For several years now, I’ve been writing for Renaissance Magazine, a bi-monthly publication for people who enjoy Renaissance Faires. I write the occasional article–mostly lighthearted stuff such as “The Rise of the Codpiece: A Short History”–and reviews of books and CDs. It’s fun, and it gives me a chance to revisit my background in music and history. But recently my involvement with the magazine took a turn that’s closer to toward my day job: fantasy novels.
Renaissance Faires tend to be a blend of history and fantasy, so it makes sense that the editor wants to include reviews of fantasy novels, particularly those with pseudo-medieval and -Renaissance settings. I had to blink, though, when he referred to them as “boy books.”
In context, I know exactly what he means: something to balance the historical romance novels with elaborately gowned and inexplicably headless women on the cover. Something with dragons and swords and combat and adventure. I get it. But seriously, “boy books?”
When I started writing Forgotten Realms novels in the early 90′s, fantasy publisher TSR described their audience as “highly imaginative males aged 12-40.” Back then, the fantasy game convention Gen Con was one of those rare events where there was a line for the men’s room, but women could waltz right through. I’ve seen a huge shift in demographics over the past 20 years, and I suppose I’d assumed we were past the notion of fantasy as a men’s club. But every now and then, something happens to remind me that certain notions die hard–the recent online kerfuffle over the Nebula nominations, for example, which apparently included more women and insufficiently Angl0-Saxon males for some people’s peace of mind.
Back to RenMag and the review column. I have no problem with the notion of reading and reviewing books that appeal to men. How could I? I’ve written more than 20 books of my own, most of them for publishers whose demographic is skewed toward the Y chromosome. But I never assumed that fantasy adventure books, mine or anyone else’s, excluded either gender, and I don’t buy that asssumption now.
So I’ll be reviewing two books for each issue, and I’m going to select books with the editorial guidelines and the target audience in mind. My first selection, James Enge’s excellent book A Guile of Dragons, has a badass fighter on a gorgeous, grim cover. Testosterone for the win! But it also has links to Arthurian lore, a topic held in high regard by readers of both genders. And when I consider the very fine writing, complex characters, deft dry humor, and the wealth of incident and imagination, I have a hard time concluding that this book will be read by more men than women.
Here’s the thing: Women like a wide variety of books. We do not require love triangles, sexy vampires, snarky dialog, long descriptions of skanky wardrobe choices, and a play-by-play of softcore sex scenes. Sure, some female readers like some or all of these elements, at least some of the time. I like the Sookie Stackhouse books (not the TV series), but I also read mysteries, literary fiction, biographies, big dusty history tomes, and a wide variety of non-fiction. I’ve never thought of any of these as “boy books.” Just…books. And I have good reason to believe that I am not alone in this opinion.
I read voraciously when I was younger, and pretty much all over the map. As long as it was genre of some kind, I was open to it, and read fantasy, sci-fi, spy, detective, etc. But thinking back on it, the books that I tended to avoid, even within genre, were the books that skewed too much to either end of the masculine/feminine spectrum. I had no interest in romance novels, but at the same time I never read any of the Mack Bolan, Destroyer, Remo Williams, hyper-macho stuff either. I liked the stuff in the middle, where character was more important than gender.
I also don’t remember thinking of fantasy novels as boy books or girl books. The division was much more nerd books or mainstream books. I was laughed at for carrying around books with dragons on the covers, not because they were girly, but because they were geeky.
That’s not to say that I was oblivious of or unaffected by the divide. Far from it. Who knows how many more books I might have read and loved had I not been put off because the cover was so feminine I was embarrassed to be seen picking it up? If a book looked like a romance, or if the colors were too bright and cheerful, I probably wouldn’t have touched it. And I’m sure the reverse was true. There are probably many women who would have enjoyed any number of fantasy books except that the books practically had “No Girls Allowed” written across the covers.
I can point to part of my own career as an example. I have written many novels set in the Warhammer universe, which is primarily seen as a boy’s market. In the books I wrote for them, however, I tried as often as I could to include strong and interesting woman characters, and tried to keep the macho posturing to a minimum, and I think many of them would appeal to both male and female readers. The covers of those books, however, were as grim and spiky and macho as possible, and I didn’t get many female readers. It wasn’t until my last three Warhammer books, the Ulrika trilogy, when I got to write a female protagonist and, more importantly, she was featured on the cover in an appealing and fairly non-exploitive way, that I was suddenly hearing from female readers who picked it up because of the cover, and from male readers who would say to me, “At last I can introduce my girlfriend to the Warhammer universe. At last she sees what I like about it.”
