Whenever I see a girl reading a book with great interest, I make a point of finding out why she likes it. Now that I’m about to become a YA fiction author (more later) I’ve taken to reading some of the more popular series books I see on the store shelf, and asking girls what they think of them.

The teen ratings have varied from a shoulder shrug to a big smile, but check the sales lists in Publishers Weekly http://www.publishersweekly.com/ and you’ll often find the titles in the top ten.

In some ways, deservedly so. They are, for the most part, well written enough to amuse women of any age, if only for a bird’s eye view of adolescence. So on the “Entertainment” and “Engagement” scales, I would give many an “A+”

Where they fail short, IMHO, is the “Character” category. Glorifying girls who gossip, betray, and exclude others by virtue of being ultra rich, ultra beautiful, and ultra everything else earns several of those titles an “F” in my book. Not only do they teach girls new ways to hurt each other, they portray young women as unidimensionally mean.

When I speak publically or with a reporter, “Why?” is always a question: Why does RA occur? Why are women so hurtful to each other? Why would be so cruel to her peers?It’s hard to boil an answer down to just a few sentences, but maybe we should be asking, “Why not?” In a society saturated with messages that encourage adolescent girls to aggress, how can we expect them not to feel rewarded for bad behavior?