Why The CENSORED Wouldn't You Say CENSORED?

Let's just lay it out there: I swear like a sailor.

I'm totally capable of turning off the flow of four-letter words and inappropriate descriptions; I used to be a nanny, and my mother is far too Midwestern to let me get away with saying anything network TV wouldn't approve of, at least without me preemptively pardoning my French, or her post-emptively chastising my "language, Jilly"

Read: it's easier to just cut swears out of my discussions with my mom.

Barring those phone calls, I can express myself without any of my more colorful turns of phrase, of course...but why would I? Deployed correctly, they so perfectly capture not just what I mean, but how I feel about what I mean. Besides, I write comedy (among other things)--if the occasional swear offended me, or if I wasn't willing to push against at LEAST the "appropriate language" envelope, I might as well just give up now.

Or resign myself to the Reader's Digest jokes section, permanently.

A horse with BANGS? Now that's WACKADOODLE!!!!



This isn't a new development; though I was even more cautious around parentals at the time, my filthy mouth developed towards the end of middle school, and has since blossomed into a veritable font of inappropriateness.

According to many of the YA gatekeepers, however, this is not a fact of my own long-ago youth that should appear on the page.

And that's just the most anodyne of the many, MANY truths of being a teenager that are--according to some, at least--best left unwritten.

Let's lay another thing out: I made a lot of bad decisions during my actual YA years.

I got far too drunk on liquors I smuggled around in water bottles and poured out by the double-shot, got in cars I knew I shouldn't have (for a variety of reasons, including other people's proclivity to likewise drink too much "water"), smoked cigarettes (the best part is how I started, after years of breaking my sister's cigarettes in half on our drive to school: my new boyfriend smoked pot, I didn't want to smoke pot until I was a senior and colleges already had my transcripts, BUT I didn't want to look like some prude tool, so...yeah, teen logic sucks), and went to any number of questionable house parties/apartments after the show/cabins with boys I had met once/there are probably even more terrible decisions I made that I'm blocking now out of shame.

And I was still a "pretty good kid." No, honestly. I pulled great grades all through high school, maintained my anti-pot stance and my virginity (which, incidentally, isn't a "good" decision per se, since I don't think there's anything wrong with sex, provided you're ready for it; not losing it in circumstances I regret is the thing I did "right"), got into good schools, and escaped the whole thing mostly unscathed.

Yes, there are kids who were members in better standing of the Upright Citizens Brigade. Not every kid makes my specific bad decisions, and more power to them for that.

But many, many of them do. Many of them make far worse decisions than I ever did and still grow up to be functional human beings--even amazing ones.

Why aren't we supposed to depict those experiences honestly? Or, more accurately, why is doing so seen as taking a risk?

I understand the argument that presenting all these things as normal teen behavior in fact normal-izes the behaviors; if all your favorite characters in all the stories you read around age 13 drink and have sex, you might think that's "okay" to do, too.

But chances are you're going to do it anyway. Chances are even higher that you're encountering these things so frequently, in so many different forms, that simply admitting that teens get very, very drunk and then say "shit" in a work of YA literature is NOT going to be new information.

When you think about just the news--forget movies and TV, music videos, and twitter and think just about the news--which of these things would kids actually avoid?

Maybe the word "fuck," but do we REALLY believe that's the thing that's corrupting them?

We know "abstinence only" is the fastest way to get your kids pregnant; why do we think virgin books are the safest way to educate them about the world? And are we really serving young readers by showing them none of the mistakes they might wind up making...and therefore none of the consequences that can come from them?

Shouldn't books let them explore the world safely, not try to shelter them from it?

...and this, apparently, is why I'll only ever click with agents and editors willing to take on something "edgy."

Well isn't that just a shit pie?