{"id":446,"date":"2016-11-17T16:50:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T21:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=446"},"modified":"2016-11-17T16:50:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T21:50:18","slug":"development-and-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2016\/11\/17\/development-and-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Development and Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luna<\/em> and Boy Meets Boy<\/em>, in my opinion are more obviously different. I think that the main difference is the very different environments that the characters of each novel reside in. Boy Meets Boy <\/em>describes a utopia. Paul lives in a very accepting environment. His family knew when he was a young age that he was gay and they never challenged that or forced different ideals upon him. Where as for Luna, she grew up with a father that wanted her to be someone that she is not. He pushed Luna into playing baseball and other sports in order to morph her into a \u201cmasculine male.\u201d The role of stereotypes and gender norms is very different between the two novels. In Boy Meets Boy, <\/em>we see cheerleaders on motorcycles and a drag queen as the star quarterback. The \u201cnormal\u201d of Boy Meets Boy<\/em> would horrify the characters in Luna, an environment so set to sticking to the strict stereotypical gender norms. For Luna\u2019s birthday as a child she wanted dolls and a bra, and instead her family got her \u201cgender appropriate\u201d toys deemed for boys. Luna\u2019s parents don\u2019t even allow her to do any housework such as cooking or cleaning because of the feminine stereotype. They always have Reagan do it. This mindset is spread throughout all characters of the novel, outside of Luna\u2019s family. Luna was mocked and ridiculed at Reagan\u2019s slumber party by the girls because he liked having his nails painted. Also when Luna wants to try on women\u2019s clothes at the mall, she is given a look of disgust and is escorted out by security guards. An unexpected similarity that I saw between the two novels was the discussion of childhood. Each novel mentions childhood and child development. In Paul\u2019s case he always knew that he was different from other boys. He discovered that he was gay in kindergarten by reading a note written by his teacher. In Luna\u2019s case, she also knew she was always different from other boys. She had lots of friends who were girls, preferred pink, and other stereotypical \u201cfeminine\u201d things. I thought that it was interesting that both of these characters knew their true identity from a young age. This clearly is not the case for all members of the LGBTQ community. It makes me wonder if this is a common trend among young adult novels involving characters of the LGBTQ community. From these two novels, I am drawing the conclusion that young adult narratives focus on the struggle of expressing one\u2019s known identity as opposed to the struggle of discovering one\u2019s true identity. I would like to compare this to a novel where this is not the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luna and Boy Meets Boy, in my opinion are more obviously different. I think that the main difference is the very different environments that the characters of each novel reside in. Boy Meets Boy describes a utopia. Paul lives in a very accepting environment. His family knew when he was a young age that he … Continue reading Development and Environment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}