I have a confession to make: I love reading negative Goodreads reviews of books I love. They crack me up. People love to be scathing on Goodreads of all places, and when I see that one or two stars on a popular novel, I know I’m in for a good harsh review.
Of course, when you steep yourself in negativity about popular books, you start to notice some trends emerge. Today’s gripe is with a critique I see time and time again in reviews of young adult books:
This a classic case of the girl-who-doesn't-know-she's-pretty.
Here's some examples that I found in cursory searches of five different popular YA novels:
All of these reviews are about protagonists who are teen girls. Their authors are women, and usually romance is the genre or subgenre. Also, many of these books contain love triangles.
*Cue screaming*
I know, I know, we all hate love triangles. . . right? Well, not really, since they are so common in YA novels. They’re pretty rampant in media in general, but I usually see them most criticized in young adult lit. But I digress.
Personally, I think it comes down to this girl-who-doesn’t-know-she’s-beautiful at the center of the triangle. The classic YA heroine nowadays describes herself as ‘plain’ but other characters call her beautiful. She focuses on her flaws, but others see her strengths.
I mean I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a teen girl who didn't have impeccable self-confidence. So unrealistic to have a young woman struggling with self image, amiright? *cue eye roll*
Truthfully, these protagonists were the ones I related to the most as a teen, and even as a new adult I still adore them. Why? Because I struggle to see myself as beautiful too. I focus on my flaws. If I were a main character in a novel, rest assured I would not describe myself as attractive. It’s something I struggle with now, and have since I was in middle school.
Okay, but everyone I meet isn’t mentioning how pretty I am right? I mean these characters have everyone fawning all over them even though they are supposedly plain. So they must be lying -- they’re actually beautiful.
Here’s my first point: if you read YA as much as I do you’ll notice that all of the characters are not in fact calling our protagonists beautiful constantly. The love interests are. Who wants the love interest to be like, “Girl, you’re ugly but I think I’m falling for your busted-ass face”? That shit’s not romantic . . . and like I said before, the subgenre here is typically romance. Not to mention that sometimes when you fall for someone as a person you start to see them through rose-colored glasses overall. So, I don’t know, maybe these characters just genuinely like each other?
My second point is that 9/10 times people start conflating actors and fanart with the actual characters. A lot of readers come to the books with the image put forth in the movies or fanart depicting the character. In case you didn’t know this, Hollywood has a hard-on for beautiful people. And--this is an even harder pill to swallow--artists don’t necessarily want to draw ugly bitches. They want their art to be aesthetically pleasing . . . just saying.
But I think my biggest gripe with this criticism of teen girls is not that people are overreacting to minuscule in-text evidence that characters may or may not be pretty. It’s that honestly . . . who gives a fuck?
So our protagonist is beautiful? And? I can guarantee almost every story ends up the same way no matter if the main character is physically flawed. So what if she’s plain? So what if she’s ugly? Who’s to say what ugly even means? Maybe she thinks she’s too skinny or too curvy, her nose is too big or too crooked, her face too round or too long--none of these things disqualify one from being beautiful. I’m going to say something crazy, but ugly is a personality, not what you look like.
In the age of #bodypositivity, I’m disappointed that such a common critique of literature for teens is focused on the female protagonist’s looks.
That’s all my tea for today folks. Stay beautiful <3
Peace out,
Grace K.
Sidenote: can you believe teens these days read YA?
Whatever, add me on GoodReads especially if you have some nice hot takes to make me LOL.