Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Submitted by Angelina

This book is the first in a loose trilogy written by Lowery about a far future utopian/dystopian society. It is followed by Gathering Blue & Messenger.

Fans of 1984 and Brave New World will not be disappointed. Society has become a disinfected and homogenized version of what it was. Children are born to designated Birthmothers and given to “families” during the ceremony of One. Family is no more, adult males and females live together only long enough to raise the children in a secure environment. All citizens look basically the same, everyone must conform. If you deviate in any way, you will be Released (euthanized).

This story follows Jonas. Jonas is preparing himself for the ceremony of Twelve. The ceremony of Twelve decides what occupation will be given to each citizen. Jonas is excited, as are all the children. However, Jonas is different from the other children. While the other children all have dark eyes, he has light eyes. You later learn that this is what gives him the ability to “see beyond”( color).  During his ceremony of Twelve, it is announced that he will become the next Receiver of Memory. He will hold the memories before the time of Sameness, memories now held by The Giver. As Jonas begins his training, through the memories he learns of concepts such as truth, beauty, love, and compassion. It is then that he begins to see the shallow hypocrisy of the world he now inhabits. 

The author keeps the book at a steady pace, nothing too jarring. My only complaint when I first read this book was that the ending was too ambiguous. When he escapes the community with Gabriel, an infant with eyes like him, you are not sure if they die of hypothermia in the mountains or if they are rescued. However, that has since been settled by the sequels. 

As a young adult, this book resonated with me because I was beginning to think for myself. I was born and raised in a small town in Michigan. Hypocrisy was something I could understand. It was all about sins of omission. Afternoon brunches often had conversations about nothing while a 600 pound gorilla sat in the same room that everyone saw but no one would acknowledge. We white-washed the dirty parts of our lives the same way the council white-washed the dirty parts of humanity. 

Why are there so many challenges? I believe it is because people are squeamish when it comes to the topics of euthanasia, selective breeding, and social conditioning. If anything, this book does not encourage these ideas, but rather it discourages it. I sometimes wonder if the people who place challenges on a book have ever even it read it. 

Submitted by Collette

I read The Pigman by Paul Zindel when I was in junior high, many years ago (*cough* THIRTY *cough* how did that happen? *screaming inside my head*).  Although it’s currently on the banned books list, I was given it by my mother, a children’s librarian.  She’d bring home piles of books for me to read so I went through a lot.  What strikes me is how much I remember about this book, especially in light of how many books I’ve read since then. 

The Pigman is about John and Lorraine, two kids who start out pulling pranks on the unsuspecting.  They eventually pull a prank on Mr. Pignati, who, through a series of events, becomes their friend.  He is a kind, sweet, lonely old man who is good to these also lonely teenagers.  What I remember most starkly is how badly it all turned out.  At first, there’s the hope that, although they met through pranks, somehow something better, something bigger would come from this friendship.  And, it’s true, for a while at least.  They gain something from one another, a sense of belonging, as well as fun.  But through their careless actions, John and Lorraine tragically wound the Pigman--a blow from which none of them will recover, either physically or, in the case of John and Lorraine, emotionally.

I remember the epiphany that I had.  My parents were correct--you really needed to think before you acted.  Little actions can have big consequences.  (Who knew they were right?) The ending still makes me sad.  For me to feel and remember even that much after 30 years (*sigh*), I think that’s the sign of an amazing book with a great lesson.

Submitted by CC

I am doing this review from memory, since my signed copy is still in a moving box and I haven’t read it for a few years. I love this book and have given copies to a variety of people over the years, all of whom agree with me, it’s a magical read.

--Sixth grade, a new school, I’m changing and so is the world around me. My teacher, Mrs. Harris, reads a book out loud every day after lunch. She read “Rifles for Waite” by Harold Keith, the book that led me to my profession as an historian, she also read “Bridge to Terabithia.” She simply sat down, opened the book, and started reading. We were transformed. No other book had been as compelling to us before. No other book had us talking about it at lunch and wondering what would happen next. No other book earned such an emotional reaction with boxes of tissue being passed around the classroom while we listened as one of our new best friends died.

