Rainbow Party arrived in the mail yesterday, so OF COURSE I had to abandon the book I was reading and latch onto this bit of teenybopper smut, just to see what all the big fuss is about. And you know what?
Dude. Seriously? The people who are all squawking because of the premise should be HAPPY about this book because the girl who’s organizing the rainbow party is portrayed as a total slutty bitchrag and you just know she’s going to Come To No Good, and the good guys are just nauseatingly sweet about their purity. I mean, this is pretty obviously a cautionary tale. If anything, my objection is that the characters are not nearly nuanced enough and the morality just a bit too strident for my tastes. Am I asking too much from a YA novel? I don’t think so. Judy Blume, for one, did a marvellous job creating nuanced, complex characters who tackled difficult subjects in her YA novels.
I’m only about 75 pages in, though, and I have about 170 more to go. Hopefully more subtlety will be injected into the book soon, though I’m not really holding my breath. Will get a review up as soon as I finish it.
This book has been such a big deal in the library world, and yet every person I’ve heard from or review I’ve read about it has said the same thing—it is definitely portraying teen promiscuity as a very bad thing. So, yeah, I don’t get what the fuss is about either. I guess just the idea of the thing is enough to make people lose it.
Speaking of Judy Blume…everyone needs to recall a book entitled Forever. Teen sex has been done in YA before.
As a bookseller, I remember when the kids picture book ‘Nappy Hair’ caused a huuuge uproar. All sorts of people claiming it was incredibly rascist towards African Americans and just awful, awful, awful. Meanwhile, if you actually read the book (written by an African American author) it was a celebration of culture, heritage, ethnicity and differences. What a difference actually reading the book makes, huh?
According to a librarian friend the real objection to RAINBOW PARTY is the fact that there is a mention of [teen] oral sex, which is apparently the first to appear in a YA novel.
Thinking about it, it makes sense. Judy Blume’s FOREVER didn’t have oral sex, did it?
I don’t remember. I think there was digital manipulation, but no oral. I’ll have to dig out my copy.
If you read the reviews on Amazon.com and Michelle Malkin’s article on it (she’s in Ann Coulter’s league when it comes to “consistently batshit insane” territory), most of the outrage comes from the concept of the rainbow party itself. They act as if there are detailed descriptions of blowjobs or as if the book endorses teen promiscuity, and you know what? There aren’t, and it doesn’t. I’m halfway through the book, and the party hasn’t happened yet. In fact, some of the characters are expressing doubt about going. And like I said, the person who organizes the party is presented as a villainous slut. I just KNOW something nasty is going to happen to her.
All that misplaced outrage. Sigh. But who knows? Maybe the last 19 pages of the book will erupt into a massive teen orgy. I doubt it, though.
And furthermore, teens are engaging in more oral sex nowadays. Why? It seems partly because of abstinence-only education. Teenagers figure oral sex isn’t having sex, so in the interests of preserving their virginity, they do everything else except vaginal penetration. In that sense, this book is pretty realistic. The kids don’t think of oral sex as being risky or the same thing as sex.
Jeez, they must’ve been watching Clinton.
“I never had sex with that woman—oh, THAT. That wasn’t sex, it was just a hummer.”
Ha! It’s ALWAYS Bill Clinton’s fault. Only I can’t call him a cocksucker, can I? Maybe “cocksuckee”?
Anyway. One of the few things this book does well is portraying how engaging in oral sex DOES carry very real consequences.
I got the book on Monday. I haven’t read more than the first ten pages but plan to very soon. I figure it’s going to be an educational experience because they sure didn’t have nothing like this when I was in high school. And since I have a daughter who is some day (god!) going to be a teenager, I want to be prepared so I can educate her.
I remember Forever very well since it was so taboo and riske back in my day. How times have changed. It’s pretty mild when you look at it now.