Good Girls? No such thing. No such thing as Bad Girls either.
Just girls who are doing their best to get by in a world where anything you do–like giving your boyfriend a blow job–can and will be caught on film (er, cellphone) and sent to everyone in your school. Oh yeah. AND TO YOUR PARENTS. They get to see you on your knees too.
The WAY you get by? (THIS is where the word good comes in.) Good friends. Good parents. Good grade point average. And a good look em in the eye and get on with it attitude. It helps if your boyfriend whom you have misunderstood and underestimated turns out to be madly in love with you and only had sex because having sex was easier than declaring how he really FELT about you.
That’s the short version of Laura Ruby’s YA novel Good Girls, which is sure to cause a stir among at least some parents because if its sexual content. In fact, this book is less about sex than it is a cautionary tale about what can happen when you HAVE sex–or rather, when you get labeled a “slut”. It is also a story about the redemptive power of friendship, family, independence, humor, and forgiveness.
Therein lies the strength–and the weakness–of this quick and mostly entertaining read. The story works best when it’s just a story, well told. But too often, you can practically hear the gears grinding in the background–like Ruby had a list of Assets for Positive Youth Development that she was checking off one at a time:
importance of respect, boundaries, self-purpose, confidence, caring parents, caring community. In fact–Ruby may have touched on all 40 of the Health Institutes Teen assets, which may explain why the storyline felt contrived in places, as though driven more by form than content.
Overall? I enjoyed this book. I liked Audrey. I found myself smiling–despite the Teen Assets–and even laughing out loud. By the end, Good Girls was more like a Disney movie than a Grimm’s fairy tale. And after looking over the often dark landscape of YA literature, I appreciated the humor, the happy ending, and the competence of the writer.
As we discussed in class, this book would be a provocative and interesting choice for a parents’ book group. I’m not sure whether Ruby’s characterization of high school life is accurate or not, or accurate for what group of teens, but for anyone who grew up without a cell phone or before the Social Web, Ruby’s reminder that this technology has transformed the way teens communicate and given “invasion of privacy” a whole new meaning–is right on the money.
