<![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon - Jezebel Comments]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon - Jezebel Comments]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @TeenageGangDeb (and everyone): It's actually a 'Middle Grade' book. Kid's books go: Picture Books (Good Night Moon, Where the Wild Things Are), I-Can-Read books (Frog and Toad, Francis), Chapter Books (Junie B. Jones, Sideways Stories) Middle Grade (Harriet the Spy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and YA (Weetzie Bat, My Darling My Hamburger)
Most of what we think of when we list are fave kid's books are Middle Grade books, geared towards fourth-seventh grade reading levels.

smoakes

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Dude, Ramona's first major book was Beezus and Ramona which was published in 1955, totally predating Harriet. (Not that Harriet the Spy wasn't awesome, I ate tomato sandwiches for awhile because of her). As a youngest (and maybe annoying) sister in the family, I totally related to Ramona more than any other children's heroine.

ramonaq

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Simon in The Wolves Chronicles (Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea...) is not a typical fictional boy--he wants to be a painter (!) and is quite protective of "brat" Dido Twite, who sort of saved his life in Black Hearts (yeah, I spent way too much of my life rereading those books)...

girlhowdy

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @edgyspice:
@funnyface: YES! I thought I was the only one who knew that book!!

This whole "wow, never knew Harriet was a lez" is getting annoying.
I liked the movie but it definitely had a different feel from the book. Sport was adorable though! Gregory something?

ChokingOnWhys

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> By god, I loved me some Ramona. I really need to find an iconic Ramona picture so I can get her tattooed on my bicep.

AnnieGetYourFun

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @trioxinaddict: I LOVED Free to Be You & Me, too!! I own the orig and the sequel for my little girl.

An informal poll of my friends and relatives though, has shown me that this was more popular in households with DAUGHTERS! No boys I know remember it at all. Even the ones raised in ostensibly feminist households!

My sister is totally guilty of this. She has even rejected our beloved Cricket magazines (and its preschool versions) as being "too feminine" for my nephew.

What happens to some smart women (ALL the ones I know) when they have sons?

Moimeme

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> There were some other brainy, inathletic boys in books I read...the little brother in A Wrinkle in Time, for example. Rarely anything more complex than that, though.

I absolutely agree with the point that little straight-identifying (?! whatever that means in childhood) boys do NOT have the freedom to explore their feminine side as girls (with decent parents) can feel free to explore all sides of themselves. In that regard, little girls have a huge advantage right now.

My 8 year old nephew considers even watching the Disney Channel (where boys SING and DANCE with regularity the atmosphere is not tough enough) to be unforgivably "GAY". And that is only the tip of his little iceberg of incipient manhood. I am working on him.

That said, all he does is play videogames and he could never handle dirt, worms and competitive sports the way my 4 year old daughter can, on top of her uber-girly pursuits.

What's to be done?

Moimeme

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: yeah, it ain't fuckin' rocket science. We get it.

StratfordX

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LvV: YES. yes yes yes. She would have been perfect. But what about Harriet herself? Michele Trachtenberg was just so not Harriet. I screamed at the TV every time an ad came on.

queensissy

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB:
I get it, and am "mostly straight, with bizebel leanings"

You explained it very well.

Abogada

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> The submit comment button is your friend, please read said post before you comment. Parsing said post and completely missing the point is not. /mini rant

But back to Jess's question: I don't really know of any such male characters only because I usually stuck to books with female protagonists outside of required school reading.

AnnoyingFemaleLeadVoiceover

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @bowlingfordollars: Seriously. This just wore me out. People just half read the story and didn't get the point. How hard is it to get that little lesbians-to-be identified with Harriett in a different way than little straight girls? I don't think any of us thought about her sexuality one way or the other when we were 10. Gah.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @lina_lamont: I really speaking more to the propensity for folks to stereotype lesbians and gay people. But I think you knew that.

ceejeemcbeegee

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: Seriously. Like, it's really no more complicated than that. Sheesh.

