Dear CEOs of Random House, Scholastic, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster, and the authors that these companies represent,

I am more than aware that your work draws in a steady flow of profits every week. I am more than aware that young adult novels reach many millions of readers in a single year. I am more than aware that the demand for these books won’t go away anytime soon. With this in mind, I have to ask you the pertinent question: Why do a grand majority of your novels feature a female protagonist and her conflict with finding the perfect love interest and is this genre cliché having unintended consequences?

We’ve seen this cliché in many of your most popular and profitable series: The Hunger Games, the Twilight saga, the Divergent series, The Selection series, The Fifth Wave series, The Dark Artifices series, and countless other knockoff series cashing in on the popularity of the next big young adult series. Whether they’re surviving a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland death tournament or surviving the emotionally-precarious halls of high school and becoming their own person, these teenage protagonists are going through the same adolescent problems as your target audience in one form or another. However, the way that you continue to present the emotionally realistic struggles of young adult protagonists are being downplayed when you continue to endorse emotionally unrealistic romantic subplots (or prominent plot points) in every single series that you publish. It’s boring at best and sexist at worst.

I realize that young females often experience emotional and sexual turmoil. They are at a time of their life where they’re discovering who they are and who they want to be in life, as well as navigating the precarious and uncertain rollercoaster that are teenage hormones. However, you unintentionally continue to treat them like the delicate, emotional flowers that you believe them to be, but do they really deserve this? Are they still the children that you make them out to be or do they need to be treated like the maturing adults that they are steadily becoming? Your “subliminal” romantic subplots end up treating your readers like the former. Why not treat them with the same level of respect as you would treat a fellow colleague on your board? Is that so hard for you to do?

But, you may argue, isn’t this material appropriate for our audience of teenage girls? Aren’t they all just boy-crazy all day, every day, 24/7? Isn’t every girl interested — no, obsessed — with having a boyfriend starting from the moment they hit puberty? Aren’t they all obsessed with their future life-mates fitting their unrealistic standards on what Adonises have graced their watch on their phones and magazines and favorite shows every day? Aren’t they all just preoccupied with thoughts of one day solidifying their relationship by having the best sex that they will ever have with their Adonis life-mates? Aren’t we just giving them what they want? Don’t they relish in picking a handsome hunk and battling it out with the opposing team supporting the other? Isn’t there anything wrong with that?

No. No. No. No. No. No. Not everyone. And yes.

Do you have any idea what you’re doing? When you focus on the massive profits that your books rake in every year, you are continuing to force-feed a sexist narrative packaged into a triangular package of romantic conflict into an already-sexist state of mind that these girls have to face every single day. You are becoming part of the overarching and overwhelming problem even when you don’t realize it.

Every day, young girls deal with everyday battles both within their school halls and within ever-changing friendships and within themselves as they navigate the perilous journeys of puberty. Every day, young girls are immersed in vapid representations of female role models like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, and the Kardashians (to name a few), looking at their artificially angelic bodies and then glancing at their own lumps of flesh and muscle, wondering if they can ever reach that level of superficial perfection. Every day, young girls are putting on more and more makeup and more and more tight-fitting, short, sexy clothing, just so that they’ll fit in with the rest of her peers and be taken seriously. Every day, young girls go through eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia just so their body can match those that they see in their magazines and shows and social media outlets every single day.

By adding the “ever essential” romance subplot to your novels, you are hurting these young girls — the grand majority of your audience, may I remind you — further by promoting this one small but ultimately harmful idea that they aren’t complete without having a boyfriend by their side to their already damaged perception of what society wants them to be.

You’ve promoted the best role models within your young adult literature, relatable models that have the potential to accomplish anything and can even take down oppressive systems of power, recognizable names like Katniss Everdeen and Hermione Granger, but answer me this: in an age where women are taking the world by storm, why are there still the “Bella Swan”s, “Cassie Sullivan”s, and “America Singer”s floating around in your young adult discipline? Should young women still be forced to consume this bland and tired idea and try and feel complete with a piece of Adonis man-candy, or should they be served a more palatable dish of strong, independent women who don’t need a man to feel complete?

This message is ultimately degrading and should not play into a young girl’s — no, a young woman’s — everyday life, on top of the other superficial things that she will one day find to be a complete waste of time and energy. Through your promotions, you tell your young audience member that a woman needs a man like a human needs air, where she will come soon to find that your female protagonists need a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

I beg you to reconsider your approach towards the literature your marketing towards young adults. Stop drowning them with this message. Yes, girls can independently find themselves the life-mate of a lifetime, but slipping them the subliminal message that a woman is not complete without a man by her side, at this tumultuous time in this young person’s life, is frankly a little condescending and far from what your audience needs: more confident, legendary, and relatable female protagonists that can take on the world without needing the constant support of their boyfriends by their side.

Give your target audience the respect it deserves rather than the respect you’re denying them. Drop the “Bella Swan”s and “Cassie Sullivan”s; give us more “Katniss Everdeen”s* and “Hermione Granger”s.

Sincerely,
A consumer

*excluding the undermining romance subplot and end of her “character arc”

Image credit: https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/763418238294319104?lang=en