What About the Girls?

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Elana K Arnold

I’ve been told that my young adult novels are inappropriate for teens. Are they?

That depends, I guess, on what you mean by “inappropriate.” Do you mean “stuff that shouldn’t happen to young girls and women?” Then, yes. Last year’s What Girls Are Made Of examined embodied female shame and the question of unconditional love, the ways girls are asked to shrink and twist into forms others desire of them. Damsel explores rape culture, gaslighting, the male gaze, misogyny, and patriarchy in a world of damsels, dragons, princes, gowns, and glass eyes.

If, on the other hand, by “inappropriate,” you mean, “stuff that doesn’t happen to young girls and women,” then the answer, unfortunately, is no. None of the “stuff” in these novels is make-believe, and it’s precisely because the books reflect lived experience that they scare and discomfort.

Ask 15-year-old Christine Blasey if she understands the dangers of existing in a female body.

Ask Seven-Year-Old Me if she got the joke when Coach Bill said her middle splits would “come in handy in a few years.”

Ask Eighth Grade Me how it felt when her English teacher told her that she was a talented young writer and, before she could say “Thank you,” kissed her wetly on the mouth.

Ask Ninth Grade Me if she understood what her algebra teacher meant when he said, “I like the way you look in that skirt.”

Or if Eleventh Grade Me correctly inferred meaning when her journalism teacher said, upon watching her eat a cinnamon roll during zero period, “I’d like to lick yourHoney Bun.”

Ask University Freshman Me if she understood implication when a dormmate held her down, pressed his erection and razor blade against her, and said, “I could rape you, if I wanted to.” Ask her if she understood complicity as that young man’s roommate watched.

Ask almost any young woman, anywhere, and she will have a story, if you are willing to hear it.

Recently, waiting for an elevator with a group of women—some I knew, some who just happened to need to get up to the next floor—we got onto the topic of sexual assault. Between the time I pressed the button to call the elevator to the time the doors opened, each of us had shared a casual memory of an incident at the office, in a classroom, on the subway. Then, in the next breath, one of the women said to another, “Where should we get lunch today?”

It’s that casual. It’s that expected, that everyday. So common that our shared experiences didn’t even warrant a moment of, “I’m sorry that happened to you. It happened to me, too.”

I get that we don’t want to believe that terrible things might happen to our daughters. I have a daughter—I want to protect her.

I wish I could have protected her from the boy who said to a friend that he’d like her, at twelve-year old, to give him a lap dance.

I wish I could have protected her from the car full of teen boys who rolled up along her and her friends and yelled, “Hey! Do you want to fuck?”

I can’t protect my daughter by locking her in a tower, or by placing a dragon outside her door. I can’t protect all the daughters. I couldn’t even protect myself.

But I am a writer. What I cando is give words to experience. I can give them language to recognize what is happening, may happen, has already happened.

Some critics say my work is too heavy for teens. One critic recently wrote of Damsel, “The symbolism and imagery, as well as the meaning of the sexual violence that is perpetrated upon Ama, may go over the heads of less sophisticated readers…While Arnold has written a compelling flipped fairy tale and commentary on misogyny, she’s missed the mark for her intended audience.”

Actually, you will see that this criticism isn’t about my book, at all—it’s a criticism of teen female readers.

The critic seems to believe that young women won’t understand the book’s symbolism and imagery. Ah, tender critic. How I wish you were right. How I wish young girls weren’t steeped in such things in their own real, lived experiences.

Willthe symbolism and imagery, in Damsel, as well as the meaning of the sexual violence that is perpetrated upon Ama, go over the heads of its readers?

Like the rest of us, teen girls see the misogynist on the verge of being appointed for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court. They see the liar and serial groper in the White House. They hear media talking about #MeToo as a “moment” in one breath, a “movement” in the next, and they know it’s still up in the air which it will be. They hear John Kerry throwing around “like a teenage girl” as a casual insult, and they correctly hear his derision.

Teen girls don’t need us to protect them from the truths of our world. They need us to arm them. With our belief in their experiences. With our own stories, too. Women, most of you have a memory, perhaps several memories, of assault. I am sorry you carry these burdens.

Not long ago, I told my daughter about my dormmates and how they threatened to rape me. I have told her about my teachers. And I listen when she tells me the things that happen to her. I listen, and together we act.

Women, tell our girls your stories. Arm them with knowledge. And let’s stop pretending they don’t know what is happening around them and to them, every day.

It’s the least we can do.