Girls' Books vs Boys' Books

The child_lit listserv is a place of conflicting responses: awe (when Philip Pullman casually posts), appreciation (when erudite and passionate discussions transpire), and frustration (when a well-meaning member repeatedly posts topics that no one else seems to share the same enthusiasm for ad infinitum). Many times it prompts me to think about children's reading today, in ways that I don't ordinarily do as a scholar who is more up-to-date with reading habits in the 19th century than the 21st.

A recent discussion on the list concerned the segregation of books into gender-exclusive categories. As a Victorianist, I'm familiar with the idea that girls looked for adventure in the pages of boys' magazines and novels. When there was no swashbuckling or discovery of the wilds of Africa in girls' books, girl readers were able to turn to their brothers' books to experience excitement not only vicariously, but at a remove from their intended audience. There are documented boy readers of girls magazines, such as the Girl's Own Paper, but they appear to be in the minority as compared with the reverse situation of girls escaping moralistic tales.


I'm not sure today whether you'd find more girls playing football than boys being chaffeured to ballet lessons by their parents, and similarly much about children's reading seems to be directed on gendered lines that put girls' books in no-go zone for boys. One list member discussed removing a dust jacket from a book to make it appear less "girly". The boy to who read the books enjoyed it but the marketing of the book as overtly girly was seen as putting off boys who may have enjoyed a story about a girl protagonist.


While there are reasons to be sick about the "pinkifying" of girls' culture, which are well covered by the Pink Stinks campaign, it also plays a part in situating girls' books as irrelevant to boys. As list members pointed out, to suggest that white child readers could not enjoy a book about a person of colour would be largely unthinkable (even though publishers do their best to outwardly whitewash their titles), but the perception that books about girls are unappealing to boys while the reverse is not a problem continues to undermine girls' interests, strengths and abilities as inferior to typically masculine traits. Do educators have to hide the outward signs of masculinity on books in order for girls to read them?

There is a lot more thinking I need to do about the gendering of contemporary books, but as I first see it, this continued status difference begins to instill a hierarchy of feminine and masculine culture from childhood. Women's interests are frivolous. Men's important. Football and fishing shows should occupy television schedules on Saturday, a day of rest from work, but never those about typically feminine interests (apart from cooking, which nearly always involves a man showing us how it's done, unless she's scopophilic fodder like Nigella Lawson). I'd be interested to read more about the gendering of children's books over time, particularly series fiction. While it seems there is far more literature out there that does not perpetuate some kind of artificial gendered reading distinction, it still amazes me that the gendered divide is still so prominent.

The Collector's Impulse

I've got two Girl Guide projects on the boil at the moment. And for this reason I've become a somewhat compulsive eBayer, trawling for interesting ephemera that might make for good illustrations. I've now got a giant box of Guide books, photo albums, camp diaries, badges, certificates, letters, application forms, even an original belt. Here's hoping a book results or I'm going to have a busy time relisting a hundred back issues of the Waratah (New South Wales Girl Guide magazine) from the 1950s.

I've also nabbed a few fairly scare weekly issues of the Girl's Own Paper with their advertisements still intact. Anyone working in this area knows that advertisements were usually removed for libraries and binding into annuals. I've only ever seen advertisements from this magazines contained in a Library of Congress microfilm, which include issues from the early twentieth century. The copies I found are from the 1880s, the earliest years of the paper.

Some contained additional fold-out ad booklets, usually for soap, including the pictured advertisement for Brooke's Soap, which I think became well-known as Monkey Brand soap. I've been reading Anne McClintock's article on the history of soap, and she mentions mirrors, soap, light and white clothing as the four domestic fetishes of the period. In this image, we've got a kind of mirror in the form of the artist's canvas, but it's depicting a humanised monkey that the girl has proudly painted. As I'm intending to write a paper on Tarzan in light of Victorian popular understandings of social Darwinism, I'm not sure what to make of the monkey in the suit. Can he be humanised and civilised like native peoples with the influence of femininity and whiteness? But what on earth is that giant furry thing on the girls' chair? An animal skin? If so, is there a reversal of the monkey in the tuxedo with the idea of the girl in the monkey's fur? A strange one, that's for sure!

