In many middle-grade books, the female characters are not as interesting as the male ones. They’re not as realistic and their backstories often aren’t as complex. They’re also not the ones that become popular. No one’s reading Annabeth Chase and the Olympians or Hermione Granger and the Philosopher’s Stone. The books that are big with kids around our age don’t generally have female main characters. There could be multiple reasons for this, such as the fact that authors often make them stereotypical, or they’re worried about being sexist. But being cautious gets nowhere with characters; their personalities become dull and overused. Authors need to stop writing the two genders so differently, and realize that to create good characters they need to take some risks.
I think many people are scared of being sexist through the way they write their characters. They think they’re making high quality female characters, but in truth they’re all the same. The girls in books are either obsessed with hair and boys, or they’re super cool, buttkicking heroes. Many people may see the latter as a positive thing. And it was. But now it’s 2024 and they’re still the same. Good characters are flawed and have confusing emotions and thoughts. These girls do not. They are always smart and never fail, they’re often the love interest of one of the main characters, and it’s getting boring to read about. Characters in books such as Rachel Dare (from Percy Jackson) and Sophie Foster (from Keeper of the Lost Cities) are great examples of this kind of writing. Aside from that, why should girls have to be one or the other? If they’re tough they can’t care about what they look like, and if they wear makeup they couldn’t possibly be strong enough to match anyone in a fight. Things like these are so black and white, when in reality more traditionally feminine things don’t contribute to one’s strength or intelligence. Not only does it make these girls much less three dimensional characters, there aren’t enough representations of realistic female characters.
If authors aren’t making their female characters cool, they’re fitting them into stereotypes. Female characters cry a lot more than male characters, and a lot of the time they’re preoccupied with crushes and whatnot while the boys are not. In books about middle school, the girls are most definitely stereotypical. Not only is it sexist, and creating bad characters, it makes girls feel like they have to be a certain way, and are a certain way. The girls in these books are nowhere near as capable as the boys, and when people read that they start to believe that that’s what real life is.
Maybe it’s that the authors don’t want to make unrelatable characters. Maybe they think, hey, I could make an amazing female character, but I don’t want her to stray too far from reality. The only thing that does is give many girls more characters that aren’t like them, so they might try to be more similar to the girls that they’re reading about. That makes less room for more personalities and continues the perpetually reinforced gender stereotypes. And anyway, if the authors are using the logic of, “make relatable characters” and they don’t think girls could relate with less “girly” characters, then they can just assume the male readers will.
To be honest, I think that if people were to write girls like they often write boys, which a lot of the time is either a really funny, not so smart character (still good characters) or a sad or angry character (best characters in my opinion), it would be written and read differently than when boys are written in that way. When boys in books are kind of stupid, it’s funny for the readers. If girls are written that way they may be taken as strange or unpleasant to read about. Authors have to create better female characters, but the readers have to do their part in not separating the genders in their minds and just reading and appreciating good characters no matter what gender they are.
Children—and anyone—should be reading books with complex, interesting characters that have something to teach them. Real people, most definitely including girls and women, are complicated and have all kinds of different emotions and skills and interests. Though it might seem that the girls in kids’ books are great, they really aren’t. Authors of middle-grade books have to start representing all genders (and everyone) truthfully, and maybe a little more bravely, in their books.
