Last week on Twitter, I got into a vicious debate with somebody over why young adult books shouldn't have labels on them. They just didn't get it and several other people chimed up that it would be helpful.
What are labels?
I'm not talking about genre labels that give the general age of the protagonist (young adult, adult, middle grade) or that give the genre of the book (fantasy, contemporary, historical). I'm talking about bright yellow warning labels that are slapped on the sides of book. They say things like "WARNING: SEX" or "WARNING: ADULT CONTENT" or even "WARNING: HOMOSEXUALITY."
What do labels do?
Labels warn against content in book for people who want to avoid it. It says that this thing is distasteful and that if you're going to read it, you need to be warned in advance to prepare for it.
Why do labels need to kiss my arse?
Labels don't do anything except make it easier for censorship. It tells teens that certain things are bad and that they should prepare if they want to read them. It allows parents to say that their kid can't read something that they may be interested because, hey, it's offensive to them!
I had a long discussion about this with my brother and my boyfriend. They used games as the counter point -- games have clear ratings on the back with why they're rated that way. Violence or nudity or sexual content.
But the thing about books - and young adult in particular - is that these books are already segmented into categories to reflect their content. Erotica has explicit sex and nudity; adult content can have explicit sex and generally adult themes. Young adult can contain sex, but it's neither erotic nor explicit for the most part, and deals with issues teenagers face. So on and so forth down the line to middle grade and kidlit and baby books.
And the difference between games and books is that, while you have two or three lines to summarize the game on the box, there's two to three paragraphs to give you the content of the book.
Some things will be offensive to people. It's why books are banned. People freak out about homosexuality and sex and implied Satanism and all sorts of things.
Here's the deal: if something is so important to you that you need to avoid it, look up a book before hand or ask a librarian or bookseller who knows about the content. Don't make it more difficult for people interested to access it. Don't turn the book into a one-issue controversy because you're afraid. Don't say something is inherently wrong and should be warned against because you don't like it.
If you're a thirteen year old interested in sex because you're coming into your sexuality, then young adult is going to be the place for you. If you're a thirteen year old not interested in sex, young adult is still going to be a good place for you. If you're afraid to read about it, or if your parents don't want you too, then it's not the bookseller's or the book's responsibility to plaster its contents all over the front because you might be afraid of the content. It is your responsibility to do the research.
I'm not going to support making things easier for you if it means offending and censoring books.
But what about explicit content!?
Here's the thing: explicit content in books is already warned about. It's not in the young adult section. It's found in erotica and the adult romance section. The same way video games plaster on about explicit nudity and sex and the same way that movies with sex are labeled as NC-17 or R.
The sex in YA books is like the sex in PG-13 movies. It's silly and awkward and makes for some damn embarrassing or hilarious moments. (Take "Easy A" and Looking for Alaska, for example.)
But it helps people choose the right book!
That's what genre and categories do. Choosing the right book in the detailed content comes down to the summaries on the book. If you're still worried about running into something you don't want to run into, talk to the bookseller. Look up the book.
And if you run into it, you picked the wrong book. Don't cry about it and demand that "sex" be scrawled on it in big letters.
In the case of trigger warnings...
The only time I might be hesitant about labels is in the case of trigger warnings - rape, suicide, and issues that could cause flashbacks for people who suffer from that. Ninety nine percent of the time, however, those stories mention that in the description and are "issue books" that focus entirely on that. And the one percent that don't tend to use it as a plot point and are terrible and shouldn't be read because rape is not a plot point guys stop using it as such.
Labels suck. Censorship sucks.
Labels lead to censorship.
It's that simple.
GREAT post! I totally agree with you... mature sex content is found in Erotica/Adult Romance-don't go there if you don't want to read about it. Everything I've read in YA certainly doesn't need a "Warning" on it because it's nothing that these teens aren't going to hear/see in their life, and books are a great way to expose them to it.
ReplyDeleteI still think the best article I've read about this issue was by Rachel Cain: A blog about book ratings.
ReplyDeleteEssentially, if you're concerned about what your kid wants to read, than read it with them. Be there to discuss the topics that concern you, so that they understand why it concerns you. Like everything else you teach your kids, take the time to do it with them until you're comfortable with their ability to fend for themselves.
Personally, I think labels are a way for parents to be lazy - they want to be able to censor what their child reads based on what someone else deems to be appropriate, versus taking the time to read up on the book (or, actually reading the book) to know what their kids are reading about. Why take the blame for your child's "inappropriate" reading material when you can blame the label for being inaccurate or not descriptive enough.
Ehhhhh while I don't feel that labels are a great idea, I also don't think they should be looked upon as the root of all evil. Like you're brother and boyfriend said, video games have warnings, why not books? Movies also have warnings. What makes it any different than a book?
ReplyDeleteI know that you're trying to say that books are already segregated according to age appropriateness and that readers who are worried about mature content should just avoid books aimed at older people, but let's be honest a lot of books that are YA have frank sexual dialogue, swearing, and edgy situations that could be equal to an R rated movie. I'm not saying it's bad and that it shouldn't get published, but I am saying that just because a book is YA doesn't mean that it has content appropriate for everyone in the YA age bracket. Additionally, one cannot always find info on a book to see if it has content that one isn't comfortable with.
