It's interesting that a lot of the discussion on the YA/Adult borderline seems to stem from sexual content, and I think that says a lot more about the adults than the YA readers. Or, rather, the adult publishers and what not.
I find it interesting that we seem to believe or wish that the lives of modern pre-teens and teens are utterly asexual, when in fact, I can't think of a time in my life when sex was more on my mind. And I think it's interesting that the only books that would deal with sex in a way that didn't feel like Just Say No To Sex Forever Or You Will Get Pregnant And Chlamydia Just From Looking At Boys! propaganda (I grew up in Tennessee, it was a very conservative environment) were romance novels, but the "age appropriate" novels I dealt with didn't seem to address the sexuality issues that were part and parcel of my life at that point.
And I'm wondering if that will change as YA becomes the new "hot ticket" genre.
In YA UF, for example, I don't find the female characters to be as bitchy and there's real story because you can't fill it all up with sex.
I find this sort of ironic, because speaking for myself? I know that as a teenager, I would have been absolutely thrilled to read a book that was filled with sex scenes.
And now that I'm an adult and sex is just Part of Life and about as mysterious to me as washing dishes (though decidedly more fun) - I'm kind of bored by that very thing and have very little tolerance for constant, run-of-the-mill sexual content that fills a book like creme fills a Boston donut.
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Date: 2009-07-15 11:14 am (UTC)I find it interesting that we seem to believe or wish that the lives of modern pre-teens and teens are utterly asexual, when in fact, I can't think of a time in my life when sex was more on my mind. And I think it's interesting that the only books that would deal with sex in a way that didn't feel like Just Say No To Sex Forever Or You Will Get Pregnant And Chlamydia Just From Looking At Boys! propaganda (I grew up in Tennessee, it was a very conservative environment) were romance novels, but the "age appropriate" novels I dealt with didn't seem to address the sexuality issues that were part and parcel of my life at that point.
And I'm wondering if that will change as YA becomes the new "hot ticket" genre.
In YA UF, for example, I don't find the female characters to be as bitchy and there's real story because you can't fill it all up with sex.
I find this sort of ironic, because speaking for myself? I know that as a teenager, I would have been absolutely thrilled to read a book that was filled with sex scenes.
And now that I'm an adult and sex is just Part of Life and about as mysterious to me as washing dishes (though decidedly more fun) - I'm kind of bored by that very thing and have very little tolerance for constant, run-of-the-mill sexual content that fills a book like creme fills a Boston donut.