“I’m about to be more sexually explicit than I normally am on Twitter … This NYT story about girls…”
Wednesday, March 30th, 2016“
I’m about to be more sexually explicit than I normally am on Twitter …
This NYT story about girls and sex made me wish I’d put masturbation scenes into all my YA books. Normally my authorial lens doesn’t focus on sex, and I don’t think it HAS to or SHOULD – but girls need women to talk about sex more.
In a review for Eleanor & Park, some guy wrote that Park wasn’t a convincing 16-year-old boy because he doesn’t think about his penis enough. And I thought, one: I’m pretty sure male authors aren’t required to make male characters talk constantly about the D just to prove something. And two: It didn’t bother this guy (or the guys in the comments) AT ALL that Eleanor never thinks/talks about her CLITORIS. (Like, maybe these guys don’t know about the clitoris?) (It’s possible.) I mean, also, I think 16-year-old boys do lots of thinking/feeling above the belt. But the assumption that girls do NOTHING below theirs …
People frequently ask me whether Eleanor and Park, or Cath and Levi, or Simon and Baz have sex within their books – and the answer is no. I really want all three of those couples to be mature and ready and emotionally safe with each other before they have sex. (My headcanon.) But I also want all of those characters to feel great about sex and themselves, and to masturbate and know their own bodies … I’m really not sure how much of that I’ll ever get into a book, or what my responsibility is.
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Rainbow Rowell, twitter: March 27th 2016
Link to the NYT article mentioned
(via fanbows)
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1M0GE9i.