BowlingForDollars

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Going way back into pictue-book territory, there's "Frederick" (by Leo Lionni), the gentle, poetic mouse who doesn't help his brothers and sisters gather grain for the winter because he's too busy gathering sunbeams and the colors of summer for the cold, gray winter days ahead. When he will recite poetry to the betterment of all. I know a guy who told me he really related to Frederick as a kid. Now he has a full-time job though.

LisaMc

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LadyNo: There were lots of boy protagonists who kept to themselves, were more or less weak and just wanted to be left alone. Sometimes, like in Hatchet, say, they learn to be tough, and sometimes (Mixed Up Files was mentioned earlier) they don't bother. What's notable about them is not that they aren't masculine, but that they are so much like the kinds of wimpy young boys who just want to read and be left alone. (Yours truly, for instance.) It's only after we finish with sweet, slightly loserish protagonists that we move on to wanting to be Hemingway. Hyper masculine boys, meanwhile, don't usually read young adult books.

Toastgod

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: I am not a lesbian. I didn't know that Louise Fitzhugh or Sandra Scoppetone were lesbians.

I was, however, a late-blooming tomboy.

I always thought Harriet wold grow up to marry Sport.

So, in sum, you are quite right. I don't get it.

Rooo sez BISH PLZ

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @babzie: I'm not old, but I can remember reading that book. It was great, as in the characters were like real people rather then cardboard cut outs.

Dogtanian

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> This is absolutely my favourite book of all time. I never thought Harriet was a lesbian - it never really occurred to me to consider her sexuality. But I felt she was a lot like me.

peggynature

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I love Harriet the Spy. That is all.

katastic

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Romey, the middle child with three sisters in "Where the Lilies Bloom" is described as slight, bookish, and not very manly. Very cool character in a book full of them.

I believe Ramona made first appearances in the Beezus and Henry Huggins books of the 50s, before she got her own series to dominate. Love her.

LisaMc

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Oh, Ferdinand is the best. I heart Ferdinand so so so much.

SBJ

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Straight girls. Relax. We are not trying to take Harriet the Spy away from you. No one thinks you're a lesbian because you like Harriet the Spy. We're just saying that Harriet's author was a lesbian, and a lot of us identified with badass weirdo misfits like Harriet. No one's trying to make her gay any more than straight girls are trying to make her straight.

lina_lamont

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Robert Munsch is all over the genderbending childhoods.

[www.robertmunsch.com]

Most notably: Aaron's Hair

and

The Paper Bag Princess.

But these might be disqualified as they're for younger children. Not chapter books, but early reading/books for parents to read.

sventurata

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface:

Horning realized she was a lesbian.

Harriet is 11 and expresses the intention of marrying her best friend, Sport. However, her creator, Louise Fitzhugh, was a lesbian.

City_Dater

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @TeenageGangDeb: Getting it a little bit more - thanks for helping me understand. I'm thinking that could be equally true for girls who were just different, or didn't fit the girly mode, though, even if not gay? Feeling like a misfit is feeling like a misfit, any way you look at it, you know?

ItchykooParker

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @lolly71: ah, so it's poor syntax that's causing the confusion then. ok.

That_little_attention_whore

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ItchykooParker: I think it's like, Harriett is the closest thing to a child lesbian one could find in the children's section, y'know? And (like Peppermint Patty or something) that makes her ripe for embracement as an icon by lesbian circles. But being a gay icon doesn't mean straight girls can't identify with Harriet the Spy any more than it means dudely jock sports fans can't listen to Queen.

TeenageGangDeb

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: Ah! Now I'm understanding a little bit more.

ItchykooParker

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface: Girl With the Silver Eyes! Hell yeah!

edgyspice

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I just looked up Louise Fitzhugh on Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org] -- Fitzhugh was a lezebel, and given that many children's authors base stories on their own childhoods (Beverly Cleary's Ramona is another example of this), I think it's likely that was her intention for Harriet. According to Wikipedia, Fitzhugh also wrote a manuscript about two girls falling in love; it was never published and has since been lost.

