen – but keep the pink off your shelves.

And here are his response, and my response:

Anonymous said…

In case you didn’t notice, all the authors i recommended were women, so cut the white man bullshit. And the author i had in mind was Louise Rennison – read three of her books, as a judge in various competitions. I can’t deny there was little of the wind up about the blog, but I’d still stand by every word.

lili said…

Hi “Anonymous”,

I would much rather the youth of today read Louise Rennison than anything by the Brontës (the very definition of “self-obsessed, shallow, blind automata, swilling about in a moronic inferno”, in my opinion).

And it’s a bit rich to dismiss a whole genre based on one author’s work. There are some amazing Pink books out there that are challenging, thought-provoking and empowering – Meg Cabot’s Ready or Not is an example that springs to mind.

Can you say the same things about your books? Are The Bare Bum Gang books challenging, thought-provoking and empowering for their young readers?

I haven’t read them, so I can’t say.

Best,

Lili Wilkinson.

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*Why does this always happen to me? First Frank Cottrell Boyce, now Anthony McGowan.

Sometimes I wish I could just grow down and go back to primary school. Everything was easy then. School was fun, I was the Grade 6 Spelling Champion, and my best friend and I thought boys were disgusting.

When I wake up on the first day of Year 10, I realise how much has changed. School is hard. My best friend is boycrazy. I have never kissed a boy. And no one gives a rat’s fund ament about spelling.
I drag myself into the kitchen for breakfast. Mum and Dad are talking, but stop when I come in. Mum looks down into her cup of tea, and Dad leaves the room.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask as I eat last night’s ravioli straight from the Tupperware container.
‘Fine,’ says Mum, then makes a face. ‘Imogen, that’s disgusting.’
Mum named me Imogen because it sounded like imagine, but everyone calls me Midge. Even Mum only calls me Imogen when I’m doing something wrong.
I pop another piece of ravioli into my mouth. ‘What?’
‘You could at least heat it up.’
‘I like it cold.’
Mum empties the dregs of her tea into the sink and then smoothes her shirt. She was a total hippie before I was born, but now she works for a classy law fi rm in the city. She still burns incense and talks about karma, and she gets all hot under her Country Road collar when I call her a sell-out.
I finish the ravioli, and rummage through the fridge to find something worthy of a sandwich for school.
‘Don’t bother making your lunch,’ says Mum, gathering up the official-looking papers that decorate the kitchen table. ‘I’ll give you money to buy something.’
I freeze. ‘What have you done with my mother?’ I ask suspiciously.
‘It’s your first day back at school,’ says Mum. ‘You should have a treat.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘This from the woman who started a letter-writing campaign to our local council insisting they serve tofu in the school canteen.’
She just smiles and snaps her briefcase closed.

Tahni bounces up to me at my locker in the Year 10 corridor. She’s been in Queensland with her family since after Christmas, so I haven’t seen her in forever. We squeal and hug and do the girl thing, then she launches into a lurid and, I suspect, highly exaggerated description of the boys she met on the beach, and the bikini she wore, and the expressions on the faces of the boys when
they saw her in the bikini, and the photo she gave them of her in the bikini (airbrushed, of course – Tahni became a Photoshop expert last year with the sole purpose of being able to airbrush her own photos). I zone out after a couple of seconds. I notice a sign on the wall:

“Welcome” Year Ten’s

I can forgive Tahni her tendency to turn even the most mundane events into a drama worthy of Ramsay Street, but there are only two things worse than poor spelling. One is misplaced quotation marks. The other is unnecessary apostrophes.
‘So?’ asks Tahni. ‘Did you meet any hot boys over the summer?’
She says it in this annoying sing-song voice which makes me blush. Because she knows the truth. She knows I’ve never kissed a boy. She’s the one who tells me at every available opportunity that I’m going to be a lonely old lady with eleven cats in a caravan. I feel like the whole school is judging me. Me in all my pathetic loser-y glory.
This is an extra-special bonus level of Not Fair. It’s not like I’m ugly. I’ve spent hours in front of the mirror, trying to figure out what is wrong. I have good skin. My eyebrows are nicely shaped. I don’t have crooked teeth or a hideous squint. So. What. Is. The. Problem??
Tahni laughs and makes miaowing noises. I envisage a whole year of this. A whole year of every girl in the school who isn’t me pashing anything with a Y chromosome. And I can’t handle it. I would rather die.
So I say it. I don’t think about it. I just say it.
‘I did meet a boy.’
Tahni giggles. ‘Cousins don’t count, Midge,’ she says. ‘Or pizza delivery boys. Or the boys who work at the video shop.’
I glare at her. ‘I met him at the library,’ I say. ‘He has wavy brown hair, and he’s English.’
I pause. What am I talking about? I didn’t meet any boys.
‘So he’s a nerd,’ says Tahni, cautiously.
Does that mean she bought it?
I grin. ‘A hotty Mc-Hot nerd.’
Tahni nods appreciatively. Who doesn’t love a hot nerd?
‘Wow,’ she says. ‘You really met a boy. When can I meet him?’
‘He’s gone back to England,’ I say. Where is this all coming from?
‘So you’ll never see him again,’ Tahni says dismissively, like it doesn’t count.
‘He might be moving here.’
What am I doing? I’m crazy. There’s no way Tahni will buy this.
But she is. She’s leaning forward, her eyes intent. ‘Did you pash him?’
‘Of course.’
Tahni lets out a little squeak of excitement. ‘Are you off your V-plates?’
I give her a Look. ‘Don’t be gross,’ I say. ‘We only met a month ago.’
‘So what did you do?’ asks Tahni. She looks slightly defensive. Maybe she’s worried that I have a better story than her never-ending Bikini on the Beach masterpiece.
I’m enjoying this way more than I should.
‘We went on a picnic by the river,’ I say. ‘We had a picnic rug and lemonade and dip and squishy cheese. He made me a garland out of daisies and willow branches and called me a princess.’
Tahni frowns, and I know I’ve gone too far. ‘Sounds kind of wet,’ she says.
‘It wasn’t,’ I say. ‘It was romantic.’
The bell rings. ‘More on this later,’ says Tahni over her shoulder as she hurries off to form assembly.
I am officially insane.

(more here)

Today is International Women’s Day.

It’s also the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in Victoria.

New Zealand came first with the whole women-voting thing, in 1893, followed by South Australia in 1902.

In Victoria, the issue was kicked off in 1891 when Premier James Munro said that he’d introduce a bill for Women’s suffrage if ordinary women demonstrated they wanted the right. They did. They created the Monster Petition, with 30 000 signatures, in six weeks. The petition was 260 metres long, and several attendants were needed to carry it into Parliament. For some strange reason it took 19 bills and 17 years to actually give women the voting stamp of approval, but that’s what happens when all the politicians are men.

The UK gave women the vote in 1918, but it had restrictions until 1928.

The US did it in 1920.

Italy gave women the nod in 1948, as did Belgium, Israel, Iraq and South Korea.

Switzerland didn’t have women’s suffrage until 1971, nor Lichtenstein, until 1984.

The most recent nation to grant their women the right to vote was the United Arab Emirates. There are still restrictions, which will be lifted by 2010.

We’ve come a long way, but while you’re munching on your purple-iced cupcake and admiring your fancy new blue stockings, spare a thought for the women in the world who are still disenfranchised.