The story of two kids and the imaginary world they inhabit isn’t groundbreaking. What makes this story so different is the depth the characters have, and not just hero and heroine. Family, teachers, and other supporting characters are well drawn. They are there for a specific reason, to move the story along. So often in young adult (I hate that phrase) books the supporting cast is nominal and rather flat. Their only purpose is set dressing for the h/h. Here they are truly part of the story and part of the lives of the h/h.

When tragedy and death strike it is love, friendship, and compassion that allow the survivor to truly get on with the business of living.

I’m confused as to why this book would be banned. It is a story of friendship, love, loss and living. It teaches us that we’re not quite the odd-ball we thought we were, but that we each are truly special. It allows kids to explore reality from the safety of fantasy. To learn to make their own world, so they can better make their way in the REAL world. It is strong, stirring, and encouraging. There is a reason why it has won so many awards including the coveted Newberry Medal Award and has been in print for so many years, because at it’s core it is a well told, engaging story.

Submitted by Goblin

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, is the story of two men living in desperate times, but it’s also a story about the necessity of hope. Most characters in the book cling to some (often heartbreakingly pathetic) hope of a better life while they struggle through the brutal realities of the Great Depression.

The story focuses on George and Lennie, two migrant workers. Lennie is physically powerful but mentally sub-normal. George is a cynical but essentially kind-hearted man who looks out for Lennie. Their dream is to save up enough money to buy a small farm where they won’t have to work constantly in order to survive.

Lennie likes to stroke soft and pretty things, but he doesn’t control his abnormal strength well. At the beginning of the story, George forces Lennie to throw away the body of the pet mouse Lennie has accidentally killed. It turns out Lennie once killed a puppy in a similar fashion, and that the two men are looking for new employment because Lennie tried to stroke the dress of a girl who thought he was trying to molest her.

They find work, and with it, renewed hope that they may finally raise the money needed to buy their farm. Then Lennie tries to stroke the hair of the wife of the boss’ son and accidentally snaps her neck when she panics.

Why was this book challenged more than all but five others between 1990 and 2000? Because George saves Lennie from being lynched the only way he can. George has Lennie visualize the farm they’re going to buy, and the soft rabbits Lennie will be allowed to take care of there, and then, while Lennie is distracted by the dream, George shoots him in the back of the skull. It’s a hard ending, but one that makes perfect sense within the story.

The novella is brilliantly written. It’s a potent and sensitive depiction of how desperation and hope interact. To ban it is to delete a great work of art for the crime of being too powerful.

What harm do we come to by reading about a character’s painful choice? What harm are we likely to do? The book makes us think about suffering and what makes life bearable. We will only be finer citizens for having done so.

Submitted by Jen C

The Face on the Milk Carton tells the story of a teenager, Janie Johnson, who looks down at her milk carton at lunch one day and realizes that the missing- child picture on it is her own.  She starts investigating, and discovering that nothing adds up.  Who is Hannah, the mysterious child her parents have never spoke of?  Why does the milk carton picture of “Jennie Springs” look like her?  Why do the Springs have that same red hair?  How can she destroy her life by confronting her parents with the truth?  Will her best friend, Sarah-Charlotte, ever stop talking?  Will Janie have sex with hot neighbor Reeve? Will there be three sequels, the last which will completely contradict the first three?

I have loved this book for more than a decade, now, and I have never exactly been able to ascertain why this book gets banned. Reeve is constantly thinking about sex, though in that middle-aged-woman-writing-this way- he wants to run his hands though Janie’s ‘serious’ red hair and put his body next to hers, rather than search for her real parents.  There is some minor swearing.  Plus, it reminds young people that joining a cult is awesome, because your parents totally won’t turn you in to the police.

