I remember when I first started reading YA books. I was having the best time of my life with all those amazing stories. But there was something a lot of them had in common. The heroines of these adventures were usually girls who were often overlooked, thought themselves to be plain and boring, and sometimes to make the difference clear, the story placed other women around them who looked ‘better’ and were more popular.
I felt overlooked when I was a teen, and well, I still often do. I feel like I’ve got much to say, but as an introvert, I find it hard to find ways to share how I feel and what I think. So, these characters, who by the end of the book were so much wiser, strong, and brave, were so uplifiting.
But fasforward to a couple of years later, where -no, I’m not the popular girl, that isn’t even relevant anymore lol- but I can see there was a harmful side to the way these characters in YA were presented.
- Only the bookish, quiet and loner types get to be the protagonists.
- Being popular is wrong and evil.
- Girls who wear makeup are arrogant, or dumb, or evil.
And we could go on and on about any of these points, but I’ll be brief about the first two.
I had a fallout with a friend of mine because she strived to be popular. I saw this in a very negative way, and because of so many things, I came to attribute popularity and having many friends a negative connotation. It was a sort of defense mechanism. There’s much I internalized and I’m still unpacking and analyzing.
But I do know this: After I struggled for some time, I grew closer to the group of friends that I really needed, and some of them have the loudest and most extroverted personalities ever. And I love them, because they’re also kind, and funny and caring.
And they can be the heros of their own stories as well!
It’s been a long time since I started being not okay with sort of demonizing friendly and popular people.
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Which brings me to friendly and popular women. This opens the proverbial doors of slut-shaming, and countless other issues that have plagued literature for years.
The first book I read with a popular MC was Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver. And I loved it. I picked it up because the premise sounded awesome, and also because I wanted to understand, or at least be a little closer to understanding what the hell went through the head of popular girls.
I found I could empathize with them on some level. I could totally relate with the desire to be heard, to be relevant. Next came, Some Girls Are, by Courtney Summers. That book left me mindblown.
Little by little I began changing my mindset. I applauded stories where awesome, diverse women worked together to ressolve the conflict. And stories where they are pitted against each other just for funsies left a sour tast in my mouth.
I no longer appreciated the dichotomy of popular girls who wore makeup to school versus the loner who doesn’t really care about how she looks.
We’re so much more complex than that! We’re more than just those two stereotypes.
[alert type=”info” close=”false”]Okay, at this point I’m realizing that I had way more to say about all this than I’d initially thought. Sorry if it’s not very well organized![/alert]
It’s a big issue, but I wanted to get to the makeup topic because that’s usually how you just knew that girl was out to get the protagonist and wanted to ensnare her love interest. This girl 99% the time wore makeup. And it just had to be mentioned.
Women shouldn’t feel ashamed of wearing makeup
We should be free to wear the brightest eyeshadows and deepest reds and blacks on our lips. Make no mistake, I love nude and understated looks. But it was a huge turning point for me when I realized that while sometimes I really wanted to look as natural as possible, other times, I did it because I just… didn’t want to be one of those girls, that people could clearly tell they were wearing makeup. Not because it was badly done. Just because it was clearly visible. That was a wake up call.
Making a character scoff at makeup and others who care about it doesn’t make them more interesting
Unless it’s an intentional character flaw and it’s clear that this behavior shouldn’t fly, or it has other purpose, it’s just harmful. We’re encouraging the stereotypes, and fueling the fire of girl versus girl mentality.
What gives them the right to judge someone based on what they choose to put on their face?
It’s not about encouraging makeup usage. It’s about just stop making it a prime trait that dictates a character’s moral compass.
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These stereotypes totally helped me relate with a ton of book characters when I needed it. But they also cemented that hurtful idea in my mind that there was a right and wrong way when it came to how you should express yourself. I was quiet and didn’t have many friends, so I wanted some validation that being that way was better than being the other way. That I was in the right, because look, all those characters who got to be heros, they were like me.
I consider it’s important to give teen girls that much needed relatability, but stories are the chance to promote all kinds of diversity, including the diverse personalities and backgrounds women and people in general have.
We can do better!
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I read a book recently where the main character must’ve mentioned about a thousand times that she didn’t wear makeup. It definitely got old fast. I couldn’t help but think that we’re doing teenagers a disservice with that message.