That said, I am straight and loved this book as a child.

KittenFluff

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @sarrible: Yes, Ferdinand! He was sensitive and he really, really loved flowers.

hatepaperdoll

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I just want to know 1)why you're saying that, and 2) how you can know that?

ItchykooParker

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Christopher Robin was very gender-bending; gentle, sensitive, played with dolls...

Bellzaboo

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @hatepaperdoll: Christopher Robin was really quite gay.

Algren

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> And Lezebel Icon doesn't mean the icon is a lesbian, but rather an icon for lesbians.
Like Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand are gay icons.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Sorry, I meant that for everyone. Eloise (1955) absolutely pre-dated Harriet the Spy (1964). Attention Editors.

Algren

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @hatepaperdoll: FERDINAND!

sarrible

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @RemoteCommander: The Giver has been in development for years. It has a Harry Potter directly and I think at one point Jeff Bridges was involved.

sarrible

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @Miss Pelled: Eloise absolutely pre-dated Harriet.

Algren

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ineffable.me: Yeah, I was reaching with the Calvin. He wasn't exactly "gender-bending"

What about the bull who liked to smell flowers and didn't wan't to fight in the bull-ring? Does anyone else remember him?

Also, maybe, Christopher Robin?

hatepaperdoll

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Now that we're talking about children't books, my all-time favorites are Gerald McDermott's retellings of African and Pueblo tales in "Anansi the Spider," "Arrow to the Sun" and "The Magic Tree." His books gave me an appreciation for abstract art at a very young age (and possibly my love for the Helvetica type font).

Cam/ron

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ItchykooParker: That's what I'm saying...straight girls didn't identify with it in the same way lesbians did.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @TheGintheCity: strange. My parents did the same with me and my brother. But he no longer reads fiction, only non-fiction. I've never figured that out at all.

brendastarlet is on it

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I cannot believe Beverly Cleary will be 92 this year. I assumed she was Judy Blume's age.

I liked the Ramona books, although she was a brat. The books were written in the 70's, and as a kid I didn't get the references to "That's a spicy meatball!" or Flip Wilson's "the devil made me do it" catchphrase.

beatrice3000

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @lina_lamont: "I loved Harriet when I was a kid because she was so mean." Ha! Ditto.

scbelle

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @TeenageGangDeb: :D

LvV

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @lina_lamont: Whoa, I totally forgot that book until just now. It's, like, rushing back to me.

LadyNo Fondles Sweaters

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: It was one of my favorite books too, and I'm straight (but not narrow, as the trite quote goes). I don't recall Harriet crushing on anybody in the book? I loved her, because she was just herself. I don't think I thought one thought about her sexuality either way.

ItchykooParker

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ineffable.me: My little brother is a budding Calvin. I'm so proud and at the same time relieved that my mom has to deal with him and not ME!

lolly71

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Tangentially, my parents read to my brother and I every single day growing up. We'd all sit together and read the same books, and it was a really varied selection.
We've both grown into voracious readers, and his taste is really sophisticated--this is a 24-year-old kid who read both Infinite Jest and War and Peace in the past year--but he refuses to read books with female protagonists.
WTF? Isn't that weird?

TheGintheCity

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @zivah: I don't think anyone said that.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> On a side note: I love you all for reminding me of all of these books from my childhood. I can almost smell the library at my school. (and yes, that IS me cheesing out to the nostalgia of it all...)

scbelle

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LvV: MARY WORONOV SHOULD HAVE PLAYED OLE GOLLY.

Hi, you're my new best friend.

TeenageGangDeb

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @Cam/ron: I've got such a raging clue right now.

Lady Skittlehattington

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I LOVED Harriet. I think I read it maybe five times when I was a girl. I even made myself a replica of her spy tool belt. She validated all my spying on the world of adults and my private loathing of their their boring adult ways. Being a tomboy who doesn't want to "reform" doesn't make one a lezebel!

celibacyanyone

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I know -- people get so distracted by Marcie and Peppermint Patty that they're letting Sally Forth fly right under the radar

briardahl

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Wait - why was she iconic only for budding lesbian youths?

zivah

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ceejeemcbeegee:It's tucked into my socks!

