[thread about teen girls & YA]
So a few years ago, I was on a panel of booksellers. It was about trying techniques to sell YA to an adult market. And throughout discussions of what we were going to talk about, one thing came up again and again.

“We have to show adults that YA isn’t all princesses and ball gowns,” several people said. “It’s more than that.”

And I bit my tongue. Because I was probably the youngest person on that panel, because I am an author myself and didn’t want to offend any of the other booksellers, because I have been socialized to remain silent rather than risk conflict.

I did manage to slide a suggestion into the panel schedule so I could take a few moments and talk about YA and feminism. And then the day of the panel arrived. Everyone was very nice, very cool, and we sat down and people started talking.

And the usual audience comments came up: We had to show adults that YA was to be respected because it had heroines that shot arrows instead of wearing ball gowns.

And that’s when I snapped. “We’re not going to get adults to respect young adult literature as long as teen girls aren’t respected,” I said. “Because that’s who we’re writing for much of the time. Teen girls. And those girls who wear dresses deserve just as much respect -

- as the girls who don’t. YA literature is disparaged for the same reason that romance as a genre is often mocked: it’s written and read predominantly by people who are not men. And that’s why it’s criticized. It’s sexism. It isn’t a matter of YA being badly written or -

- because all genres have their badly written books. But I don’t see mysteries or biographies being torn down as a whole because of badly written books. It’s different with YA. YA is always presented with a caveat: ‘yes, I know it’s a young adult novel BUT it’s really good.’

I want to remove that caveat. ‘It’s a young adult novel. It’s written for teen girls. Teen girls have amazing taste in books. They are passionate and smart and wear dresses and shoot arrows and go outside or stay indoors.

We don’t do teen girls any favors by tearing one group of them down to lift another up.

And then I went silent, because I realized at that point I’d been talking for like three minutes straight and I just kind of sat there.

Afterward, I had several people come up to me and tell me how much my impromptu rant had resonated with them. It was a good experience.

And so this is why someone tearing down Sarah Dessen’s books angers me so much. Her books are wonderful. They are insightful and smart - and unrepentantly aimed at teenage girls. That person who tried to take those books away? They don’t respect teen girls.