Sex and YA Fiction

(from a female perspective)

A few weeks ago, I sat opposite the beautiful girls in my small group who had scrunched together onto two couches. I’ve been their youth leader for 5 years, but this is the first time the appointed topic was sex. Usually we have a special event for that, involving parents and panels and a couple of counselors. Oh, and my actually married co-leader was sick, so it was just me. Fourty-two-year-old sexless me facilitating a discussion about sex and sexuality. 

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I tried to reassure the girls as they voiced the same complaints I voice to my adult friends. I personally am not unhappy about celibacy as long as sex isn’t being thrown in front of my face. That’s when “waiting” seems so unfair. But right now, sex is everywhere. It’s hard to keep little eyes from seeing. It’s in teenaged-targeted TV shows, like the wildly popular Riverdale. And it’s crawling into YA fiction, often explicitly. Writers persistently put forth the world-view that touts teenaged sex as perfectly normal, if not fantastic. 

So what can we writers do? I don’t have comprehensive answers, but this is a list of battles I recognize: 

Battle #1 Be good enough to be heard

We’re all encouraging young people to read, but no one is going to take the smut from the shelves. It’s selling and it’s big business. Instead, we have a challenge to step up and produce better stories than the ones we are seeing in the YA lines. Is that a hard task? Absolutely. We’re all here, because we recognize writing as a skill that needs to be honed. And I think we should increase in prayer for the authors, the ideas, the creativity, and the opportunity to be competitive in the marketplace. 

Battle #2 Demonstrate healthy sexuality

Healthy sexuality requires healthy all-around relationships. It’s my experience that young women build their identities first from their families, then from their girlfriends. I’ve seen really great examples of young female friendships from this writer’s group. Julane Fisher’s Sour Lemon and Sweet Tea is one of my favorites (and in the running for a Selah award this year!). Her protagonist learns how to be a good friend, how not to judge people by appearances, how to lean on her family when she’s disappointed with herself. What’s more feminine than that? 

Battle #3 Demonstrate covenant

Love and covenant. Sacrifice and submission. It’s hard to make these archaic-sounding Christiany words relatable to a teen’s life. The girls in my small group expressed their greatest frustration with the term WAIT. They’re sick of hearing it. How do we show them, then, that waiting is their way to honor the covenant they will one day have with their spouse? For the sake of a future, greater love. Waiting isn’t necessarily passive, either. Maybe our characters are simply too busy with their dreams, aspirations, and ideas to be scanning the horizon for their man-options. If love does find them, it’s a great surprise. Even then, how do they care for and honor this person? What are they doing to crucify the flesh and how are they rewarded? 

Battle #4 Counter the lies. 

This is my long rant, so I’ll save it for tomorrow’s post. Also, feel free to rant with me in the comments below.