I'm not saying that books should be censored or banned, but I do not see the huge uproar over putting some general warnings of content for parents and readers on books, especially when we do the same thing with movies, video games, music, etc. Censorship is going to happen whether we have warning labels or not. People are always going to want things to be banned. That isn't changing anytime soon.
So honestly, I'm okay with labels getting put on books. It's not gonna stop me from reading anything that I don't want to read.
The thing I draw the line at is age limits on books. If warning labels were to get put on books (which honestly, I don't think is happening anytime soon) then that's one thing, but if books started to become illegal to buy or read for certain age groups because of content, that would be an issue for me. What a person reads should be the responsibility of the parents or a reader themselves, not some random people slapping age limits on things.
"What a person reads should be the responsibility of the parents or a reader themselves, not some random people slapping age limits on things."
DeleteOr, perhaps, random out-of-context warning labels? You just subverted your entire argument. :)
Did she though? We don't think so. She's talking about how 13 yr olds can't buy tickets for a Rated R movie, for example. That's a law, versus just a content warning/label.
DeleteBut most teenagers aren't allowed to buy erotica or books with explicit content like that without a parent present when they're in a bookstore. It's the same kind of label -- in YA, nothing would have been R-rated or it wouldn't be in the YA section.
DeleteThe best way to get your child to read a book is to write "Sex" or "Adult situations" on the front cover. They are curious about sex and will learn about it somewhere, especially if it is taboo at home.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, my house was within walking distance of a book store. My best friend and I would sometimes find our way into the Harlequin section and read the lusty parts out loud to each other in a sexy voice. We were just messing around and being silly, and there was no harm done. Even at that young age, we knew where to find the sex books--no labels required.
Oh, I hate those labels. They're so unnecessary. I forget what novel it was, but I remember checking out a YA book from my library when I was in high school that had a red WARNING: ADULT CONTENT label inside a PG-13 type of story. And I still have no idea why TWISTED by Laurie Halse Anderson has the label "NOTE: This Is Not A Book For Children" printed inside, since it's obviously an upper YA novel...
ReplyDeleteLabels like those are not even necessary. Like you said, you can usually figure out if a book is right for you or not by reading the summary, or talking a librarian or bookseller. You can usually easily tell which books are "light" or "serious" in content by looking at the cover and summary. Slapping a warning label on a novel is almost pointless.
Fascinating post, Nicole!
I agree that the labels make books easier to censor. I get that music & video games might have explicit warning stickers, but I think the difference is that most people seem to be OK with letting parents of kids and teenagers screen content for games and such. When content is in books, it's almost a bigger deal. With a video game, you might get a few complaints, perhaps a blog posts or two on the internet. When people object to content in books, it escalates much quicker. School boards have meetings, books are taken off shelves, in extreme cases maybe even burned. I don't recall a time when another form of entertainment was opposed so passionately, but it happens with books all the time--enough where we have an entire week celebrating banned books. I agree--labels just make books too easy to censor.
ReplyDeleteHm. Loooots to think about here. We're not exactly sure where we net out, so we'll try to process it "out loud"...
ReplyDelete- We're anti-censorship as a general policy.
- But as parents, we don't hate the idea of knowing ahead of time what we (or really, our kids) are in for. It's not so much about preventing them from reading anything, as it is about preparing ourselves to discuss those things. (And truly there just is not enough time to read everything before they do, even though that would be ideal.)
- Regardless of labels, we would hope that there's a strong enough foundation between us and our kids -- due to the way we've raised them -- that they could/would come talk to us about something new/unfamiliar/scary if if they needed/wanted to.
- A generic "trigger warning" label/icon might be helpful to some readers, assuming it's not abused.
- Perhaps part of this discussion should be about WHO would get to assign labels, if the industry moved forward with them. Publishers? Librarians? Parents? Some "independent" council? That would make a huge difference, we suspect, on how labels are applied and the impact they have.
Great post, Nicole. It's an interesting issue. I don't think books need warning labels for explicit or adult content, though I do think that they could actually help curious kids find the books they want to read. For Banned Book Week, we do a display at the library where we cover books and write why they were banned on the paper--and the shelf is bare by the end of the week. I think blurbs, reviews, and informed staff at libraries and booksellers will help people find what they are looking for most of the time. Though I'm not sure I'd support it, I wouldn't oppose a trigger warning. I wouldn't have considered it, until this past year when I, an informed librarian who had read the book, recommended Bitterblue to my sister. She'd read Graceling and Fire, so she knew about Leck and his evilness, to a certain extent, but wasn't prepared for how much it is discussed in Bitterblue, and it was very triggering for her, to the point where although she loved the book and stayed up all night reading it (which she does a lot, I guess it runs in the family) and had to call in sick to work the next day because she was still processing. I know she would have still read it had I warned her about the content, but she probably would have waited until the weekend. She told me I should have warned her, and in retrospect, she was right. It's made me more careful and led me to be more frank in my discussion of books with teens.
ReplyDelete