A Tribute to My Mum

It has been a challenge to keep the focus of this blog on the topic of girls' literature and culture. Every day there are dozens of issues that I feel compelled to write about, but I've not made the decision to blog about "everything that bothers me and what I think of it", rather to focus on anything that relates to girls, femininity or children's books.

One thing that has been immensely challenging to the idea of regular blogging during the past 8 months has been the illness of my mother with mesothelioma. It is a rapid, debilitating disease that makes relentless progress regardless of treatment.


My mother passed away on 8 January 2010, after diagnosis in April 2009. She was only 64. She was a central part of my life. I spoke to her every day. And it is hard to adjust to knowing that she won't be there on the other end of the line when I call home.


In the shellshock of the moments after my Mum had finally gone, I wrote an opinion piece for The Age newspaper. My family had not had time to be angry about the fact she had suffered through a disease that she should never have contracted. A disease that was the result of company greed, despite the known risks of asbestos decades before she was exposed to its deadly fibres.

My mum taught me to read before I went to school. It is hard to know that the first piece I had published in a newspaper appeared because she is now gone.

The history of children’s literature and girls’ books

Comment on Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter from a girls’ literature perspective

I remember stumbling upon Seth Lerer’s at-the-time new history of children’s literature in a library catalogue search last year. I have since read critique of the book that asks why those outside the field of children’s literature feel that they possess sufficient knowledge and authority to attempt to write definitive histories. I believe Lerer is both a Medieval and Renaissance literature scholar, which cannot alone discount the value of his contribution to the field. One of the most renowned children’s literature scholars, Professor Clare Bradford, was a medievalist originally. Until children’s literature is well entrenched at undergraduate and postgraduate level at more universities, it’s going to be a common occurrence for some scholars to traverse from other areas to children's books. Professor Mavis Reimer and Professor Perry Nodelman began as scholars of the Victorian era, just as I have begun my foray in the field looking at books largely no longer read, and unaware of the wide reach of the discipline in contemporary texts.

While it is perhaps impossible to imagine a children’s literature scholar doing an about-face and setting out to write a history of Renaissance literature mid-career, some part of me was pleased that a scholar in “serious” literature would enter the realm of children’s literature. In my fantasy of it all, while there are methodological specificities to children’s literature and generic conventions to children’s texts, it should be no different to move between Romanticism and Victorianism as from Modernism to children’s literature. You’re going to be beginning behind the eight-ball with the switch, but we’re not talking a move from geology to social work.

And so I went to Lerer’s book, taking no offence that he was willing to swan in to the field and publish a history of children’s books that probably outsold the works of the best-known established children’s literature scholars.

I have spent several weeks revising a book proposal based on my PhD thesis on girlhood and the British Empire. The motivation behind this research was further galvanised upon reading Lerer’s history. In the time period relevant to my own work, he refers to boys’ periodicals, including The Boy’s Own Paper, boys’ school stories, the Boy Scouts and has a dedicated chapter on Robinsonades. None of the girls’ equivalents of these aspects of print culture are mentioned.

Actually, there was a little white lie in that last sentence, because The Girl’s Own Paper is mentioned in the chapter devoted to “female fiction”. It comes up because Harry Potter’s Hermione “owes” much to the Paper, but we’ll never now why, as we hear no more detail about what the girls’ periodical actually contained. That the chapter begins by discussing a book that celebrates male achievement is not a good start (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) even if Lerer uses it to make the point that Hermione is not central to the action and only becomes so in the filmic version.