Cooney’s books were the first step for me to reading romance novels.  I grew up on her books- Camp Boy-Meets-Girl, Family Reunion, the Time series, Tune in Anytime, and The Girl Who Invented Romance.  All the books feature dreamy, contemplative heroines caught in melodramatic situations.  I based my life on these books, back in the day, living more of my preteen and teen years acting as a Cooney heroine would.  This was not necessarily a successful endeavor, but I am still glad I got to spend my teen years with these books.  Though I am now an adult, I still read and reread her books.  None get to me quite like the Face on the Milk Carton.  As Reeve would point out, you always remember your first… Caroline B Cooney novel. 

Submitted by Delia

Have you heard?  Reading Harry Potter turns you into a devil-worshipper!  JK Rowling’s young adult series Harry Potter is the most challenged book of the 21st century, and is one of the top ten most frequently banned books of all time.  Parents are concerned about the positive portrayal of the occult in the series and cry that the book is indoctrinating their children into Satan-worship.  But they are ignoring the real threat this series poses to our children!  If they searched for Harry Potter related websites on the internet, they would see that the series does not just glorify witchcraft, it also turns impressionable young women into pedophiles.  The Harry Potter series has inspired more fanfiction than any other book series—and since the release of movie adaptations, the amount of fanfiction increased significantly and the focus shifted from Will Harry Kill Voldemort? to Will Harry And Draco Stop Fighting And Just Have Buttsex Already?  Harry and Draco are still minors at the end of the series, which led some social networking sites to ban pornographic fan material, telling fans that they are child predators for posting such harmful and illegal material.  Don’t parents realise that their children can be kidnapped and abused because of Harry Potter readers?

Parents focus on the witchcraft aspect of the books rather than the naughty fanfiction, claiming that the portrayal of in a positive light is inherently evil.  Porn-inspiration aside, the series is no more evil or even complex than a typical Disney movie.  A boy is orphaned and forced to live with abusive relatives until he learns that he has a secret talent that makes him special and leads him to be mentored by a well-intentioned (if just a bit misguided) grandfatherly figure who dies before the strapping young man can learn everything he needs to know, at which point he is forced to think for himself and defeat the bad guy on his own.

But the beauty of the series isn’t the universal theme of good triumphing over evil, it’s that this is a wildly popular children’s book that has characters who blur the line between good and bad, and a villain who is well and truly evil.  Voldemort isn’t just a bully who steals your lunch money and later reforms to become a law-abiding citizen—he’s a bitter, manipulative, racist, power-hungry, murderous monster.  He is what Harry could have become, had his choices in life been different.  The series presents real-world problems that kids have to face sometime in their lives (racism and prejudices, injustice, bad first impressions, death, and even crushes and detentions) in a fantasy setting that makes for a quick and enjoyable read.  Kids can get wrapped up in a story that transports them to a magical make-believe place that really isn’t all that different from their own lives.  Despite its faults—plot holes, entire books made up of clichés, a terribly flat main character who is obsessed with his school nemesis and YELLS IN ALLCAPS FOR NO REASON—millions of kids are reading as a result of Harry Potter because, magic or not, they can relate to it.

The Harry Potter series would deserve an A rating if it was retitled Severus Snape and the Annoying Brat Who Refused To Die, since Snape is the most complex and developed character.  Plus, Snape is played by Alan Rickman in the films.  ‘nuff said.

Whenever I think of this book, I’m reminded of a story reading expert Jim Trelease tells in his presentations to parents.  He once read his son the first page of this book, which ends with the following paragraph:

“Then, one day, James’ mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.”

Like any good parent, Mr. Trelease anxiously looked to his young son, expecting he’d need to offer reassurance.  “No, mommy and daddy aren’t going to die.  No, animals cannot escape from the zoo.  And even if they did, rhinoceroses are herbivores.” But his son was not even fazed.  In fact, his only question was, “Is there a picture?”

In the tradition of most great children’s literature, James and the Giant Peach features an orphaned protagonist (James) who must thwart oppressive adults (the evil Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker) to escape a dreary life and find adventure with true friends (in this case, an assortment of overgrown insects).  It’s the exciting, humorous story of a seven-year-old boy who crosses the Atlantic Ocean in an enormous fruit and lives to tell the tale.  As a child, I must have read it a dozen times, and to my recollection, it isn’t the least bit titillating.  (Well, okay, it contains the word “ass.") Yet this book is #56 on the Banned Books list.  Why?

