By Adam Amor
While browsing Borders, I chanced upon the “Young Adult” section, a place I did not previously know existed. It immediately became apparent to me that young men are not a part of the “Young Adult” population.
Among the books targeted toward girls were The It Girl, The Boys of Summer, and Doing It; the only book (singular) targeted toward guys was Stormbreaker. I read that book in seventh grade! It is on elementary school book orders! Why is there no faith in our generation?
To answer this question, I went straight to the source of all knowledge, Ms. Bodily, an English teacher at THS. She said “A lot of young men are more interested in nonfiction, more legitimate stuff, than the romance, while girls are interested in more romantic escape fiction.” If men are busy in the mystery section, they have no reason to head towards the “Young Adult” section. Why then, do bookstores not title the section “Young Women”? Bodily added, “That sounds like poor merchandising to me.”
As a young man, my pride is stung by this lack of confidence in our reading interest; however, I would feel no better as a young woman. I have not read any of these aforementioned books. They may be the next A Confederacy of Dunces (best nonfiction ever), but how good can anything be that is titled Gossip Girl?
Next, I went straight to the source. I sent the following email to the company’s Customer Care department:
As a young man, I am completely dissuaded by the selections in your young adult section. When I spy a section of the bookstore as broadly named as “Young Adults,” I expect to find books that appeal to more than the narrow wedge of airhead girls somehow chosen to represent my generation. I beg you to place more informative and respectable literature in this section.
The reply I received was suspiciously generic, hardly referencing my complaint.
At the end of my research, I have come up with two possible reasons for the young adult section appealing to women only. First, maybe boys really do not read. Conversely, they could be such voracious readers that they enjoy multiple sections that do not have to be geared towards a single population (history, mystery, westerns and adventure). Hopefully it is the latter.
