Taboo for Teens
Readers of adult romances are likely used to seeing sex scenes in novels. While the genre ranges from chaste to naughty, the average contemporary romance will likely contain some amount of sexuality. When I made the switch from reading almost exclusively romance to a mix of romance and Young Adult, I couldn’t help but notice the stark difference in the approach to sexuality.
Now, that isn’t to say that books for teens should have long explicit sex scenes, like you’d find in adult erotica or the like, but it struck me as a bit odd that sex seemed to be so taboo for these fictional teens. I think that the Twilight is a good example, albeit very outdated at this point, because so many are familiar with the story. In the books, Bella is actively interested in furthering her and Edwards’s romantic encounters, and he is the one that holds back. There’s the issue that he might freak out and drink her blood that dampens the mood some, but he also wants to hold off and make it special.
Okay, let’s really think about that. He’s been perpetually 17 years old for, what, 100 years? I’m sorry, but I have to snort a bit at the idea of someone with the undying hormones of a 17 year old remaining chaste until he happens to meet his true love in biology class.
Yet readers, me included, ate this up. It seems that it set a tone for the future of the YA genre. There are troves of books now with immortal teen beefcakes who meet these young girls and barely make a move. The paranormal and fantasy books in the YA category seem to want to avoid sexuality, or leave it to steamy kisses. The contemporary novels seem more apt to broach the subject of the big S-E-X, yet usually avoid having the main character actually take the plunge.
I recently read the book Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy and I was actually shocked about how frank the discussion of sex was, when really it was pretty mild. The main characters best friend plans to lose her virginity, and the main character actually helps her pick out sexy underwear to impress the boyfriend. The moment so vividly took me back to being 16 and having nearly the same conversation that I thought “Wow, where is this in the hundreds of YA books I’ve read?”
As I said, I don’t think there needs to be explicit sex in YA, but where are these conversations? I don’t know about you, but sex was a frequent and fervent topic when I was a teen. Yet, teens in YA novels seem so sterilized. I read almost entirely fantasy/paranormal YAs and I can only think of a few books I’ve read that even approach the topic, let alone actually go all the way. Notably, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas(which Dabney and I discussed in a Pandora’s Box) and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor.
I personally would like to see YA novels embrace realism and become more sex-positive, but what do you think? Do you think YA novels should be totally clean and chaste? Do you think there’s a need for mature discussions of sexuality? Do you know of any sex-positive or stand-out books that deal with sexuality in the YA genre? Let me know in the comments.
Haley Krall
[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
More reading material on the subject:
“”‘A lot of YA clearly is about romance, or crushes, or falling in love for the first time. And sex is a normal part of that. If it’s senior year of high school and there’s no mention of sex, that would be weird to me. It would be like writing an adult novel about a bunch of grown-ups in New York without ever mentioning drinking.'””
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sex-scenes-for-young-readers_us_56ec6404e4b09bf44a9d517e?ir=Books§ion=us_books&utm_hp_ref=books
I wanted to add that, since writing this post, I remembered that both Graceling by Kristin Cashore and the Rephaim series by Paula Weston both deal with sex in a positive way.
Thank you, thank you for writing this. I’m another person who doesn’t like reading YA for this reason. It feels too sterile to me, not written about real people. I don’t necessarily require explicit sex in my books (although I do like it), but I’d like to feel I’m reading about a universe where people have sex even if it’s not happening on page. It’s also strange to me that considering that… you can read adult books with explicit sex as a teenager? That is, they’re not actually fooling anyone, and it’s not like teenagers can’t get adult books if they want them. The romance world is full of people who started reading their aunt’s stash of romances from the eighties while teenagers. I was reading adult books with graphic sexual content from the age of twelve, and I’d given up on YA entirely by the time I was fourteen, largely because most of it just didn’t feel real to me.
I wasn’t even sexually active as a teenager, because I was a social outcast, but I was, nevertheless, very, very horny, as was everyone else around me. I remember very well what it was like; we lived in this hypersexual state of perpetual awareness even if we weren’t actually getting it on with each other (which plenty of people luckier than me were), and this was no less true of the girls than the boys. It’s weird not seeing that reflected in books. I can’t trust authors who want to present worlds in which teenagers are not simmering bundles of hormones.
Your comment made me laugh. I’m right there with you. Sex was definitely part of my world as a teen. Even if I had abstained I knew countless others who didn’t, and I don’t see that world existing in YA except as the random cautionary tale.
I think promoting healthy sex and relationships in YA is incredibly important. As people keep saying, good doesn’t mean explicit.