Well, probably partly because it contains the word “ass.” Others have accused the book of “promoting” drugs and alcohol, because the Centipede sings a song that mentions monkeys chewing tobacco, hens taking snuff and porcupines drinking wine.  But I’m guessing mostly this book gets challenged for reasons like those of a Stafford County, Virginia, school district, which (according to DeleteCensorship.org) placed Dahl’s book on restricted access in the library because it “encourages children to disobey their parents and other adults.”

Yes, there you have it.  Like many of the children’s books on the 100 Most Banned list, James and the Giant Peach contains the most enduring and subversive message in children’s literature:  kids can make it on their own.  I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I loved to read books in which children outwitted evil and/or clueless adults.  I’d go so far as to say I lived to read those books.  And Jim Trelease’s son was certainly eager to read them, too.  Because kids crave this message.  They need to hear it, whether the people in Stafford County, Virginia, like it or not - that people, even very young people, possess the wit and courage to triumph over injustice, oppression, and peach-eating sharks.

When you were a child, which books empowered you to believe you just might be able to make it, even if your parents fell victim to an enormous angry rhinoceros?  Along with James and the Giant Peach, some of my favorites were The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (no, the protagonists of these books are not orphaned, but they are on their own in Victorian England and New York City, respectively - close enough).

Submitted by Heidi

I first read this book at least 10 years ago, and there is a funny story that starts it made so even more by the fact that it’s on this list. My 84-year old aunt read this book and then lost it. Could NOT find it. Was DESPERATE to find it again because she enjoyed it so. We searched for it for a year or two, and then after hearing her wax lyrical about it over several coffees (believe me, I knew the story by heart then) I came across this Follett book and while reading the back cover, thought YUREKA! and took it to my sweet aunt and she thus confirmed it....THIS WAS THE BOOK!

Well, after all the fanfare, I set about reading the book with great enthusiasm and was not disappointed. At the time I was in my late 20’s, a die-hard mystery, detective, espionage reader, having sort of drifted out of romances through college. I mean, wouldn’t night after night being pawed by drunken college fraternity boys in dank, beer-smelling bars put you off romance too?

But this book, with it’s tales of ribaldry and romance...errrr, early English architecture and the feudal system with knights and the monarchy and the CHURCH with all it’s pomp and circumstance, was captivating. It really was. Follett was a master of drawing you into the rich characters and the satisfying storyline. I really enjoyed it. It was so different from what he normally wrote, but it was GREAT!

Okay, the only ooookey part that I hold against it now, since I have nursed 3 children, is that when they deliver the baby at the beginning of the book and then nurse the baby at the mother’s breast---there would NOT be breast milk there, sorry Ken. Look it up. Milk does not come in until the 3rd day or so. Ask my hungry bruiser babies who chewed my nipples off.

What any person could have against this book PILLARS OF THE EARTH is beyond me. My 84-year old AUNT and 86-year old UNCLE liked it and found nothing insulting about it. My aunt was buying copies for all of her old friends, for crying out loud. Will they ban the bible next because it discusses nudity? I can remember being a child and asking my mother how someone impregnated someone else when I was reading my “children’s bible” and she said the sperm got into the lady and I asked “How, did they crawl across the sheet?” and my mom, paragon of help that she was, just made a vague wave and left the room clutching her side and then I heard her thru the bathroom vent that night guffawing her head off about it with my dad. I never asked her anything again. Thank goodness someone drew that anatomically correct drawing on the back of the stadium bathrooms in 5th grade or I’d never have found out. ~sigh~

Submitted by Christine

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has been challenged for the sexual content (some of it creepy) and references to suicide (who would want to live in this world?)