The core argument of this chapter is that “girls are always on the stage; that being female is a show” (228-229) and that girlhood produces a tension between this external staging and finding “inner virtue” (229). I wouldn’t disagree with the ideas of femininity as performance, but conceptions of hegemonic masculinity no doubt identify performative aspects to masculinity as well. The feeling that some of the ideas in Lerer’s book were familiar, and have been much further developed elsewhere, came over me several times. While Lerer does cite many sources in his notes, the weight of the body of children’s literature scholarship does not seem to impact substantially on the content. He writes on fairy tales: “It is as if the girl’s body is itself a kind of forest for the fairy-tale imagination: something dark and inexplicable, something in need of management, of clearing, of cleansing”. While neither masculinities nor fairy tales are within my area of specialisation, ideas like these seemed to present well-worn ground as new observations.

I was surprised to see a book from 1851, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, described as the first “work of literature (not simply of advice) designed for readers in their girlhood...” Now perhaps the word “literature” is what might save this assertion, but, while it’s earlier than the period I ordinarily work in, there are definitely novels written for girls prior to 1851 that are not simply conduct manuals. The next section of the chapter is devoted to Anne of Green Gables, leaving behind the entire development of girls’ literature in the late nineteenth century in Britain, with only the abovementioned work on Shakespeare’s heroines rating a mention. While Lerer is telling a tale about performance, and selecting texts that best suit his study of girls as actors, his book seems to continue the trend of dismissing girls’ literary genres as unworthy of mention. After four pages devoted to Anne, we move to the American Little Women, and finally back to Britain with the canonical The Secret Garden. Wonderful Wizard of Oz rates a mention for the theatricality of Oz, but I find it strange that a book that has a girl protagonist but is not specifically a work of girls’ literature enters into this dedicated chapter. Oh wait, outside of fairy tales, books with male protagonists are “children’s literature” and ones with girl protagonists are “female fiction”? The history of girls’ literature is summed up in six books. The chapter closes with an analysis of Charlotte’s Web. Clearly not a lot happened in the world of girls’ reading in almost half a decade until then.

While Lerer’s book seems more useful for pleasurable reading than research purposes, I am in some ways glad that girls’ books are given short shrift once more. That there is an entire chapter on Robinsonades that does not mention girls’ versions; that boys’ adventure novels and periodicals warrant discussion while girls' equivalents or alternatives are not; that boys’ school stories are analysed in ways that make the schoolboy out to be a Crusoe-figure and we'll never know about what girls' books do beyond the six, questionably "girls'" books that are included. These omissions leave a little space for me to flesh out at least one aspect of children’s literature that is glossed over all too often.

The Embarrassment of Children's Literature

We hide things because we are ashamed of them. Because we know that the norms of our culture will say that there is something embarrassing about a particular act or belief. And so it is a welcome thing that we do not have to hear about the health benefits of adopting a nudist lifestyle from the person we happen to sit next to on a long-haul flight. The bounds of the cultural norm serve some function to keep the majority comfortable. There are nonetheless areas where the cultural norm inexplicably relegates something outside the realm of acceptable adult behaviour. Neither breaking sexual, religious or political taboos, children's literature nevertheless must be discarded as we reach adulthood or our enjoyment of it concealed. Beyond the perils of the train commuter who feels compelled to buy an edition of Harry Potter with an "adult" dustjacket, in the academic realm, children's literature is flat out even convincing scholars of literature more broadly that it is a valid area of academic inquiry.

If you would accuse me of being overly-dramatic, I would direct you to an article in the English Telegraph about the release of the most recent Harry Potter film. Bryony Gordon, who has tired of the series' marketing hype, extends her criticism to adults who might enjoy reading children's books: "Anyway, it won't surprise you to learn that I don't understand grown adults who like Harry Potter, especially when there are so many other great books out there. It's a bit sinister, actually. In my mind, you may as well sit on the tube reading a Thomas the Tank Engine picture-book making choo-choo noises."