GordonGartrell

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I loved Harriet when I was a kid because she was so mean. Learning that Fitzhugh was herself a lezebel just made things better. I remember way more tomboyish girl characters than their femmey brothers. I don't have any numbers or anything, but I think women are better represented in the children's publishing field, and people write about what they know. Badass girls grow up to be badass women who write about being badass little girls. Boys could use some more books about them that aren't about nature or war.

One of my favorite books when I was in middle school was Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, narrated by this super-smart, awkward fat swimmer kid who loves his bitchy best (female) friend, loves his mom, and spends debate class doing battle with his sworn enemy, a fundamentalist Christian. God, I loved that book.

lina_lamont

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @ceejeemcbeegee: Ha, you reminded me of that South Park episode where the Hardy Boys get homoerotic when they find a clue.

Cam/ron

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Harriet and Ramona rocked my childhood.

violetbeauregarde

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> For what it is worth, re: the confusion about who is a lez, I heard it on the radio this morning and it was very clear in that format.

Heidiismyrealname

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I always thought Ramona Quimby was a dumbass (although i read the ramona books repeatedly, i did so because i relished the fact that i felt ten times smarter than her even though we were the same age), but i liked the other Beverly Cleary books.

HootieHoo

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I never thought of Harriet as being a lesbian. It reminds me of how so many people claim that Marcie and Peppermint Patty are a lesbian couple.

Cam/ron

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time? He's sensitive and shy, his brothers always got in fights defending him at school.

LadyNo Fondles Sweaters

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I can't believe no one's mentioned the Hardy Boys... I mean, the name says it all...

ceejeemcbeegee

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> OK so I just read the NPR article. It is well-written and I have no issue with it except for the photo from the film version of Harriet. Which is a horrible, dumbed-down abomination.

MARY WORONOV SHOULD HAVE PLAYED OLE GOLLY.

LvV

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @brendastarlet: Yes! "Because flowers are ephemeral." Aw, now I want to read the whole book again...

Lux Lisbon

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> That boy in The Witches movie was way fem, no? I'm wondering if the book was the same?

MJones

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @GordonGartrell: I LOVE your screenname!

ceejeemcbeegee

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Was anybody else completely horrified by the casting for the film? I could never bring myself to watch it.

queensissy

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @dillitaunt: I was thinking about one of those, but surely the "lonerish" child protag is kind of a guyish set-up, no? Especially when it leads to escape into another world.* I think there's a split where girl protags tend to get put in a world of social relationships, where boy protags sometimes get to adventure without them.

*Yeah, there's a whole Alice tangent to go into here, but she's a whole other thing -- someone who acts as a total uninhibited child but mostly argues with dream-creatures about proper behavior and at one point fantasizes about buying shoes.

briardahl

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @TheGintheCity: I loved that book as well. There's a Mates of State song that says something like "It's my side of the mountain, my side of the bed." Always reminds me of Sam and his falcon-training.

LadyNo Fondles Sweaters

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: THANK YOU for clearing the Harriet = lezebel thang up. All this chatter about whether or not the heroine of a children's book is a lesbo was starting to annoy me.

Oh, this lack of clarification annoys: Harriet the Spy is not a YA book. YA = teenagers. Go Ask Alice, My Darling, My Hamburger, and Weetzie Bat are YA books. Harriet the Spy is a children's chapter book, like the Phantom Tollbooth, Ramona and her Mother, or James & the Giant Peach.

TeenageGangDeb

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> How about Jess from Bridge to Teribithia? Loved art, his best friend was a girl, had a kick-ass imagination, and he was kind to his little sister.