It is a dystopian novel set in Gilead, the former USA. Congress has been murdered, the constitution thrown out, by religious zealots. Women no longer have any rights, even reading is forbidden. The current government has divided women into groups. The Wives are the wives of the elite, Marthas, the maids, and Handmaids are for breeding. Pollution of the planet has caused high rates of infertility and birth defects. Young women, especially mothers, are prized for their fertility, and are held captive by elite males hoping to have children. But it’s worse to be an Unwoman, either old or infertile, who end up working in “The Colonies” disposing of bodies or toxic waste. Living in this horrifying world is Offred.

Offred is a Handmaid, it is her tale. She tells of her life before the coup, with a husband, a daughter, a mother and a career. She relives the night she was captured and her retraining at the Red Center. This is her second try at being a Handmaiden, if she isn’t pregnant soon she fears what will happen to her.

It’s written like a diary, so we only know what Offred knows, which isn’t much, and we can only speculate if what she sees and hears is truth or rumour. There are many unknowns, even though Atwood does answer some later. We’re supposed to question how this happened and could it happen to us. Of course, all over the world things like this have happened and will happen again. It scares me to think you could wake up and suddenly you are without rights, hardly even human. Atwood seems to say that this has happened slowly over time, with hardly anyone noticing at first, then it’s too late to do anything about it.

This novel was often hard to read, for me especially when she talked about her child, who was the same age as my child when she was taken from her. It often felt hopeless and full of despair. The women’s own attitude towards each other was also aggravating. They were hostile to one another, blaming each other for their situation instead of banding together. Still, the writing was engaging and poetic.

For me, I can say that this book will stay with me for a while. I know I will see echoes of it on the news and in the newspapers. I will think about it when I go to the store, put on lipstick, hug my kid, read a book…

Featured on Wonkette: How to get people to read something called Evaluating a Decade of World Bank Gender Policy.

(Thanks to David for the link.)

The picture is too good not to share, so here it is again in technicolor glory:

Sarah and I literally laughed until we cried. And we thought the Search Inside Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s Pants was, uh, loaded.

Look at her! She’s so cute! So happy! So eager to leap out of the burlap vagina!

And since I’m an evil, evil bitch, I immediately started thinking of LOLcaptions:

I’M IN UR VAG POLITISIZING UR WRLD BANKX

My Patriarchy, Let Me Show You Them

I Can Has Micro-Loan?

If you’re similarly evilly inclined, post your best, ahem, shots in the comments.

Submitted by Elyssa

Forget Jerry Springer.  With family issues, cross-dressing, and a touch of homoeroticism, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an engaging, first person point-of-view set during the Civil War-era.  Considered a “Great American Novel” and one of the first to use common-day vernacular, Huck Finn has been highly contested novel, resulting in its current #4 slot on the Banned Books List. 

Huck Finn is our narrator, the typical misunderstood bad boy, living with two older women.  Until his alcoholic, abusive father returns, kidnapping Huck to his place in the woods.  In order to escape his father, Huck fakes his own death, taking a raft to a nearby island.  There he meets Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave, who explains why he needs to make it North––he was going to be sold and separated from his family.  Deciding to see if the situation is as precarious as it seems, Huck goes into town––dressed as a girl.  There he finds out that his “death” has made the rounds, but also Jim and Huck’s father are suspects.  At that moment, Huck decides to help Jim become free.

Faster then you can say “Brokeback Mountain,” Huck and Jim hop on a raft on the Mississippi River.  Even though you get the sense Jim loves Huck, it’s an interesting dynamic since they are of different races and power.  Jim has to agree with Huck’s decisions because Huck is white while he is a runaway slave.  In one pivotal scene, a dense fog separates them; afterwards, Huck plays a trick on Jim, convincing him it’s all a dream.  When the truth comes out, Jim’s disappointment makes Huck see Jim as a person and not as a “slave.” Saving Jim now becomes a very real thing, and not just some adventure. 

Unfortunately, they end up not going North but deeper into Southern territory.  After a steamship overrides them, Jim and Huck are yet again separated, and Huck lands on shore, meeting the Grangerfords who have a long-standing feud with a neighboring family.  When a mini-war breaks out due to an elopement between the two families, Huck makes his escape.  He reconnects with Jim, and they come across two con artists, the Dauphin and the Duke.  The two men include Huck and Jim on their schemes; however, the Dauphin captures Jim, getting the reward money.