This is meant to be a blog on girls' literature and culture and Harry Potter isn't an exemplary text in its portrayal of girls, with an unattractive, annoying swot as its leading female character (in the first book especially). The assumption that Gordon makes, however, is that adults are wasting their time reading children's books because children's books cannot be "great books". While Harry Potter may not constitute the most innovative or brilliantly written series of books, it's a very wide sweep of the critical broom to discount an entire genre of literature with centuries of history as devoid of literary merit. Her final sentence touches on the perceived need to strictly separate adulthood from childhood. Any dalliance with children's books, films or games might reverse your intelligence to the point of pre-literacy. Or before you know it you'll be erecting a statue of Peter Pan in your sprawling ranch, just a moonwalk away from your replica of a Disneyland train station. The "sinister" aspect is the idea that there is indeed something perverted and warped about adults still finding entertainment in books written by adults for a child audience.

The comments in response to the article also bear out the idea that there is something wrong with adults who read children's books: "Why would an adult raed or attempt to red a book such as Lord of The Rings or Harry Potter. They are childrens' books." Ignoring the assaults on grammar in those sentences, the sentiment is clear, children's books should only be read by children. There is no benefit to be had in reading Neil Gaiman, Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, C.S. Lewis, Maurice Sendak or Philip Pullman. And what did anyone ever get out of young adult fiction like The Catcher in the Rye? It's clearly more adult to have a copy of a gossip magazine in hand that poses such elevated intellectual questions as "has Jordan had her breast implants downsized?" than to read works that might also be enjoyed by children. I suppose this is why all of the thirtysomething men who are obsessed with Star Wars films are also labelled "sinister"? Despite some disturbing uses of lycra on middle-aged spread, I don't see too many articles in major newspapers suggesting that men in Storm Trooper outfits are reverting to toddlerhood.

Farewell Terri, Kerry, Frances and Leigh: Trend Against Unisex Baby Names

How do names suddenly catch on? Why are kindergarten teachers wiping the noses of Brittanys and Mias, Coopers and Rileys, yet nursing homes accommodate women named Mavis and Edna and men called Theodore and Cecil? I'm not sure why names fall in and out of favour so quickly. Perhaps each generation wishes to separate its identity from that of its parents, and may even seek to reclaim the identity of the generation that was cast off before that. "Old-fashioned" names can magically transform into hip originality.

A research company in Australia has released details of the top baby names in Australia in 2009. What interested me most about the results, more than the return of once-dated names like Isabella, is McCrindle Research's observation that "Australian parents are consistently registering baby names that are undoubtedly gendered." The trend they identify for "soft-sounding" girls' names, versus "firm-sounding" boys' names is I think well-known. A good example given by linguist David Crystal is the fact that "Marion Morrison" would not have made a masculine-sounding cowboy while "John Wayne" was short, sharp and strong.

What is seemingly new is the disappearance of unisex or gender-neutral names. The researchers involved have proposed that this change reflects the "conservative side" of Generation X parents. Just which names would Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke choose for their children? Well, actually, short-haired, almost-forty Winona has yet to reproduce, and Ethan Hawke has three children, including a darling daughter, Clementine. From the researchers' assumption it seems that Australian parents wish to more firmly locate their children as feminine or masculine right from the get-go. Coupled with the proliferation of "Jacks" and "Williams" you could wonder whether we're carrying misplaced nostalgic for the gender ideals of more than a hundred years ago, when the sexes were generally confined to separate spheres of home and public work.

Is it also part of the backlash against feminism that parents feel that the blurring of gender roles- and names with blurry genders- are just too complicated? Wouldn't it be easier if lines were redrawn as they once were so everyone knew where (and how!) to stand? Mia (proud owner of the most popular female baby name in 2008) will be at her plastic replica ironing board with wrinkled clothing in hand, while Jack (similarly popular for males in 2008) will be working on a woodwork project with his miniature tool set.

