Anne of Green Gables is a Redheaded Child Not a Blonde Playboy Centerfold

This is the new cover of Lucy Maud Montgomery's children's classic Anne of Green Gables. You remember Anne: a redheaded, 11 year old orphan who hates her hair and who is sent to live with Matthew and Marilla who wanted a boy; a girl who spends the first two books learning to love herself both as a female and one with a red hair. At least, it's been a while since I've read the book but I definitely remember Anne being a redhead and a child; not a retro-Playboy centrefold. I definitely don't remember Anne rolling about in a haystack like a supporting body in Dukes of Hazzard. Being 7 am, I have taken the liberty of checking with Wikipedia  to make sure I'm not completely out-to-lunch with this. They're pretty sure Anne is supposed to a redheaded child too. Now, I do know that Wikipedia isn't always the most accurate source of information but even they can't confuse a redheaded child with an 18 year blonde with breasts being posed in a sexualised manner.

Has it really come to the point that one of the best books written for girls by a brilliant author which has already sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into 20 languages needs to be repackaged as if the target audience is middle-aged men with a teenage girl sex fetish? Because, they've never struck me as the target audience for Anne of Green Gables. And, frankly, everything else in our culture is targeted at them. Why can't girls have one book that doesn't erase our lived experiences?

Why does everything have to reference a pornified, heteronormative sexuality?

Why do we assume young girls won't want to read a book about another young girl, especially since 50 million of us already have, if she isn't sexualised?

FFS, the whole point of Anne of Green Gables is learning to love ourselves even if we have freckles, red hair and aren't called Cordelia. It is not a book about a blond teenager learning to be a sex object. It's a book about a child discovering themselves and loving themselves.

This is precisely the kind of shit which evidences why porn culture is so insidious.

Anne should not pass the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. 

She is a child; to pretend otherwise is disgusting and creepy. 


This is the cover of the edition I have. Notice that Anne is both a redhead and a child; not a blonde woman being posed in a sexualised manner.

Plus, let's be totally honest here, there is NO WAY Marilla would let Anne prance about in a boy's shirt.

This is from the Mumsnet thread I started today. I thought it needed sharing:

FastidiaBlueberry Thu 07-Feb-13 12:04:17

Who is the publisher?

This really is pernicious and a brilliant example of porn culture.

Any child buying this book is receiving the message that being a girl means being sexy before being anything else. Even if the words in the book say something completely different and don't even talk about the need to be fuckable, the subliminal message is that even when you're busy doing other stuff, sexy is where it's at. If this goes on, it will almost be impossible to find pictures of female humans which don't emphasise their fuckability above every other aspect of them. Are we to look forward to a representation of Hermione Granger suggestively holding her wand in her mouth, or near her arse or something, a la 50 shades? WTF?

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea, is the publishing house full of child-molesters or something?

I mean seriously, what possesses an otherwise normal person, to imagine that the best representation of an 11 year old red-haired girl with freckles (something the book is very specific about) is a sexualised picture of a teenager? There's something actually quite sinister about this, what is wrong with the adults who authorised this cover? I really do think they should be forced to make a statement about why they felt it was appropriate to pornify the image of a child on a book whose target market is female children. It's beyond disgusting, it's actually amazing - as if peadophiles are working in the office and deciding the artwork and the normal adults there are accepting the paedophile view of the world, that every child is a potential fuck. 

And of course, we're all going to be told that we're overreacting, it's only a picture and it's fine for 8 year old girls to be brainwashed in this way.

FFS.

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Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel

I love Margaret Laurence. She's a brilliant but criminally under-rated Canadian author. As with most Canadians my generation, I first came across her work as a set text in high school. In my case, it was the short story collection A Bird in the House. It remains my favourite book by Laurence but The Stone Angel is a close second. 

The Stone Angel is set in the fictional town of Manawaka; as are A Jest of God, Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House and The Diviners. The Stone Angel is the life-story of 90 year old Hagar Shipley who tells it retrospectively whilst living in the house of her eldest son and his wife. Without giving away too much, The Stone Angel is basically about the choices and the consequence therein that women make, the relationship decisions that leave devastation in their wake, and growing old knowing the mistakes made caused those Hagar loved pain. 

Laurence's books are a must-read for everyone. All of her books centre around women. In many ways, they are a celebration of women; even when they are self-destructive or self-deluded. They are real, which in a culture which celebrates "reality TV" and "celeb culture, feels incredibly powerful and frightening.


My two favourite quotes: 

"Privacy is a privilege not granted to the aged or the young." 

"Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched."

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