I was struck by how shallow American teenagers have become the other day after reading about popular books for girls. Now this is not the first time I realized that teenagers, both boys and girls, are concerned about unimportant things, but this led to deeper thinking. This article I read talked about how the most popular girls books these days are books like Gossip Girl, The It Girl, The A-List Series, etc. The "good characters" or heroines in these books are rich, popular, and materialistic girls. They can be considered bratty and mean, and are concerned with how they dress and sex. These are the kinds of girls that the books suggest are cool and the targeted audience, teenage girls, want to be them. The thing is, many girls fall for this and live their lives with goals of fame, money, and glamorous clothes. And this is just an example of girls, guys have their own concerns.
The problem? When kids are spending their time focusing on these things, they are not focusing on more important things. This causes a decline in moral and intellectual thinking. Older books and stories have the opposite plot, the smart "not fabulous" girl defeats the popular girl and shows her weaknesses. Will this popular media and literature cause our generation to be dumber?
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I don't think the popular media today is really a problem. I personally dislike stories like Gossip Girls, but I do not think they are, in themselves, damaging to today's teenager. I like to think that most teenage girls realize how nasty and horrendously flawed their favorite characters can be. And if they don't, I still doubt that reading Gossip Girl, or any literature like it, truly affects teen minds.
ReplyDeleteStill, it is a legitimate concern that ought to be studied.
I disagree with Shirley. I think that these books (even though I read some of them) can definitely promote the wrong values and lead to girls becoming concerned with stuff that is not in the bigger picture of life. They are fun to read, but like Brian said, they don't exactly lead to deep thinking and they could lead to girls creating false images of who they should be and becoming more concerned with materialistic values.
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ReplyDeleteYesterday I read an article in the Chicago Tribune (can't find the name of the article now) saying how girls are attracted to movies such as The Twilight series because it displays true love without sex. This is similar to the books that you listed Brian because it's like teenage "fairy tale". These characters (Blair and Serena on Gossip Girl etc) are like the Snow Whites and Cinderellas for teens. Although,every once in awhile a trashy teen novel is great, I agree Brian. When teens try to put themselves into the stories and become these characters, just like a little girl dressing up as Cinderella, that's when they are getting the wrong message sent across to them.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the fact that their lives are very unrealistic or at least extremely uncommon.
I know that doesn't really answer the question but it's my response to the post in general.
I agree with you Brian that the quality of books have been decreasing. Whenever I go to the library looking for a good read that's not complete trash like Gossip Girl, the books on display are usually the types of books that you have just described. It's seems to get more and more difficult to find a book that has some sort of meaning to it. Maybe I'm just growing out of the young adult section, but I'm still a young adult so these books should still appeal to me. I wish authors would stop writing books just about sex and money, and start writing some quality stuff.
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