Huck discovers that Silas Phelps, Tom Sawyer’s uncle, has him.  Tom’s aunt mistakes Huck for Tom.  When Tom actually appears, he pretends to be a cousin and convinces Jim and Huck to an elaborate escape plan––one that fails, resulting in their capture.  A whole mess of secrets comes out: Aunt Polly (a different Tom Sawyer aunt) reveals who Tom and Huck are; Tom reveals Jim has been free this whole time (Miss Watson’s died); Jim reveals that Huck’s father is dead.  Knowing he doesn’t want to be civilized and tamed, Huck decides to head West. 

Bitchery reader Natalie writes:

I am hoping that somewhere in someone’s brain, that they know the book I am about to describe.

I read it in the late 1980’s and it was a series book (either Harlequin or Silhouette). The heroine of the story’s best friend has just died and said best friend left orders that the heroine go through the crap in the attic and decide what to toss and what to keep.

The heroine is reluctant to do this because once upon a time ago, she and the hero (who married the best friend) had a tempetous affair.  Of course she goes and tries to ignore studly hero while also befriending the hero and best friend’s son.

Of course they end up jumping into bed together and before anyone can blink, there’s a knock on the door. You guessed it, secret baby plot! Secret baby is now a teen (I think his name is Tyler) and angry and sullen. Of course, the hero figures out it’s his kid in like two seconds and chaos ensues for a brief while.

The hero and heroine eventually get married and I think there was snorkeling or scuba diving on their honeymoon. (There’s more to the honeymoon, but I can’t really remember what).

They settle back home and she returns to the attic and finds a letter from the best friend saying basically that she didn’t really care what happened to her stuff, she just used it as an excuse to bring the heroine there. She goes on to write that she knew something had happened between the heroine and the hero and gives them her blessing to be together.

Does this sound familiar at all?

Submitted by Danielle (aka GaiaGrrl)

Bio: Danielle (aka GaiaGrrl) is a High School teacher in the city of Boston.  She has taught English for 7 years, during which she has encouraged her students to read as many banned books as possible, and to think independently.  She prides herself on having taught over 20 books on the banned book list.  She is also a mom-to-be, and looks forward to similarly corrupting the future youth of our society.

I first encountered the story of The Handmaid’s Tale while channel surfing by HBO.  Though the movie was not terribly good, (Aidan Quinn was still delectable, however) it teased me with glimpses of a frightening future.  When I read Atwood’s novel, I was simultaneously chilled and fascinated.  Atwood’s writing transformed my familiar Cambridge, MA landscape into a place where the a woman’s sexual identity determined her fate.

The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the not-very-distant future in Harvard Square, Massachusetts.  Atwood paints a future where infertility plagues the majority of the world.  A women’s role is determined by her class, race, and her ability to produce children.  As religious wars rage throughout the country, fertile women are trained in camps (set up in defunct buildings of Harvard University).  These women are stripped of their identities, dressed in red, and called “Handmaiden’s”.  Rich government officials are given these handmaiden’s to bear children for them, and then they are moved on to the next family.  The narrator of this novel is a Handmaiden renamed Offred (because she is given to a man named Fred.) We join Offred’s tale as she joins her first household, and the history leading up to this event is told in a series of flashbacks, spurred on my memories that are activated by the new world in which she finds herself.  It’s a gripping narrative that provides more questions than answers.

Last summer I picked this novel up to re-read it.  I was astounded by the similarities in the future it described, and the present in which we were living.  Offred’s awareness of herself as a narrator of a tale made me feel as if she were writing this as a warning to all women, and I found myself with a deeper understanding of her pain and struggles.  I decided to teach it to my junior class this year, and it made them think about issues they had never really considered before.  As a class we created a timeline of the fictional events leading up to the creation of Handmaids, only to discover that our actual society had already progressed more than halfway through these events.  The fictional shooting in the government that led to a suspension of the constitution paralleled 9/11 and the Patriot Act.  From there, the steps to Atwood’s future are few and easy to imagine.  (I knew that this book had broken through to my students when a group of boys and girls came to my room at lunch to talk about it with eachother.)

