'Apprentice losers, already on their way to a witless future'

[helloladies]

In ‘Young People’s Fiction: Feisty Girls, Feckless Boys’ Eleanor Updale, Costa judge, posits a link between the domination of a ‘feisty’ cliched female character and a negative ‘bias’ towards male characters, that she thinks can be found in young adult fiction. She then goes on to suggest links between this negative bias and female publishing executives, as well as female consumers.

Our journal is called ‘ladybusiness’ everyone. I’m sure, you can guess we are less than supportive of the kind of argument that links the destruction of male characters with women who are out spoken, or in control. Ana and I decided to take a really hard look at this article, so we could spell out our own objections to the construction of Updale’s article and the logic she uses to support her arguments.

( This got long. )