Mental Illness on the Bookshelf

 I grew up with a mom that wouldn't let us watch Dragon Tales because they recite a magic rhyme to go to dragon land (magic rhymes are witchcraft, dragons are symbols for the devil). I also wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter, and Aladdin was considered highly suspect. 

All this to say that I understand what it's like to grow up with a philosophy that fears things that aren't actually dangerous. 

So I'm a little upset that I'm finding myself reacting to a children's library book I found with deep revulsion and an impulse to ban my children from reading certain genres outright. But looking at this thing, I don't know how else I can react and keep my understanding of what sanity is. 

The cover looks pretty par for the course for middle grade fiction, especially fiction aimed toward girls. 

But open the cover, and this is a book about a kid who goes to a school named for a thinly veiled metaphor and "now she lives openly as the girl she has always known herself to be." 

Well, you should never judge a book by its cover, right? I flipped through it, trying to see what exactly this story entailed and found this passage...

Before I say anything else, I don't think it was necessarily inappropriate to have a description of a boy going through body dysmorphia in and of itself. Middle grade fiction has a reputation for not staying away from difficult subjects, and I honestly don't think it should. Kids who are going through difficult things can benefit immensely from seeing themselves reflected in the pages of a book. 

 I do think that the authors need to tread carefully when they bring these subjects up though. These authors become de facto mentors for the children who read their books, and they wield a considerable amount of influence. 

What bothers me immensely, and what makes me want to keep my kids in a bunker when it comes to young adult literature, is what happens next.

 The kid meets a relative who's makeup artist and gives him a glamorous makeover that covers up his emerging masculine features and makes him look feminine. He reacts with joy and finds "hope" for the future. 

The central message of the book is that if you're uncomfortable with your body, you need to change it. That the fullest expression of your identity is manipulating your body to look how you feel it should, even if it means changing your natural features and suppressing your body's natural functions. 

Reminder that the cover of this book is aimed towards an audience of teenage girls. Middle grade teenage girls at that, which means that they're in the midst of puberty. Puberty is an awkward, difficult time.  Your body is beginning to do things you don't understand, and (for a lot of girls) it's a time of pretty significant weight gain as you gain curves. There's a reason that eating disorders usually set in about this time. 

This book basically puts forward the idea to a vulnerable population that to fully live your identity, you have to make your body look like you want it to. Accepting yourself isn't embracing your natural features and the body you have, it's changing it. It's making your physical reality match the "real" you, which is what you think it should look like.  

That's a horrible, horrible message to give to children. It's a horrible message to give to anyone.

 Imagine if the protagonist had an eating disorder instead of body dysmorphia, and then the angst resolved by having him be given a gift bag with a ton of laxatives and a gift card to a clothing store for skinny people by someone saying, "we love and recognize the skinny person inside you, and we're going to help them come out." 

It's basically the same message. "You don't like your body? Fine. The loving thing, and the best thing, is to change it."

At the point that there's books on the shelves actively encouraging my children to believe that they are their thoughts and desires (and mental illnesses), rather than those being a part of who they are, how am I supposed to be comfortable with them having free reign in the library?

I have OCD. I know what life is like when you think you are your thoughts (rather than your chosen reaction to them) and I would never wish that hell on my worst enemy, let alone my children. 

I guess I'm going to have to do a fair amount of pre-screening for the foreseeable future. I don't like it, and I'm afraid it's going to pass on a mindset of fear to my kids, but I honestly don't see an alternative.