After talking to Libba Bray about how sexism occurs in books and how we may portray a certain book specifically for a girl or boy, we asked her some questions about how her book Beauty Queens, a novel about teenage beauty pageant girls who get stranded on an island and have to learn to fight for themselves, and why she would write a book directed at younger girls. “I think because I care very much about feminism and about gender issues–kind of like how we were talking about earlier today–where does this idea come from? Is it cultural? Is it society that puts these expectations on us? How do we change how we’re perceived?…I began to notice how women are shown in the media. I walked into a store, I think something like a Rite-Aid, and I noticed how all of the magazines in the front of the shop were pictures of pouting women talking about marriage, body images, and pregnancy. Now we’re stuck with ‘Is Kim Pregnant Again?’ and I just thought, Jesus, is this where we are?” She goes on to talk about how she actually really does enjoy all things “girly” and how these standards are only made up because of what we have already given back to our society. By showing everyone that “all girls love dresses and shoes and all things pink”, we’ve started to take things to extreme levels for the sake of advertising and getting attention. Libba showed her strong ideas about feminism and how ridiculous “boy and girl books” are. Would a boy be caught dead seen reading The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot in public and get away with it? Never! The standards that we hold teenagers to are unrealistic because not all girls love makeup and not all boys love war and sports.
