Guest Post by YA author Lauren McLaughlin, author of Cycler and (Re)Cycler

Let Your Jack Out:
Why Cycler and (Re)Cycler Are More Than Just Books About Gender-bending

by Lauren McLaughlin

When you decide to write a book about a girl who turns into a boy four days out of the month, there’s a lot that can go wrong. It would be easy to turn it into a mindless romp about how different boys and girls are (boring). You could play it strictly for laughs (funny perhaps, but still boring). You could have your protagonist exploit the possibilities for sexual adventure (getting warmer, but still not that interesting).

What I chose to do was to explore the limits of gender by creating a character who desperately wants to conform to society’s norms but simply can’t. There’s an air of desperation to Jill’s bid for femininity because it’s founded on a deep-seated insecurity. All she wants is to be “normal,” but her ideas about what constitutes normal come primarily from her mother, whose own attitudes about gender are summed up in a laughably sexist book called The Guide. That book is a satire of a real book called The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, and it exemplifies a popular and persistent strain of sexist thinking that, ironically, poses as female empowerment. Within this philosophy (if you can call it that) men are portrayed as dumb hunter-type beasts who need to be manipulated by clever women acting as prey. All women’s actions are supposed to be indirect and passive-seeming so that the big dumb man can feel like he’s in charge. There’s nothing new about this philosophy. Women have been manipulating men from a position of subordination for centuries. But why does it still appeal today? In my opinion, its endurance is a result of insecurity. There’s something comforting about putting people in boxes and drawing simple conclusions about them. You don’t have to deal with the messy complexity of individual personalities and desires. Plus you can blame all of your romantic disappointments on the opposite sex rather than exploring your own unique foibles and failings.

But gender isn’t the only box people get put into. And what I hoped with Cycler was that individual readers would see their own secret identities in Jack. The teen years are a time when personalities are in the process of being invented. A kid may be a goth this year, a jock next year, then graduate as captain of the math team. Until a certain degree of confidence is achieved, I think kids take comfort in conforming to a group, however narrowly that group is defined. But there are always kids who simply don’t fit in. This book is primarily for them. I wanted to show the psychological damage that can be done when you deny something essential about yourself in order to conform. In the end, whatever you deny will find a way to get out. And, more often than not, the thing you deny is a beautiful thing anyway. Maybe it’s a little embarrassing, a tad controversial, but, like Jack, it deserves to be free.

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Thank you, Lauren, for your thoughtful post.

You can follow Lauren on her blog tour as she answers more questions and guest blogs:
On November 15 at The Page Flipper

On November 17 at The Children’s Book Review

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To ask Lauren questions or to chat with other fans, you can visit Lauren on RandomBuzzer.com.

You can also check out Lauren’s website
and follow Lauren on Twitter.

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Check out Lauren’s book trailer for Cycler; I think it’s fantastic!

November 15th, 2009