http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/why-do-we-hate-things-teen-girls-love
“This week, Stephenie Meyer released Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, a gender-swapped version of Twilight… Naturally, the Internet had plenty to say on the topic, but while Twilight fans — many of them teenage girls — expressed excitement over a new book in their favorite franchise, numerous others mocked them for it.”
I’m not even sure if I can accuse Meyer of shrewdness. I think she’s genuinely daft. Twilight has a reputation for being poorly written, and this is apparently the same thing, just with name and sexes switched around. Kids like a crappy book, other people, whom I’m pretty sure are also predominantly kids as well, give them crap about it. I’m not sure this was actually a necessary component to the introduction. And I don’t think Meyer is paying for that publicity. All right.
Anyway, here’s the actual introduction: “‘For many people, the fact that teenage girls like something — whether that something is Taylor Swift or One Direction or Twilight — is a reason to write it off completely,’ said YA author and blogger Kerry Winfrey.” In the days of the internet, it’d be nice if there were a link to that, but w.e. A link is provided later on to another selection of Winfrey’s, though:
welcometoladyville.com/2013/07/08/the-villification-of-the-teenage-girl/
Bitching about this article is probably a stretch enough, so I probably shouldn’t harangue the other author as well. But the take-away quote provided is a decent synopsis: “Because once teenage girls start liking something, it’s over.” Winfrey and the main article’s author are missing over-qualifying this. Being a teenager girl can suck. What they miss is that being a teenager in general sucks. They conflate umbrage taken against teenagers as umbrage taken against teenager girls specifically. Teenage girls thinking myopically and believing the world is out to get them is one thing, but these authors are older, and the mindset gets less defensible the older the person is. Once you’re an adult, you should start to realise that the world isn’t out to get you personally, but that it shits on pretty much everyone. Some get it differently than others, but oftentimes the ass-kicking doesn’t discriminate.
My beef isn’t with teenage girls (phrasing?). Teenagers are entitled to not think things out thoroughly; it’s their opportunity to work it out when the stakes are low, because it’ll be less tolerable as an adult. My beef is with the everything-is-sexism! adults. It’s not that once something is liked by teenage girls that it causally becomes crap, it’s that teenagers, which includes teenage girls, tend to have terribly taste in a lot of things. At least as far as adults are concerned. Teenagers don’t have a great barometer for enduring artistic appreciation. There are exceptions, sure, but for the most part, a lot of what we liked when we are younger does not hold up to the same scrutiny we use to judge things as adults. To be fair to Winfrey, she cites a guy who seems to imply a causal association. I don’t know the context, but I’m fine with writing off that Klosterman guy as an idiot. “Metal isn’t good anymore!” Which actually means, “I’m not as into this as I was 10 years ago. Oh my God, are my tastes maturing? Am I changing? No, that’s not possible!” The stink can’t be coming from him, so he blames a scapegoat. Teen girls are an easy target. Or that might not be what happened. Regardless.
” While many teens report being mocked for their interests by friends or family members, often it’s the media that throws the hardest punches. When Zayn Malik announced he was leaving One Direction earlier this year, fans of the boy band turned to social media to share their heartbreak — and they were judged harshly for it.”
Yeah, it’s not just that people were like “Aw, dang, my favorite band broke up! :(” There were people who went off the deep end with histrionics. Here’s some of the reactions and judgment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1W-QmbJ_Tc
Is Buckley an asshole? Sure, but he’s not targeting the kids themselves,–NB he blurs the names–he’s targeting their words and actions. Their ideas they put into the public sphere are being judged, and they are being judged on their merits. If the media was being shitty about it, I mean, the media is shitty about a lot of things, but I don’t recall the WSJ or Times savaging any kids. Links, people….
” This belittling of teenage girls for their interests and fandoms isn’t a new phenomenon…. ‘Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.'”
The Beatles is an interesting choice, and the author could have been clearer about why she picked it. The Beetles are a massive aberration. They’re a boy band that had staying power. And that’s because they evolved. They wrote drugged-out kids songs, and they wrote adult songs. One Direction doesn’t have a “Yellow Submarine” or “Eleanor Rigby”, which is why no one will remember them in five years. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the best example to pick (unless there was a follow-up point, but there doesn’t seem to be any).