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YES I think this is SO IMPORTANT!! I wrote a post a few years back about how I was frustrated about how protagonists in older YA often staunchly did not care about their appearance or personal aesthetic and characters who did were portrayed as villains and vain and vapid, which I think is actually super harmful. I LOVE makeup. I love that it’s a creative outlet, it’s so artistic, it allows people to have fun and try out trends and experiment with their own look and personality. I think YA has shifted and we’re seeing less of the “mousy, plain, protagonists” but I want to shout from the rooftops sometimes that it’s OK to wear AND love makeup!
I’ll have to check out that post! I’m glad that this tendency isn’t as popular now, and books with women supporting each other and fighting together are getting published and being praised.
Makeup IS art, and I love how some people come up with all those different looks <3
Thanks for sharing your opinion!
Great discussion! I LOVE makeup. People get glam-shamed in real life, so of course that is going to happen in books as well. I totally agree with you. As a woman in my 30s I feel it even more. I often feel like I have to do my makeup in a certain way so as to not get those “looks.” This sucks because I very much view makeup as an art and I love experimenting and creating new and fun looks (with eyeshadow), but feel limited in where I can actually where these makeup looks.
Really, we just need to stop judging each other in general! I admit I used to be quite a judgemental person, but now I hate when people judge. There are so many aspects of life (and of course then it goes into books as well) that this applies to and I just wish people would be kinder and less judgemental to each other.
It really does suck. And I love how you consider makeup an art. I didn’t use to see it that way, but once I got to know a bit of that world, I agree completely it IS an art.
And it’s true, kindness and less judging would be perfect XD The world can’t change overnight, but if stories made more of an effort to address this issue, I feel we’d be taking steps in the right direction.
Thanks for stopping by!
This is a very important post Pamela! I agree that it’s very dangerous how even until now, all the popular girls are evil and make up wearing girls are shallow. Personally, I don’t wear make up because I just don’t like how they feel on my skin (maybe I haven’t explored enough) and I would rather get my extra 15 minutes of sleep rather than making my eyebrows xD But I do love talking about make up, and a lot of my friends who are popular AND wears make up are some of the nicest people around. I think it’s important to realize that it’s okay for women to wear make up, especially in literature where most of the readers are women 🙂
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Lool, sleep is totally my first priority as well. I agree it’s just a bit of a mindset shift we need. It doesn’t make you shallow, or an attention-seeker. Makeup really is about yourself, and what you feel comfortable with, not about others. So, if you don’t like it then that’s totally fine! Some brands can be so expensive 🙁 But I do like playing around sometimes XD I really do hate foundation though. I can empathize with not liking my whole face covered in something like that. But maybe I just haven’t found the right one, who knows?
This is such a great post, and I totally agree with you!
I wasn’t very popular at school, and in fact I got bullied by some of the ‘popular crowd’, including girls who wore make-up, and it did give me a kind of prejudice against more popular people which I can now thankfully recognise as being incredibly unfair. This view was only consolidated by the books I was reading, where as you say, plainer heroines were generally pitted against pretty mean girl characters.
However, now I’m an adult and have met a much wider variety of people, I now know that this view is absolute nonsense: plenty of the women I work with wear lots of make-up and they’re all lovely and kind! Make-up is an aesthetic choice that people make, and is no way related to what’s on the inside, and I think it’s amazing that we have an ability to choose like that, what we want to look like. I’d love to see this reflected in more books too, instead of characters being reduced to stereotypes, and I may have to check out the two books you’ve mentioned, as I haven’t read either of them! 🙂
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It was my same experience. And you just said it better than I did, THANK YOU. How you choose to look has very little to do with how you are! That’s why it also bugs me when some people don’t approve of crazy colored hair for ‘professional’ people. It’s like, what? My education remains the same whether my hair is brown or rainbow!
Do check them out! Some Girls Are in particular offers such a raw look at a girl who used to be in the popular crowd but then falls from grace with her friends. Some parts are a little over the top for me, but I loved them, because it might not be a reality for me, but who knows what kind of people are out there? Some people are really capable of doing some evil stuff!
It’s sort of odd, that in media, you often see a woman, who wears no make up as brave and secure in herself, whereas, studies show that women, who wear makeup are more successful. I think if a woman likes to wear makeup, she should wear makeup, especially if it makes her feel good and she does it for herself. I hate the demonizing of anything associated with classic femininity. I believe it’s all ok – wear pink, don’t wear pink, paint your nails, don’t paint your nails, wear a dress, don’t wear a dress. Nobody should be shamed for their choice of how they want to represent themselves.
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I agree that it really just comes down to doing whatever you want, whatever feels right. Because we’ve only mostly seen one side of things. It bugs me too now, I think because I see my sister being really excited about makeup tutorials and I don’t like how literature portrays girls who like makeup.