Very soon after I decided that I wanted to be a YA writer, I learned the following “truth:” that girls will read novels with both male and female protagonists, but boys will only read novels with male protagonists. So if you want the widest crossover, you write a boy protagonist, and if you write a girl protagonist, that means you’re mostly writing for a female audience.
Then I heard the oft repeated story about how J.K. Rowling decided to use her initials as her author name so that the readers would not know she was a woman. And I heard about how YA was dominated by women writers, sometimes as though this were a bad thing.
Then I heard a couple of male writers who I respect talking about the problem of there not being enough boy books in YA. Later on, I heard about what a problem it was that there were too many female protagonists and “girl books” in modern YA.
Shall I define “boy book” for you? A boy book probably has a male protagonist. It features action and adventure and is quick paced. It probably doesn’t have much if any romance. The language and structure might also be more straightforward and simple, since one of the main reasons having YA boy books is supposed to be important is to encourage reluctant boy readers to read.
A “girl book,” by contrast, probably has a female protagonist. It may have action and adventure and be quick paced. It almost certainly includes a romantic element. It might focus more heavily on social interactions and relationships in general, as well as issues of social status (because of course, men aren’t interested in status at all. Ha!). There might also be a stronger focus on emotions. The language and structure run the gambit between simple and complex.
I’m not going to mince words: these truths about boy readers, the YA genre, and boy and girl books are harmful and sometimes flat-out false. If boys won’t read books with girl protagonists, especially by the time they are teenagers, this is not a good reason to write and publish fewer books with girl protagonists. This is a red flag that something is wrong with the message our society is sending to these boys.
Often this argument gets lost in the rush to emphasize the importance of boys learning to read. It’s fine to perpetuate this “truth” of boys being unwilling to read anything not entirely male-centered, the unstated message goes, as long as we can wheedle them to read anything at all. And this is how sexist thinking gets passed on to the next generation.
Obviously boys learning to read is important. It’s important that everyone learn to read. And it’s also important that we throw away outdated and harmful ideas about gender and stop teaching boys that girls and anything related to girls are somehow shameful or uninteresting or embarrassing. THESE CAN BOTH BE IMPORTANT AT THE SAME TIME. Revolutionary idea, I know.
If YA did have such a predominance of female protagonists, I’d be happy, given all the messages female teens receive to the contrary, that there was at least one place where they could experience other females being front and center, having agency and their own individual identities. But it is not necessarily even true that YA has more female protagonists than male. According to this study, 49% of YA protagonists are male. 49%. And only 36% of YA protagonists are female. (15% have protagonists of both genders.)
You know what else isn’t true? That YA is dominated by women writers. The same study found that 56% of YA writers were women, which is hardly an overwhelming majority.
When we talk about female protagonists in YA books as if they’re somehow a bad thing, we’re strengthening harmful stereotypes. When we believe boys won’t read books with female protagonists, we’re sending them the message that they shouldn’t want to, or that there’s some kind of problem with reading these so-called “girl books.”
The Feminist Batwoman wrote a fabulous essay called “Boys Don’t Read Girl Books and Other Lies My Society Told Me.” She ran a successful experiment exposing her little brother to novels about girls as well as boys, and she has this to say about boys not reading books with girl protagonists: “My outlandish theory is that if boys aren’t belittled for reading books about girls, if they’re not taught that girls are lesser, if they’re not teased about cooties, if we don’t teach them to fear the feminine… they’d probably like more “girl” stuff.”
We need to stop talking about boy books and girl books as if this is some kind of important and valid distinction. We need to wake up and realize that 56% of YA writers being women does not mean that women dominate the genre. And we need to think long enough to realize that if girls are happily reading novels with protagonists of both genders, there’s no reason we can’t work towards encouraging boys to do the same. Plenty of boys already do.
For a long time I took these assumptions about YA and YA readers for granted. I’m guessing I’m not the only one. Therefore, if you think this is an important and interesting issue, I encourage you to share this essay or start a conversation with your friends and colleagues. Let’s challenge what everyone knows and find out what lies underneath, shall we?