The best thing about Atwood’s tale is that there are no easy answers.  Though we can see the harm that religious zealots to do women, we can also see the foibles of 70’s feminists who censored our sexual freedoms.  What is a community of women?  Can there be freedom without equality?  These questions will run through your mind, and you will find yourself wishing everyone read this book so that they asked these questions as well.  I look forward to making more students do just that!

Thanks to Fabulous V. & ever-fab Jezebel, I have a link to a Daily Mail article about how much man-cleavage (or “he-vage") is enough. Now, on a romance cover? You bare it all, baby, yeah!

But an actual person? Not sure. I see plenty of he-vage that I could live without in the summer thanks to pectoraly men in tank tops and chains. And if you ask me, David Beckham looks like he’s channeling an elf in the picture in the article and not so much like a sex god. But it’s more the hair and ethereal glow that’s odd rather than any chesty pecs.

So how much man-valley do you like to see on actual men? 

Submitted by Iffygenia

Bio: Call me Iffygenia. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having few books left on my pile, and nothing particular to interest me at work, I thought I would surf about a little and dip my toe into the deep waters of the blogs.” - Moby-Dick

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A feminist-intellectualist-romanticist-historicist-deconstructivist-takingthepiss reading

After the brainwashing, we knew our purpose; we were docile, compliant, content in our sphere.  No messy choosing of mates, no fumbling to learn an occupation. We alone had been plucked from the darkness, perfected, molded in a form of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning’s choosing.

We took our soma, a pacifier, a crutch in our pursuit of cheerful perfection.  Our fertility was strictly regulated; we were hatched from bottles, bokanovskified, each ovum replicated with meat-cleaver precision into 96 small monuments to progress.  We were decanted in perfect proportion to society’s needs: one-ninth Alphas, eight-ninths a mixture of Betas, Gammas, and Deltas conditioned to despise books and nature, and enough khaki-garbed Epsilon Semi-Morons for factory work.

One day we became aware of Outsiders and Savages.  Something stirred in us.  We, a few of us, came to question whether brainwashing was the only way.  We demanded choices, not knowing what we would choose.

Some returned to primitive ways, seeking answers in nature.  (A few even, it was rumored, investigated arcane practices of sexuality and viviparous childbirth).  Some rejected nature, seeking to reform the system from within.  We hoped to retrain the Hatcheries and modernize conditioning; we tried to embarrass the Director with proof of his old-fashioned ways.  We rejected the old, forgetting that Civilization loves stability.  We tried to convince others through persuasion, then through example, then through spectacle.

Some of our small number began to question.  Had we triumphed over brainwashing, only to succumb to a subtler but still forcible conditioning?  Was it Civilization that accepted this conditioning on our behalf, or were we complicit in our own homogenization?  Was so-called natural Savagery the answer? Or did the solution lie in the flight from nature, the grooming of our kind to emulate the plastic intelligences of the future?

More choices brought more conflict.  Predestination had been easier.  Some of us found the Savagery of the new naturalism terrifying.  Some demanded to be returned to the Hatcheries, reconditioned, slotted back into their familiar roles and castes.  Some reclaimed forcible conditioning as a choice, even a pleasure.

The dissonances of these demands strained our determination.  We knew by now that we must all choose one path, that we must conform; for more choices had not led to more happiness.  We persuaded, we led by example, we created spectacles.  We worked on each other as we had worked against conditioning.  We returned to the doctors we had discarded; we asked the state to subsidize our soma prescriptions.

We, the larger Civilization, set limits on art, science, religion, and philosophy.  We sought stability and mindlessness as a remedy for choice.  We exiled our greatest intellects to islands.  Some went willingly; some, threatened with isolation, chose conformity.  A few of our small group gave up on Civilization and chose the isolated life of the contemplative.  Some of these contemplatives became items of curiosity, like animals at the zoo.  We hope some of the few thrived; we know that one despaired.