Books part the first: girls’ and boys’ worlds
I’m involved in two Internet discussions around kids and books lately. And my position is a bit opposite in each of them. I never said I was totally consistent, but I thought I would look at them here. I’m dividing them up. First up: girls and boys. Second: Disney crap.
So over at Tertia’s there’s a discussion about the dratted old Dangerous Book for Boys and Daring Book for Girls. I haven’t seen the girls’ book yet; I flipped through the boys’ book, which makes me an expert (ha, ha).
What I found offensive about both of them actually is that they are marketed to baby boomers and I am sick of baby boomers! Ha! (My job has involved a lot of that over the years!).
No but in all seriousness… look, I work for a (smart, actually quality) woman’s magazine. (Oh boy this is close to outing myself now.) Magazines are complex as far as what’s in them goes because advertisers pay for them. (If you didn’t know before, you now can inform yourself that the price of subscription covers something like ten percent of the cost of most consumer magazines - or about the profit margin. Consider whether you would pay 10 - 11 times what you pay for your subscriptions now.)
So although in most reputable magazines the editorial branch is autonomous from the advertising branch in terms of the articles, and I will vouch for that wholeheartedly at my current job, sometimes the departments are not. Like, if you have a magazine for smart, sexy women, you pretty much have to have a fashion and beauty department if you want advertisers to pay for it.
I’m not defending this reality; I’m stating it. A lot of magazines are aspirational - they basically fit an image of who you think you are and then present you with the information that your group is presumed to want… and mostly, the consumer decides that he or she did want that information.
Magazines have content, yes, and a lot of it is good. I love magazines. They do what they do well - guess at what will appeal to me and deliver it. But they are not books. They are like a cautionary tale for books in that the package - the “O reader,” the “Forbes reader” - outweighs the individual stories. You might buy a magazine once for a story, but you will buy it again or subscribe because it fits into your image in some way.
I’m bringing this up because a) people who disagree with me about the next bit often say something like “well I really LIKE O magazine and it’s just natural and instinctive that I do!” Err… all I can say is… no. Your behaviour in finding O has been totally influenced by a zillion things before it ever hits the shelf - oh! by the way! That would be the grocery shelf, and not the waiting room at the proctologist.
And b) I have to admit I think we need to resist this marketing trend when it comes to books.
It’s not that I don’t think there should be books on fashion and style, and perhaps they can have pink covers if they really must. It’s just that I don’t really want to walk into a bookstore one day and find it rearranged into “the books men read” on the blue side of the store and “the books women read” on the pink side of the store.
If you think this would not be a problem and good stories would come out anyway, consider the last time you read a “really good story” in a magazine where you don’t fit the audience at all. For all I know, Country Living has the best advice on how to get stains out of wood floors ever. I have wood floors, but I do not identify with country living and I will probably never ever hear about it.
It is a reality that book publishers have to segment their audience some. The Nanny Diaries cover does not look like a business book, and the colours are meant to appeal to women for a reason.
Sure, there are books about girls whose audiences are assumed to be girls. And there are books about boys whose audiences are assumed to be… girls and boys, ha ha, no, okay there are a few books about boys designed for boys. And books about fart jokes assumed to be for boys. That has to happen to put a book together. The packaging has to match the content, and the content has to appeal to some audience that you have in mind.
But there is a whole other level where the content is functionally irrelevant.
I see from a BUSINESS perspective why you would take old, boring shit like flag signals and knot tying* and fort making**; non-proprietary, easily researched stuff, and slap a cover on it and call it “for boys” and make shitloads of money. And then, since that worked, take “how to wear high heels” and add it to some old girl scout manuals - add in how to negotiate a salary to make the feminists happy - and call it “for girls” and make more shitloads of money.
But from a sheer emotional perspective I would just rather have a book about “great fun things to do” and stick it in the store and let the kids buy it because it’s a good book full of information they want. Not because it got publicity because “finally boys/girls have something for them!” (have you BEEN in a bookstore lately? No lack of things, trust me.)
And I think it’s funny, quite honestly, when people get all sure that they are making this deliriously happy choice to get their Boys/Girls a Good Book, finally. Well trust me, when it’s really a good book, it doesn’t have to be segmented to a boy or a girl by its MARKETING.
“The kids’ guide to salary negotiation” doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Probably because actually, kids don’t make money… they build forts… but that’s not relevant is it?
Or is it? See the difference? In one you have a book a child wants for what’s in it. In the other you have a book a child wants because that book seems to reflect who the child is.
Many magazines are designed as aspirational. People buy a magazine because it reflects something about who they are or want to be. Then the magazine tells them the stories and trends and such about that kind of person. Sometimes this is very useful, like if you see yourself as a traveller, and someone tells you where you can travel.
But sometimes it’s a little dangerous, like if you’re 11 or 12 and you are reading Seventeen because you will one day be a teenage girl, and it’s all about mascara. And sometimes, it’s destructive, because you will not actually have Forbes or Business 2.0 or Wired marketed to you, thus sort of giving you the idea that you are not “that into” business… or if there is no parenting magazine out there to give you the idea that dads care about diaper rash too.
It’s all a handshake: I don’t think a single book or even a marketing reality is The Evil. But it really does make me shake my head when people think that a book about signal flags is meeting a need in boys that is not being met.
No, it’s creating one.
* Knots kill me every time. Kids like knots. Boys are encouraged to tie “sailor knots” and make nets and girls are encouraged to make friendship bracelets. Guess what?? KNOTS!!!! It’s all about the presentation.
** Ha, fort building is not actually boring - but see, good books for it on the market already.
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I am with you on this. I looked at the Girls book at the bookstore, and it does look like some good stuff, but I don’t think my daughter needs the “This Is For Girls” message. I very nearly bought this book instead:
The Encyclopedia of Immaturity by Klutz Press
It has a similar feel (one page ideas of fun things to do or learn) without the unnecessary gendering. I might still get it some other time. It has a page on “How to write a book report” with a long, detailed-sounding but completely generic report. Hilarious!
I’ve seen you all over the web on this one, and I have been cheering you on. Absolutely 100% cheering you on. Because you are brilliantly on-point.
I’ve stopped even trying outside my own space to talk about it though, because people just refuse to get it.
Interestingly enough, there was a report on the Disney Princess line in the WSJ in the last few weeks that included a quotation from a marketing guru who said that parents were as gender-obsessed and gender-absolutist these days as they had ever been. (Of course, why parents might be that way was NOT addressed.) But certainly the discussions on blogs make me depressed as hell, because the whole “we should celebrate gender differences because they are the true expressions of who are children are in their natural state” attitude is EVERYWHERE.