GordonGartrell

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LuxLisbon: ooooohhhhhhh. I had a boyfriend who gifted me with a copy in French -- he couldn't read it but he knew I could. Remember "We don't record flowers?"

brendastarlet is on it

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I am picking up my boxes of YA books this weekend from my parents because of you fucking dykes. Can't wait!

stacyinbean

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> What makes Harriet a lesbian? It's been a minutes since I've read that book... I can't recall any specific evidience of said fact.

Gah! Not every girl/woman who is assertive, self-assure, head-strong, and/or a tomboy who wears tattered jeans with disheveled hair is a lesbian! There are plenty of straight women with traditionally "masculine" qualities, and just as many lesbians with traditionally "feminine" qualities.

And fellas... Action Figures. are. dolls. They are smaller. They carry weapons. But they are still DOLLS!

ceejeemcbeegee

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @trioxinaddict: I am a HUGE fan of the tv special for "Free to Be You and Me"! My best friend from high school and I actually wore out her VHS copy and I bought her a DVD of it later on. I tried to get my BF to watch it with me a couple months ago, but he didn't flip out over it the way I always do.

Me: Look! William wants a doll, see? And his grandma buys him one because it's ok for a boy to pretend to have a baby and learn how to be a good dad himself!! Get it!?!

BF: Um, yeah.

atalanta

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> So, to be all meta-Jez right now, if you're teaching in a single-sex classroom, do you give your boys "Harriet the Spy?" What if you have a boy who isn't traditionally "boyish," as in, he doesn't play sports or jump in puddles or pull pigtails.

One of the great things about being a girl growing up is that I could always find heroines to identify with. Much harder for little boys, especially those who deviate from the norm.

not.a.clever.name

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Male protagonists in Bridge to Teribithia, the Phantom Tollbooth? Pretty quiet and lonerish.

I heard this on the way to work this morning and remembering the book was a great way to start Monday.

dillitaunt

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @brendastarlet: My boyfriend gave me a copy of The Little Prince when we first started dating. On the inside cover he wrote "for my rose [lux], the only rose in all the world." Love. The. Book.

Lux Lisbon

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> How about Peter from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing?

Lady Skittlehattington

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Well, Harriet's creator, Louise Fitzhugh, was a big ol' sapphist, so the inference is not totally out of left field. (Yes, I know, characters are differnet from their authors, etc.) Actually, L.F. collaborated with Sandra Scoppettone a lot at the beginning of S.S's career. I think they wrote Suzuki Beane together, but I could be wrong about that.

Anyone as near to fossil-age as I am remember a YA novel called "Tunes for a Small Harmonica"? There was a lot of gender talk in that one. Certianly the main character, but also her best friend's little brother.

babzie

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I was so into Harriet the Spy that I kept a little notebook with "observations" about the kids in my 4th grade class. I inevitably got caught and destroyed the evidence before anyone else got to read my thoughts on why Scott ate 2 packs of Gushers at Lunch everyday.

BeAgrestic

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Ya'll. The point is that young lesbians identified with Harriet...and in retrospect it seems that she probably grew up to be one.
If you aren't a lesbian, then you don't get it.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LuxieP: Yeah, I get that now. But at age 7 it was kind of just a focal point for my self-loathing.
Glad I read it though.

tiramisu

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I named my kitten Harriet after HMW. She's twelve now!

As for the boys, I always loved Victor from Lizard Music. Can't really go wrong with a little dude who idolizes Walter Cronkite, and D. Manus Pinkwater is the shizz.

LvV

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @exelizabeth: the giver is my favorite book of all time. i reread it as an adult at least once a year.

my roommate and i have serious plans to make millions by turning it into a movie, possibly starring the younger fanning as rosemary.

RemoteCommander

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @hatepaperdoll:

and since we know about Dumbledore, Neville is a good choice.

zoobabe

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I loooooooooooved this book and wanted Harriet's life.

vivresavie17

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @hatepaperdoll: aaah Calvin. but he was still a boy, just like, a weird boy who would grow up to listen to indie music and shit. hahaa

ineffable.me

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LizClara: Per the little prince: he's french. What can you expect?