Teens are going to have sex, regardless. I remember hearing that while teen sex rates have increased, things like teen pregnancy rates have dropped pretty dramatically in the past 15 years. Teen Mom, as much as I personally hate that show, has helped by showing what the consequences could be for teens having unprotected sex.
Now if only STDs and rapes would decrease as well.
There was never a blog written that was more for me than this one! You nailed it! I totally agree! In my book TO SLEEP which was released last month I kept it honest. Now like you said there can be sexuality in ya books without is being explicit! It just needs to be honest. Teens know when we as adult writters are just trying to teach them a lesson. We as writters need to remember what it was like to be a teenager and write those feelings out and yes write those conversations we whispered with our girlfriends during sleep over parties! It’s real, it’s honest! I belive that is what teens want to read!
I’m glad you enjoyed the article! I agree that trying to shield teens from sex doesn’t seem authentic, and teens see through it.
I took the time to read the article and what the writer concluded is the exact reason I don’t write YA, don’t read YA, or nothing. And I did read that Twilight thing, and her conclusion was mine also. Teenagers, not only now but from as far back as Adam and Eve, know about sex, and think about it all the time. Their bodies are in prime hormone activity mode; therefore, in my humble opinion, to write books with heavy necking and no sex is so far removed from reality that it’s funny. If you don’t want to describe the sex act in your book that’s your choice, but don’t make it seems as if you are thinking of the teenager accidentally reading your work. I was reading whatever I could put my hand on from as early as I could read. It made me who I am today, an avid reader and writer. smile emoticon
My middle daughter and her friends read Twilight (repeatedly) at 14, whereas my older daughter and her friend who were 16 at the time, just weren’t interested.
I always subscribed to the theory that Edward occupied the same space in their lives as a Donny Osmond or Harry Styles – a safe figure to rehearse feelings of attachment towards. I’d argue that Twilight appealed to those children because of it’s lack of explicit sex – that it met the needs of it’s YA audience.
In general, I tend to think YA does sex better than Romance, when it does it. If you think, for instance, of Stephanie Perkins ‘Lola and the Boy next door’ , Lola is secretly sexually active with the boyfriend who her parents disapprove of, but she only ever kisses the hero. I can’t imagine a Romance allowing the heroine that much agency.
Female rates of teens having sex haven’t dropped precipitously at all.
The rate of teenage women having sex in 1988 was 51%. In 2011-2013 (the last years the CDC has rates for) it was 47%, up from 42% in 2006-2010. (Here’s the graph.) Additionally, girls are having anal sex and giving blow jobs at greater rates than in the past.
Every social scientist who studies sex will tell you that sexual activity by teens is notoriously underreported, so I question even those rates.
Young girls are also engaging in sexting and in other sorts of sexual behavior that are focused on the male response to them rather than their own sexual response.
This is just to say that I think that the more we educate young women about sexual pleasure, the more likely they are to make choices that they will, in the long run, feel good about.
It’s hard for me to answer this question because in YA novels I read mysteries, where the characters are in mortal danger from some freaky villain, or paranormals, where the characters are in danger from some supernatural villain. Since the kids are fighting for their lives the lower level of sexuality in a lot of the novels works for me.
I do think there are times it is left out when it shouldn’t be, though. Hunger Games is a good example of this. In Battle Royal, written ten years prior to HG, some of the guys in the game tried to pressure the girls to have sex under the old “”We’ll be dead tomorrow, do you want to die a virgin”” argument. This seemed likely to me. I would definitely have expected more fraternization when all those teens facing death were stuck together training. And it seemed unlikely that Katniss and Peeta would never have even considered it all those nights they lay in each other’s arms.
Then again, the times they are achangin’. Recent statistics vary on how many teens are sexually active but even the highest numbers place it at slightly less than 50%, with the number decreasing rather than increasing in recent years. So perhaps the teen novels are reflecting the more conservative behavior of modern teens.
I grew up with Forever by Judy Blume with its lovely sex scene and watched The Blue Lagoon. I believe that these loving depictions of sex were what made me, as a teen, wait to have sex until I could replicate that.
I’m currently reading Peggy Orenstein’s book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape in which she makes the point that we don’t give young girls a path to pursue sexual joy so that when they do have sex–and teens do have sex–they do so with the goal of pleasing their male partner rather than themselves. Here’s what she said in a great piece in the New York Times.
I remember being so struck by the love scene in Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown. It seemed just right–it’s what I would hope for my daughter. So for me, sex scenes that show teens and young adults making love where sex is responsibly focused on female pleasure, that’s something to celebrate.
I think we should do a future column about “”Best books for modeling healthy sex.””
I think that’s a great idea.