” Often, it’s the way in which girls express their love for something that draws this criticism.”
Yes, when it becomes over the top.
” On fan pages, forums and sites like Tumblr, girls can share in their obsession, participating in discussions and forging new friendships.”
It’s extremely rare to forge genuine relationships on those kinds of places. How many people do you hang out with you know because you met on a fan site? And I don’t mean you played a multiplayer game and chatted a bunch, I mean, like you logged in as OnED1r3cT1onLvvvvvrxoxo and hit it off with ZaynorwhateverisnameisILOVEYOU17 on 1Disthegreatest.com so now you guys do game night at your place. That’s right, never. Fansites and Tumblr is just a place for people to scream into a void about how much they feel something and have it validated by people who already agree with them. And when that kind of thing spills out into the rest of the world that doesn’t share that same enthusiasm, there’s criticism.
“Teenage fans may line up hours before a movie premiere or scream and cry at a concert along with thousands of other fans. They’re excited and they’re sharing in that excitement with others, but often their joy is mislabeled as “hysteria.'” Pretty sure that’s the working definition of hysteria. You realise nobody thinks that’s an actual medical condition anymore, right? We have made some progress.
“After attending a One Direction concert this summer, Jonathan Heaf wrote for GQ that boy bands ‘turn a butter-wouldn’t-melt teenage girl into a rabid, knicker-wetting banshee who will tear off her own ears in hysterical fervour when presented with the objects of her fascinations.'”
That’s all you got out of that article? How about the part where he linked to the death threats these non-hysterical teens sent him? http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2013-07/30/one-direction-gq-covers-most-terrifying-responses
Yeah, if you’re sending people death threats for not liking their favorite band, people have the right to be critical.
“Feminist writer and activist Bailey Poland says that such discussions of teen girls often seem to be ripped from 19th and early 20th century attitudes about female “hysteria.'” Oh, well if Bailey Poland said it…
“‘There’s an underlying assumption that teen girls are not in control of their emotions or interests and become overly excited or upset for no reason,’ she said.” Yeah, well, when they send death threats to writers for not fawning over a band they like, that assumption seems to be rooted in some experience with reality. Sure, it’d be stupid to say that teen girls are never in control of their emotions, but clearly, sometimes some of them aren’t.
“‘When the reality is that teen girls are often very intentional about what they’re interested in and aware of the social influences behind those media products…'”
Bullshit. Part of thing about being a kid is that you’re working with limited experiences. How much classical music has the average teenager listened to to be able to make an “intentional” decision to pass it up for pop music? How many of them know the amount of corporate production value that goes into pop acts like One Direction? You think their fans know the composers, producers, instrumentalists, writers, etc. for their pop band of choice? Do you honestly think people like Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez would be as successful as they are now without the Disney media behemoth marketing them?
“…and they deliberately use excitement and passion as the foundation for community-building and empathetic development.'” Community building which involves sending death threats to strangers? Also, teenagers will use anything they can find as a weapon to be shitty to each other. That includes music. Not that they can’t use music for empathy building, but it can also be used for destructive purposes. Like guns, music in the hand of a teenager is a tool. It’s the wielder who chooses what they do with it. But not all of them make good choices.
“What it means for women”
Hence my actual concern with this article.
“Mocking teenage girls and portraying their interest as worthless can further reinforce ideas that things created for women and by women are unimportant.”
No it doesn’t. Mocking teenage girls and portraying their interest as worthless can further reinforce ideas that things created for teenage are unimportant, sure. Because for the most part, they are. Nobody is going to bond over One Direction in five years. No one who wasn’t a teenage girl when they were popular bonded over them either. Sure, it made some people some money, but it was largely unimportant.
“’Everyone loves to make fun of ‘Twilight’ and how passionate teen girls got behind it,’”
Everyone loves to make fun of Twilight, because it was god-awful. Teenage boys made fun of teenage girls for liking it, because teenagers are assholes.
“‘More, when ‘Twilight’ became a phenom (sic) among adult women, it continued — this time, we chose to call them ‘Twi-Moms’ and make fun of their interests, too.'”