Harriet rocks, lezebel or not.

scbelle

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I did just think of one gender reversal though--From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The details are a little fuzzy (ok really fuzzy) but I think in that book the girl spearheads the whole running away and living in the Met thing and drags her wimpy little brother along. Maybe kind of a stretch. But that book rules.

type_slowly

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> The grand problem with people's fretting over the protagonists of children's books as role models is that it kinda wants to normalize them into ideals and strip them of any character whatsoever -- something kids continually defy by liking characters who have STUFF going on, whether anyone else would deem it positive stuff or not. (The real ideal is that the protagonists of children's books might all be different: brave ones, naive ones, scamps, boyish, girlish, smart-aleck, earnest, whatever.) A lot of the boy protagonists I can think of who aren't "boyish" seem to be that way partly because they've been stripped of anything other than being models or vessels or ideals; they're polite and stand there and mostly get instructed, because whoever was writing them declined to give them any character beyond A Boy. (People rarely write A Girl in such a neutral position, because, you know, being A Girl is allegedly a quality that makes you behave certain ways.)

briardahl

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> How about Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain? (One of my favorite books of all time.) Yes it's billed as an "adventure" novel, and it's a pretty stereotypical bildungsroman, but the main character does nothing if not play house in a giant hickory tree for a year. I loved the descriptions of Sam sewing clothes out of deerhide, cooking frog legs, training his (female) falcon to hunt.

I recently wondered to my mother if there'd been any hint of homoeroticism in this book, but she reminded me that it was written in the 50s and it wouldn't have been appropriate for the professor character, who sleeps in Sam's tree when visiting, to be a woman.
Hm.

TheGintheCity

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Neville Longbottom, from Harry Potter: loves plants, is shy and well-meaning. Loves his grandmother.

Calvin, maybe? He prefered his imagination to organized sports, he was picked on at school. Loved his tiger.

hatepaperdoll

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LizClara: haha. well, that's a good way of putting it. It's my favorite book ever and now the little prince has a permanent home on my arm.

ineffable.me

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Encyclopedia Brown got picked on by other boys a lot, I think. But he was smart and solved mysteries, typical boy things.
I love Roald Dahl so effing much!

KnitSandwich

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @LizClara: The Little Prince always made me cry. I loved St. Exupery. His book "Night Flight" is poetry.

brendastarlet is on it

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I guess I didn't really read books about boys much, except Dahl's of course.
I think I read Harriet the Spy about 50 times...so good.

nats

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Um? Proof for lesbian allegation? I am totes in favor- just seem to have missed that news blast. I believe they mean that Horning realized she was a lesbian, not that Harriet did. The "like Harriet" business confuses it, but it's clearer in the NPR article.

eleanorstrousers

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @tiramisu: I don't think the point of the book was that she was SUPPOSED to be particularly likeable. Just real, and INTERESTING.

Bitter Poor

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: I'm straight, but damned if I didn't spend a lot of time toting around a notebook and spying on folks because of my love for Harriet. But I loved all the outcast-girl books, like "Matilda" and "The Girl with the Silver Eyes."

funnyface

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> they're not suggesting that Harriet was a lesbian, but that Horning the librarian IS and was inspired by Harriet. In"SPY"red even!

zoobabe

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I read Harriet the Spy like 14 years ago, and I still desperately want a dumbwaiter to hide in. I was always too paranoid to write things down like she did, but I wanted to be just like her, nevertheless.

janna

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> No sillys! The chick that is the librarian in Wisconsin is the lezebel! Re-read it again. It is not well written, but that Kathleen chick is the lesbian. Harriet never came out in the books.

badmutha

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @chunkymonkey: hugging other women with her legs in friendship

Damnit! Failure on my part

tastidelighttonight

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Anybody here read Free to Be You and Me as a kid? Pretty much every gender convention ever was squashed in that one.

