For my journalism class, we had to write an opinion article about something that effects teens nationally. I also wrote a blog about this a couple months ago. If you're going to make a nasty comment about the topic, spare your time. Enjoy & thanks for reading.
I am a teenager, influenced by media. More often then not the music, movies and television shows contain vast amounts of sex, scandal and drama. It’s what people want to see, and they usually get it in heaping portions. We have gotten used to this, it no longer being anything unusual. But what if we found this same vulgarity in something that is a source of escape from our scandalous world?
Young adult fiction has taken a disturbing turn. I bought a cheap book one day, its cover friendly and inviting, its title, Cures for Heartbreak, intriguing. I soon found myself reading a disgusting, detailed-filled sex scene that didn’t even fit into the plot in the slightest. It made me a little disappointed in the human brain, as someone must have published this piece of trash and sent it out the public. At first I thought it just might be this particular book, so I took some other friendly-looking ones out in the library in the young adult section. All three had the same result.
This isn’t young adult. This is authors trying to make a profit by marketing sex to teenagers, and compromising morals. This goes undetected, as no one would think this kind of disgusting indecency would be tucked neatly into the pages of a disguised romance novel geared towards teens. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you would be shocked to find what’s in your child’s romance books. If you’re the reader of these books, I’m sure you’ve seen it before. If you intend to tolerate it or not is your own decision. I know I am not, and never will tolerate it.
What about Harry Potter? The multimillion dollar history making series. No sex, excellently written. This is one example of a good book that can sell and appeal to young adults without having a sex scene in the middle. What author is that insecure to put a scene like that in their story just make the plot better? It’s a little pathetic. There are plenty of series that have had success without indecency.
There is the counter argument that controversial topics teach teenagers about adult issues, and prepare them for real-life situations. Adult issues are for adult books, and not for a fourteen year old to cringe over in a novel supposedly written for them. Real-life issues? A lot of teenagers aren’t interested in sex in their reading material, and may become more interested when the characters that they look up to setting the wrong example. As a future creative writer, I’m not proud of these authors taking the easy way out.
There is something wrong with our world if sex is ruling over our literature. I guess I’ll be reading non-fiction for a while.
Gender:
Points: 2380
Reviews: 27