Then later, I would hear from those same female readers who, having liked the Ulrika books, went back and braved the other manlier-looking books, which they would never otherwise have touched, and they would tell me that they liked those too, and wished they had tried them earlier.
So… I guess what I’m saying is that the marketing of books is more to blame for the perpetuation of the stereotypes of male and female reading habits than the readers of those books. It is the snake eating its tail. Advertisers tell boys and girls from birth which kinds of images they’re supposed to like, then point to studies of boys and girls raised in that sex-divided environment that show that boys and girls like those sex-divided images in order to keep making more sex-divided images that will influence the next generation of boys and girls. And on and on and on…
I will admit that, as a female reader, I tend to check out books by men more cautiously than I check out books by women. I’ll make sure to read reviews by women (you are providing a valuable service!). Not because I don’t think high fantasy is FOR boys inherently. I grew up on Tolkien like the rest of us. It’s just that I’ve found that the testosterone fest ones can be pretty hard on the female characters, so, as I said, I approach with caution.
I admit to reading Lidnsey’s comment (“That said, I think girls have a definite (and rather unfair) advantage when it comes to reading material…especially in the YA market.”) and having an immediate response that went something like, “AHHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAH! yeah. right.” I’m not sure that a culture that so systematically devalues and degrades women’s voices, and feeds young women a steady diet of books by, for and about men, while telling them that they are superior to any of those girl books, is an unfair advantage. I love this Maureen Johnson quote on the topic:
That girls are finally given books about them to read, books that are valued (somewhat, mostly mocked on the whole, but you know, can’t win them all), isn’t an unfair advantage. It’s a step towards equality.
Indeed, you are not alone.
I began reading fantasy novels when I was…hmm, maybe eleven or twelve. The first fantasy series I ever read was the Belgariad by David Eddings. After that, I was hooked. I read every fantasy novel I could get my hands on and I never thought of anything I read as a ‘boy’ book. Ever. All I knew was that it was a book, and there was never enough time in the day to read as much as I wanted. Granted, most of the protagonists were male, as were most of the authors. (Though Mary Stewart’s take on the King Arthur legend is still one of my all time favorites and I adore the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce.) As much as I enjoy finding a really awesome female protagonist, for me it’s not a deal breaker; I care about exceptional story.
That said, I think girls have a definite (and rather unfair) advantage when it comes to reading material…especially in the YA market. We may not always be able to find the volume of female heroes we’d like, but girls have always been able to read Hardy Boys *and* Nancy Drew pretty much without impunity. Boys cannot read Nancy Drew or any of a vast number of really great books marketed to girls, without fear of reprisal on some level. In this light, it’s easy to see why men especially would consider fantasy, with all its swords, scorcery, and epic battles between good and evil, primarily a masculine domain. The same culture that perpetuates the myth of ‘boy books’ has created a default counter culture of ‘girl books’. Unfortunately too many people buy into these myths.
Through my reading lens, fantasy is relatively gender neutral. Books are books and well crafted characters can be related to by males and females equally, regardless of gender.
When I started my apprenticeship as a bookseller about 20 years ago the head of the pocket book department told me: “Now the difference between SF and Fantasy is that male readers prefer SF and female readers prefer Fantasy, because it isn’t so harsh.”
Though, maybe Austrian readers are different from American ones.
I started reading SF at about age 9, and fantasy at about 12 or 13. Sure, I noticed that most of the protagonists were male — but then, unless you were reading Nancy Drew, or those horse books, that was true of pretty well everything there was to read back then. It’s certainly not true now, and that may very well be because people like you Elaine — ahem, I mean women — are now writing the SF and fantasy books everyone, not just boys, are reading. I’m not surprised to learn, however, that people not directly in the SF&F field, even those in related fields, still tend to think of SF&F as “boys books”. They need to look around a bit more, broaden their horizons. Traditionally “girl books” aren’t being read strictly by girls either.