Sometimes, as I am writing I come across one of those questions that is so loaded as to derail my intentions for everything I am doing. Today, the question has a lot of “conditionals” to it, so I figured I would toss it out there and ask the masses what they think.
Question: How young is “too young” for a female lead in a comic, movie, story, etc?
To start, I think underage sex is one of the worst things in the world. Sure, I did it (as the underage one), but I was also young and foolish. Now I’m a little older, and hopefully a little wiser. Despite all that, I still consider underage sex to be a terror in our world, and I would never write it into a story. I am sure I hear the sound of doors closing, even now. Ah, well. The truth is, I see no point in writing sexual contact of any type (oral, anal, vaginal, fetish, whatever…) with a character that is under 18.
At the same time, we have to consider our stories can be read internationally, and 18 is almost solely an American standard for that kind of thing. In a lot of other countries, teens are considered adult as young as 14, and on the average about 16. So, do we consider our global market, or the market in which we write? Anime and Special Interest stories have taught us that even though we might not agree with it, 14 is a fair age to show romance, up to and including sexual contact in some forms.
Now, before you start posting Pedo-bear images all over my site, understand I am not someone who would write something like that. Yet I find a very thin line between writing the actual event, and writing heavily implied or desired contact between characters.
The thing is, what if you are writing a coming of age story set in a mature and dark setting? Whether in a fantasy or medieval land, or perhaps a modern story in a country that does not frown on such a thing, do you make your protagonist lady under the age of 18? Does she still attend school, but has a growing desire to explore these feelings she has, and the dark stranger who appears in her bedroom at night gives off that “older but gentle teacher” vibe?
I kid, I kid.
But say your character is mid-teens, and she meets someone at a party or through a friend who is older (say, early 20’s), and the story progresses to the point where they end up in a compromising situation? Say it never actually leads to sex, but the sexual tension and desire is evident in the scene. Does that label the male, and thus the author (or even the reader) as some sort of pedophile for wanting to see where it goes? For that matter, doesn’t any show like the OC, or 90210, or any other teen-drama with sex included, do the same?
To be more specific…
The narrator of a story is a man of middle age. He is protecting the daughter of a woman he loved who has since died. The daughter is coming into an age where the powers of her mother are passing on to her. All she knows is this man keeps turning up in her life and saving her from danger. She imprints a bond with him, and it grows into something on her side resembling love. A moment comes when they are in a compromising position, and he rejects her, roughly. She feels ashamed, and angry. This fuels her betrayal of him to his enemies, and almost gets him killed. Towards the end, she realizes the truth of the matter and saves him.
Simple story, told a million times. They don’t have sex; in fact, other than sometimes seeing her mother in her, he rarely has an emotional attachment to her beyond fatherly. Does this situation seem better written with her as 18, 16, or even 14? Do we make the choice to write her as “an adult” to avoid backlash and ridicule regarding sexualizing a teen, or do we write it in a way that would be more believable to the setting? Say, if the powers she inherits come at a mid-puberty age and the big bads are trying to interrupt it before she fully gains her true strength?
Or, am I just trying to justify a cheesy gimmick?
One of the problems with writing this story is the amount of time between when her mother dies (when she is an infant) and the point where she begins to manifest. The other characters in the story, friends of her mother, are aging as the story progresses. Sure, the difference between 15 and 18 is relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time the difference between 38 and 41 can mean a lot for an adult.
Okay, enough rambling. I would like to hear what you think; do you agree that underage romance can still be an effective storytelling tool? Or, do you believe that romance should remain in the realm of adults to avoid crossing any sexualizing of teens or pedophilia lines?