Yeah, see, because the adults in society figured it’s one thing for teenage girls to have terrible tastes in books that get turned into movies, but when adults do it, it’s concerning. Because Twilight‘s literary composition is geared towards an immature audience. Adult women should be more mature than teenage girls. We may roll our eyes at a teenage girl who wants a mysterious, brooding, hunky guy to like her inexplicably, but when an adult women wants that same thing, we wonder when they missed the whole growing-up thing they were supposed to do.
” Jensen says that belittling adults for reading ‘Twilight’ or other young adult literature is ‘connected to the idea that work/creative pursuits with an intent to reach teens or children is feminine.'”
Because she’s an idiot. Things targeted to teens and young adults are immature, juvenile. I may have sexist proclivities, but I’m not about to equate femininity with immaturity.
” She also points out that women who write the genre are frequently overlooked while men are celebrated.”
Yeah? Because the chicks who wrote Twilight and The Hunger Games sure seem pretty celebrated to me. Frankly, those are the only two YA authors I know, so by my count, female authors are 100% celebrated, while males are non-extant. Well, I think the dude who wrote Ender’s Game was a male. That YA, right? See, here’s the thing though, I, like most adults, simply don’t care. Look, if the kids are reading, that’s great.
“’We know why it is that men like John Green write Love Stories and women like Sarah Dessen write Romances,’ she writes. ‘It’s not the quality. It’s the way the system is built that makes women the outsiders in the category of fiction they made.'”
This was very confusing without context, so the link was nice to have here. She’s bitching about the semantics. “love stories” versus “romance”. It’s a distinction I have literally never seen, and I spend an unreasonable amount of time in bookstores. I don’t understand the criticism. The genre is consumed entirely by women. Men don’t give a shit about them whatever the name.
” Often, the female-written young adult books that are wildly successful are those that feature protagonists with traditionally male characteristics, such as Tris in Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’ and Katniss in Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games.'”
Those books are basically the same thing though, and they’re all ripping off Battle Royale, and my guess is that had literary precedent too. You only need one of those to be successful, and the rest is success by cultural zeitgeist inertia. For one, the existence of female-characteristic protagonists like Twilight seem to undermine this argument, but even entertaining it, one of the keys to THG’s success is that it was read across the gender lines. A good chunk of its readers were male. It wasn’t just a chick novel. When the movies came out, they got traction because there was a gender-neutrality to it. In THG, the female protagonist has a George Washington archtype to her. She’ll lead the rebellion to overthrow the totalitarian government. Americans will see that. Because that’s a compelling story. If it were just about Katniss choosing which boy she liked without that whole dystopian future backdrop, it’s way less likely it would have been a smash hit.
“Jensen says it’s because Katniss isn’t depicted as a ‘typical girl’ that she has wider appeal. Because of that, because of how action-driven the story is, it sells to a wider readership.'”
Storytelling 101. The population at large doesn’t want to see ordinary. Stories are escapes, fantasies. Fighting an evil government and gladiatorial combat is cool. Being normal is not. Humans like action in their stories.
“She’s a girl who is complex, feeling, romantic, tough, and absolutely layered and deep.”
No, she’s not. She has absolutely no depth. I saw two of the movies, and I paid attention. She reacted to changes in her environments. Nothing in her personality ever motivated her to do anything.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/whats_wrong_with_the_hunger_ga_1.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/the_hunger_games_is_sexist_fai.html
“Just before ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ was released in 2012, Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter who penned all four ‘Twilight’ movies, told Women And Hollywood that there’s a double standard when it comes to fantasy films. ‘We’ve seen more than our fair share of bad action movies, bad movies geared toward men or 13-year-old boys. And you know, the reviews are like ‘OK that was crappy, but a fun ride.’ But no one says ‘Oh my god. If you go to see this movie you’re a complete xxxxing idiot.’ And that’s the tone. That is the tone with which people attack ‘Twilight’.’