The Lack of Cheer in Cheerleading

There's no doubt that US cultural influences formed the bulk of my childhood entertainment. My family rarely watched Australian public broadcaster ABC, with its mix of documentaries, British dramas and newscasts that were delivered in what we (being a family in which no one had yet completed high school) perceived as "snobby" accents, but which I now recognise as the mark of education and travel. Heaven forbid someone had actually lived in another country for a year or two: we never even travelled interstate!

What I could access through our small-screen television became a cultural junk food diet of sitcoms, teen films and "dramas" such as Beverly Hills 90210. With a predominantly American intake of films and television, the figure of the cheerleader was an easily digestible sign of successful femininity. She stood in contrast to bookish and unattractive girls. Not only was the cheerleader good looking, she was athletic, popular and considered successful, but in a way that supported men, rather than overshadowing their sporting "achievements". Recent films such as Bring it On emphasise the backstabbing and bitchiness inherent in any all-female competition, and also its sexualised nature as one tag-line proves: "A Comedy About The Crazy Things Girls Do To Be On Top."

I remember an older high-school girl who travelled on my school bus. She had become a cheerleader for a new Australian Rules football team that had been established on the Gold Coast. I stared at her spiral-permed hair, heavy Cover Girl pancake makeup (masking a reasonable dose of acne) and the pom poms that she once carried on the bus in awe. She was the living embodiment of everything that I had seen via American culture. She was the peak of what a girl could achieve within that realm of thinking. Several years later, I saw her at a fleamarket stall with her friends, clearing out belongings they no longer wanted or needed, and the pom-poms were among the items for sale. I knew that I could not simply buy them and transmogrify into a cheerleader. It would take a certain type and look of girl to become one, and even possession of the coveted bunches of plastic were not going to make it happen.

These reflections were sparked by the suggestion that the National Rugby League should ban cheerleaders from its games due to numerous recent controversies relating to a sexual assault and the omnipresent objectification of women. How could football players be asked to treat women respectfully- to not abuse their position and status as the ultimate Australian male- when the very system of football itself placed women on the sidelines as entertainment based on their physical attractiveness for the enjoyment of male spectators? General opinion on discussion forums did not seem to locate a connection between women treated as entertainment (it's just for fun!) and situations that spiral out of control like the 19-year-old woman who consented to sex with two football players and wound up in a room with five times more men masturbating and rubbing their genitals in her face.

Researcher Catherine Lumby said that the problem did not lie with the cheerleaders: "I take a strong view that how women are dressed has nothing to do with it. I refuse to condemn women for cheerleading or for dancing as ballerinas in skimpy tutus for that matter." Of course, she is right that the mere presence of a scantily clad woman does not authorise sexual assault (witness a Brisbane man this week claiming he raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter because she wore shirt skirts) or even Neanderthal attitudes to women in general. The Minister for the Status of Women, Tanya Plibersek, put her suggestion for the NRL to change to alternative forms of pre-match entertainment (such as drummers) in terms of needing to please mothers to ensure that the the NRL appealed to "the next generation of football fans". So, in short, the only reason you might want to remove the barely-clad women from the football field on a winter's evening is because mothers might be upset and not want to encourage their sons to participate further in the sport. We wouldn't want to try something else for the simple reason that many women might not like or enjoy it, full stop.

The only serious calls I have seen for the banning of cheerleading are in India, where its recently developed IPL cricket series has brought Americanised cheerleading to a different cultural context. There are other faint murmurs about overly-sexualised routines in other parts of the world needing to be toned down. I'd like to hear more about how women could be recognised publicly as more than than celebrators of male achievement. It's not simply about sexualisation, but creating heroes of men and ornaments of women. So long as a school girl on a bus like my eight-year-old self might see a cheerleader as a successful woman, there is a problem with all-female cheerleaders at football matches. And the masculine terrain of football is just the place that needs to break down stereotypes about women as mere accessories to successful men.