Also, I idolized Harriet as a kid and was super-happy to catch their piece on her on NPR. More kids like Harriet and less Gossip Girls, please.

trioxinaddict

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Reading this book as a kid, the unlikeable aspects of the character made me really uncomfortable. Probably it was made worse by the fact that my name's Harriet, but I saw things I didn't like about myself in her and it made me sad.
So pretty much I was a weird kid.I think it's an amazing book though.

tiramisu

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface: Aww, I misread that at first too. But they're talking about Kathleen Horning, not Harriet.

Unrelated: isn't the point that it's ok for girls to want to be like boys because obv boys are higher status, but not vice-versa because femininity is lower status so boys aren't supposed to identity with it? That's what my women's studies and psych professors in college said, anyway...

special_boots

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I think Tennant-Moore is right. Charlie Bucket's character wasn't really defined by his gender but he wasn't overtly feminine either. It is way more acceptable for women to be masculine than for men to be feminine.

type_slowly

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface: It never said that, because that wasn't the point of the book. But if you ask a bunch of lezebels what their fave young adult book was, most of them say "Harriet The Spy".

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> The Little Prince was gender bending as they come...bellbottom jumpsuits, asymetrical spiky haircut ala Pete Wentz and Ferosha Coutura?

Whitney's Black Best Friend

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @BAngieB: hugging her legs with other women in friendship

Too much brilliance from that skit, I'm going to have to pace myself with my quotes

tastidelighttonight

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Didn't Avi write non-traditional male characters as well?

Bitter Poor

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @exelizabeth: But that passage says "like Harriet." So that implies that Harriet, too, is a lesbian.

funnyface

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Le Petit Prince?

ineffable.me

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> The lads in Eight Cousins could fling themselves a fine Highland fling. And Cousin Archie was particularly tender hearted and artistic. He was my favorite.

brendastarlet is on it

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface: The way that's written, I got the same thing. I think it's "like Harriet, Horning was a "tomboy who didn't want to reform, and later on, she (Horning) realized she was a lesbian."

lolly71

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> How did they decide Harriet was gay? She was eleven. Maybe they meant "weird-looking and sort of British"?

the.bleach

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Roald Dahl is the shit. I did a reading of "The Tummy Beast" for a performance some years back. However, I do think that his characters are not the norm. I also think that male young adult books are a woefully underserved area.

Scoregasm

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @funnyface: No, Kathleen Horning, the woman who was talking about Harriet is the lesbian. Yeah, I read that wrong at first too!

exelizabeth

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Hmmm... .I never liked this book. As I recall she seemed overly rude to "the help." Or maybe I just didn't like my heroines to be so neurotic.

BringBackTheBustle

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Louis Sachar was pretty good at turning stereotypes around. Weren't there some femmy boys in Wayside School?

the.bleach

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Roald Dahl.... you and Ralph Steadman are cordially invited to the Phonetic household for an evening of Pictionary and Round-Robin storytelling. I'll even supply the booze.

PhoneticLorin

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> @exelizabeth: Jonas, not Jonah. Woops.

exelizabeth

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> alls i remember is rosie o'donnel inthe movie version

nodoubt9203

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Wait...Harriet was a lezebel? How did I let that go sailing over my head? Well, I was nine years old at the time, so I guess things related to sex didn't really enter my brain yet. But, nonetheless I was probably slow on the uptake.

That_little_attention_whore

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> NPR SCOOP! Harriet the Spy: Fucking Dyke.

sybann

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I didn't read books about boys...but I hope Harriet is somewhere burning bright with sister fire.

BAngieB

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Um, how did I miss that Harriet is a lesbian? Does the book SAY she's a lesbian?

funnyface

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> Jonah, in The Giver, is very nurturing.

exelizabeth

]]> <![CDATA[<i>Harriet The Spy</i>: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon]]> I always thought Ramona predated Harriet. Must go research...

Also, he's not a literary character per se, but I always thought Linus from Peanuts was quite in touch with his feminine side.

Miss Pelled

]]>