Insecure writer is insecure. In her defense, I’m sure it sucks to get your work shit on by a ton of people. and the movies were a big target because of the books. But she wasn’t making Casablanca. She was turning a book with bland, insipid characters and a dull plot into movies, and if she didn’t fuck it up, she’d make enough money to never have to work another day in her life. She’s completely capable of saying, “look, I got paid a shitload of money to turn this book into a movie. I’m not making Citizen Cane. Bite me.” I mean, Robert Pattinson, the male lead, would tell people the movie was stupid in interviews–that appears to be his honest opinion. He got high for the DVD commentary tracks and talked about vegie burgers. He didn’t give a shit. That’s how you do that. ” And you know, the reviews are like ‘OK that was crappy, but a fun ride.’” But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t admit it was crappy, but the girls love it, so fuck you. “That is the tone with which people attack ‘Twilight'” That’s the tone it deserved. It was a bad movie. Not your fault, the source material sucked. The criticisms aren’t about you.
“‘The male species is allowed all manner of violent, creepy, ludicrous and degrading movie tropes, and while we may not embrace them as high art, no one questions them seriously as entertainment.'”
People shit on terrible movies for guys all the time. There is absolutely a valid argument in, “hey, I know it’s crap, but it entertains me”. That doesn’t make it not crap, and that doesn’t invalidate artistic criticism, but it’s a defense that can be mounted. So make the argument, and get on with your life like the guys do.
“But even liking forms of entertainment that are considered traditionally male, such as sports, comics and video games can backfire for teenage girls, who are often relegated to ‘fake geek girl’ status. ”
People are skeptical of people who say they’re a part of a group but don’t fit the profile. Not fitting the profile means you’ll have to prove your bona fides. The purpose of niche groups is that they are niche and not for people to waltz into willy-nilly, hence resistance from perceived outsiders. Deal with it.
” Teenage girls already struggle with body image in an era of airbrushed models”
Teenage girls have been struggling with body image issues since always. Makeup is not a new invention. Also, in the age of internet porn, I’m pretty sure guys have their own share of media-exacerbated body image issues.
“and they often work harder than their male counterparts to prove they can make it in STEM fields”
Love to see that quantified. It’s not that I’d refuse to believe there isn’t a bias, but you can’t just throw that out there like it’s a known fact as a general rule. Plenty of my STEM field coworkers are female, and the males don’t seem to be slacking while the women do twice the work.
” and Winfrey says that belittling the things they love simply throws another hurdle in their path”
Calling Twilight stupid makes it harder for girls to be mathematicians? I see…
“‘I remember, very clearly, what it was like to be a teenage girl. To always feel like my opinion didn’t matter, to always feel like my very approval of something instantly lessened its cool quotient,'”
I remember, very clearly, what it was like to be a teenager. To always feel like my opinion didn’t matter, to always feel like my very approval of something instantly lessened its cool quotient. Do women just not talk to men anymore?
“‘We make sure [teen girls] know that their interests are vapid and trite.'”
Same for the boys. A lot of that is because their interests are vapid and trite. Also, adults to a fair amount of informing other adults that their interests are vapid and trite.
“‘How are they supposed to grow up to be writers, thinkers, artists, lawyers, doctors or anything when they feel subhuman?'” Because to cut it in a lot of the adult world, you have to realise that the world doesn’t give a shit about how you feel. You want to be a doctor or a lawyer? You fuck up, people literally die or get their lives destroyed. Your clients don’t give a shit how you feel about things, they care about you making the right call for them. The great writers and thinkers don’t get to get away with crap. Nobody cares what you like if they don’t like it too. You may love your book, but if nobody else does, it’s not going to get sold. Vapid and trite things are not assets in the adult world. Growing up means finding a place for those things, but evolving and maturing your tastes and expectations.
There is buried throughout all this a decent message: teenagers get shit on a lot. They’re young, and dumb, and that’s okay. You raise them right and they’ll stop being dumb when their older. That doesn’t mean you endorse everything they do, for sure. I’m not saying suspend your criticism. But have some sympathy. Don’t be shitty.
Nonetheless, teenagers are not innocent in all this. When they do not get immunity for stupid things. But criticizing things teenagers like isn’t a one-sided sexist bitch-fest. The boys get their crap too. Not every bad thing in the world is always sexist and a uniquely female problem.