The Practical Free Spirit 
There are some sites just for this issue. Check out http://www.guysread.org and http://www.boysread.org.
Haha, throwing bombs again. I agree totally. Boys shouldn’t get a pass for avoiding books with female protagonists. I wonder if there is research on the extent to which this is the case and the extent to which it’s just a stereotype. My feeling is that there probably _is_ an extent to which boys avoid books with female protags.
On the flip side, I’m not sure that writing for a primarily female audience would be a huge handicap for a writer. Plenty of massive pop-cultural phenomena (Fifty Shades of Grey, Justin Bieber, Twilight, etc) seem to be driven entirely by women. And that’s fine. I guess if you’re like Jonathan Franzen and you have some sociocultural desire to be read by men (he was annoyed, at one point, that Oprah picked his book because he said that meant it’d be discarded by men), then this stuff might matter to you, but, otherwise, ‘being a girl book’ doesn’t seem like something to be avoided.
Oh, I agree that I’m not worried from a commercial standpoint about writing YA novels that could be classified somehow as “girl books.” It’s when viewing this from a social standpoint that I’m concerned.
I’ve also heard in adult literary circles that if you want award nominations etc. it is much easier if you are a man and/or write about subjects that are coded as more masculine.
I think boys have a soggy side and enjoy a well observed romance as part of a story. I do anyway
I’m glad to hear anecdotal evidence that not all males dislike having a romance as a side plot. 🙂
When I was a boy, I had no trouble reading any action-oriented “girl book” like Nancy Drew mysteries, but I had zero interest in reading YA romance books, and a lot of YA “girl books” seem to focus on that.
I just wasnt interested in a book where the major plot was, will the girl pick the good boy or the bad boy, and can she make the bad boy be kind, or make the good boy a little more exciting (I’m looking at you, Twilight).
I can see wanting to avoid novels in which the main (and possibly only plot) is a romantic one. But happily there are lots of YA novels with female protagonists that feature other plots. 🙂
Twilight actually has a lot of action, funny moments and some pretty scary scenes that have nothing you do with finding a boyfriend which you’d all know if you actually looked into it without prejudging it based on internet memes or whatever. I even enjoyed some of the characters- namely, Alice, Rosalie, and Jasper.
THANK U thats exactly how i feel
To my way of thinking: a good book is a good book. And, as Jeffrey P mentioned, subject matter often has more to do with who the audience is than female vs. male protagonist. As the mom of a teen boy, I can tell you he’s happy to read any well-written YA book that does not fall into the category of romance or fantasy—all three of them.
I guess it’s a good thing thrillers are becoming such a trend in YA right now.
Actually, I’ve found the reverse true more often, especially post-Hunger Games. Many, MANY girls will not read books about boys, especially if a boy main character is not involved in a strong, central romance. I increasingly see boys reading things like Twilight or Hunger Games, on the other hand.
Interesting. Well, I’m glad to hear anecdotal evidence that contradicts the myth!
As I think about this more, it seems to me that the “romantic” element is probably the reason for the big divide. It seems to me that many YA books with a girl protagonist do seem to center around the “romance,” rather than other elements of the story, reinforcing the idea that girls are supposed to be focused more on romantic relationships. I don’t think a boy is put off by relationships in general… I mean, Lord of the Rings really explores human relationships, in the midst of the grand adventure and I’ve yet to see a guy have a problem with that… heck, even Star Wars has romantic elements… but they aren’t the central message. So perhaps one aspect of this worth exploring is why so many girl-led books have to have such a strong romantic element?
I have heard that YA novels can be a hard sell to publishers without some romantic element. That being said, even if some kind of romantic element is included, it doesn’t have to be the primary narrative drive of the novel. In the fantasy and science fiction YA I’ve read from the last few years, the romance is usually the B plot.
Orrrr, maybe many girls just happen to enjoy romances. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
As a boy, I read the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, and my father’s westerns, and my mother’s romances, and everything in the juvenile section at my local library (children’s and YA were one section then) and pretty much anything with printed words on it that wasn’t in some kind of locked storage. I admit, I am an avid reader, so I may be a statistical outlier. But I really think gender stereotypes are just that: stereotypes. And since a lot of gender behavior is learned… well, the conclusions seem obvious.
