Banned Books Week 2014

Hello there Internet!

Happy Belated Banned Books Week! Grad school has been throwing me for a loop, and I wanted to write about a specific book this year. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (let's just call it The Earth from now on for reading and typing purposes) is fairly old in the publishing world, but I had to put it on hold at the library which says something about its relevance 11 years later. The Earth was published in 2003, and made the ALA's Top 10 Frequently Challenged Books list in 2006 and 2009. In 2006, the book was deemed to be "anti-family, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group" and to contain "offensive language." In 2009, the complaints were almost the same; the challenger that year had no issues with the representation of family.

I'm going to stop here to put a disclaimer: SPOILERS AHEAD! 
And a trigger warning here: Mentions of rape, fatphobia, self-harm, eating disorders/disordered eating, and misogyny in this post and in the book.

The story goes like this: Virginia Shreves lives in New York City with her athletic and naturally slim father and her weight-obsessed, formerly fat mother. Her older sister is in the Peace Corps, and her older brother, Byron, is a student at Columbia University. Everyone in her family is thin and blonde, but Virginia is fat and brunette. 

Virginia's physical and personality differences from her parents and siblings create a gap between her and her family. When Byron rapes a fellow student, her family situation becomes even worse. Virginia's father relies on alcohol to cope, her mother pretends everything is normal, and her brother mopes around the house during his suspension. Virginia feels conflicted between the adoration she feels for her brother and her horror at his actions. She cycles through binge eating and starving herself to cope, and self-harms by pinching herself until she bruises and biting her cheek until it bleeds. I don't think the book is anti-family. I think it truthfully portrays the relationships within a family experiencing a situation like Byron raping a girl. Mackler makes a point to have Virginia be more concerned about Annie, the student Byron raped, than her family, especially Byron. Virginia idolized her brother prior to the incident, and her confusion and disgust manifests in further isolation from her family and friends. 

Another way in which The Earth could be seen as anti-family is the portrayal of mother-daughter relationships via Virginia and her mom. Virginia says her mother is a psychologist who spends all day listening to other teenagers and is too tired to listen to her after work. Her mom is obsessed with staying thin, and she pushes her ideal body type onto Virginia, which contributes to Virginia's low self-esteem. The tension builds to the point of Virginia disobeying her mother in several ways, like getting her eyebrow pierced and dying her hair purple. Everything about this book that is "anti-family" are truthful portrayals of an teenager's experience. It's important to explore the complexities of familial relationships in fiction so that teens can work through their own, real-life experiences.

The book opens with Virginia making out with Froggy Welsh the Fourth, a classmate at her private school. This is probably the most sexually explicit scene in the book. In this scene, Virginia reveals to the reader that she makes out with Froggy in secret because she's embarrassed for him. She knows that boys don't like fat girls, so she saves Froggy the trouble of asking her to keep their after school activities quiet. Froggy and Virginia meet again in her bedroom, but her mom comes home early and Froggy sneaks out. The only other mention of sex that could possibly fall under the realm of explicit is Annie's, a student at Columbia University, description of the night Byron raped her. Virginia does struggle with her sexuality throughout the book, specifically relating to Byron's sexual assault against Annie and her fatness. The idea of being touched repulses her after hearing about what Byron did for some time. And even before that, Virginia's sexual desires did not match the societal expectations of a fat girl. She references a radio show and magazines that explain how she must act sexually in order to attract any attention from men. Like the uncomfortable family situations, the exploration of sexuality related to fatness goes directly against the ideas society wants to display for teenagers. Girls should not be thinking about sex, and certainly not fat girls. 

While The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things contains slightly controversial material, it is an important book that should be accessible for teens. Fiction is a method teenagers can use to explore themselves and the situations in their lives, which is important because adolescence is a tumultuous time for everyone. Most challenged books are written for youth because parents want to shield their children from outside influences with which they disagree. Challenging books does a disservice to everyone in the community, but especially to the kids who need representation in fiction. Every person deserves to see themselves in the media they engage with, including girls with big, round butts.

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10
Mackler, Carolyn. (2003). The earth, my butt, and other big round things. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.