I was the same kind of reader as a kid. I’d read almost anything put in front of me and get big stacks of books from different sections of the library every two weeks. I had very little awareness of any idea of gendered reading selections until quite a bit later.
One thing that bugged me forever and ever when consuming media aimed at guys and marketed to guys is that I’ve been considered by many to be some kind of anomalous outlier if I like so-called guy stuff, when in fact, women often have to consume “male-oriented” media at many points in their life if they want to be considered culturally relevant. And then when you try to ask simple questions about Why aren’t there any TF2 female skins or Why were the majority of action heroes guys, one was repeatedly told that guys couldn’t possibly relate to a movie that featured women. The message this translated to in my head: Wider society culture expects me to have empathy for guys and relate to guy characters, but doesn’t expect guys to have empathy or relate to women characters. It’s one of the single most pervasive messages devaluing the experiences of women and it happens DAILY.
Yes, the double standard can be quite annoying. I completely agree.
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I’m currently doing a study into Why Adults Read YA Fiction. It would be great to get some of your opinions.
Just follow the link below. Thanks.
http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s/ORlBozCQ
I kind of have a theory about this.
Main characters are often intended to be inspirational.
Women get to be inspirational for applying for a low level office job because she’s likely to get harassed or something and is being oh so brave for even considering working in such an environment..
For boys on the other hand, the only time they really get inspirational if if they’re the first person to do something. For example, besides Neil Armstrong and Buzz, who’s walked on the moon? Unless you have some interest in space or something like that you probably can’t recite their names like you can the alphabet.
My theory is that at least part of the reason is because boys apply something different to male characters than they do to female characters, I think they look at male characters and think, “Hey I’m similar to this character maybe I can be like them!”
And sadly we seem to live in a world where people aren’t expected to relate to anyone who’s not like them in some physical way. A little Muslim girl being called a terrorist can’t relate to a German boy being called a Nazi.
This is just a theory based on observations though, so I don’t know for certain this is it. Someday I’d like to an experiment with children readers about this, asking them what their favorite things about their favorite characters are stuff like that. Maybe I’ll find something different. Who knows?
It’s always a “delight” to witness otherwise intelligent individuals flat-out lying.
Fiction reading being dominated by girls/women, I’ve always heard that you need to cater to *girls/women* instead. That’s why a lot of books on market contain book with such a prose often allergic to boys’ perspective.
You can’t expect boys to read books that are in a “language” unlike what they’re familiar with. It has little to do with protagonist gender and everything with the handling of the prose!
This is the also the reason why women will not (generally) read romance written by men, for instance, protagonist gender being totally irrelet; they assume it to be bad, unlike the “language” they speak. That’s why many male authors will write romance under a woman’s pseudonym.
Calling my reaction to this article appalling would be a gross understatement. As usual we must pathologize boys for simply being unlike their obviously superior girls counterpart.
[…] If Boys Really Won’t Read Books about Girls, We Have a Problem […]
Interesting article.
Well, I’m woman, but I’ve never red girl books much, because of the romance in them. They just seemed to be all about the romance and nothing else. What was boring. Boy books seemed too naive and not realistic, but more acceptable for me. I wanted to read about something unusuall, not something I can easily have in my real life. My solution was to move to adult books. Till today, I’m not sure whether it was good or harmful for me. Kid probably shouldn’t read Kafka or Bergman’s Sevnth Seal.
[…] by and for men since they started school and they haven’t once complained, the least you can do is read one or two by and for women.” All I’m asking is for those threatened guys to quiet down for a moment about not liking a […]
Revitalized web project:
http://annmarie.go.telrock.net
Yeah, great points, especially “It’s important that everyone learn to read. And it’s also important that we throw away outdated and harmful ideas about gender and stop teaching boys that girls and anything related to girls are somehow shameful or uninteresting or embarrassing.” Ultimately, women and girls are still seen as inferior on some level.
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