I raised three daughters who spent their childhoods reading Harry Potter. So I had never encountered the Nancy Drew mysteries until Malcolm, my seven-year-old son, received a copy of one in a bookstore earlier this year. Apparently, Nancy Drew wasn’t selling, so to spark interest the store was giving away The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in the series, with purchase of any two children’s books. The story, to me, was rather predictable, and Nancy Drew, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do attorney, was so wholesome as to be unbelievable. But my son loved the book.
Malcolm got hooked on Nancy Drew mysteries; before two months passed he had burned through five of them and was begging for number six. Now any time we go to a library or bookstore, he bolts for the Nancy Drew section, which is easy to locate: The original fifty-six titles, with their bright yellow spines, blaze a four-foot stripe across the shelves of the children’s section. But even though the series has been in print continuously since 1930, having sold more than eighty million volumes worldwide, these days the once popular collection’s bright hue has been dulled by the dust of disinterest.
According to Carol Dosse, a children’s librarian at the Minneapolis Central Library, girls—the books’ primary readership—are no longer captivated by the teen sleuth. “Girls are savvier now than when Nancy Drew was written, and they’re looking for something more contemporary to their world.”
Nancy Drew was the brainchild of Edward Stratemeyer, a book publisher who originally conceived the series to appeal to young adult readers. But as years passed, children apparently became more sophisticated; today, seven-year-olds like Malcolm can easily consume the 180-some-page novels. It’s not surprising, then, that teenage girls have lost interest in Nancy Drew. What’s popular today is R-rated fiction like the Gossip Girls series, by Cecily von Ziegesar, which Dosse said is “big with girls as young as fifth grade.” Gossip Girls are affluent teens who “live in gorgeous apartments, go to exclusive private schools, and make Manhattan their own personal playground,” as the jacket copy says. Here’s a taste from the opening pages of You Know You Love Me: A Gossip Girl Novel.
“To my Blair Bear,” Mr. Harold Waldorf, Esq. said, raising his glass of champagne to clink it against Blair’s. “You’re still my little girl even though you wear leather pants and have a hunky boyfriend.” He flashed a suntanned smile at Nate Archibald, who was seated beside Blair at the small restaurant table … Blair Waldorf reached under the tablecloth and squeezed Nate’s knee. The candlelight was making her horny. If only Daddy knew what we’re planning to do after this, she thought giddily. She clinked glasses with her father and took a giant gulp of champagne.
What does it say about girl culture today that young women are shunning the long-popular Nancy Drew and pushing sales of books like Gossip Girls through the roof?
Julie Schumacher has cracked the bindings on her teenaged daughters’ books and, given the choice, would prefer them to read fiction with “unsexualized” characters like Nancy Drew. A creative writing professor at the University of Minnesota and the author of three young adult novels, Schumacher believes that pop culture is feeding a particularly insidious message to girls: “‘I can act like an idiot, I can dress like a slut, but I can still have self-worth and be an admirable person,’” as she sums it up. “It’s a recipe that doesn’t sit well with me.”
Andrew Fleming agrees—which is, in large part, why the screenwriter and director’s latest movie is a new adaptation of a Nancy Drew tale (in theaters June 15). “I’m troubled by the princess culture I see among girls,” he says. “There’s this idea that if you put on a provocative outfit then you’re entitled to act like a diva. There’s a lack of politeness, kindness, and consideration. I don’t think girls are given credit for being smart, brave, and strong. Nancy Drew was all of these.”
When Fleming criticizes the way girls behave in 2007, he is also criticizing himself. In the early ’90s, he wrote and directed The Craft, a film about four teen social outcasts who realize their innate feminine power through the practice of witchcraft. While using both magic and sexuality to manipulate their schoolmates and drive boys insane with desire, they also transform their wardrobes, from Catholic school uniforms to miniskirts, thigh-highs, and see-through blouses.
For Fleming, those characters were a way to liberate girls who, at the time, he says “were being kept in a cultural box and told, ‘This is the way you’re supposed to behave.’” Eleven years after The Craft, Fleming sees some of the worst aspects of his characters playing out in the mainstream, and he’s resurrected Nancy Drew to confront them. Rather than reinvent the young sleuth for twenty-first-century moviegoers, Fleming opted to pluck the original version out of the 1930s and plunk her down in modern-day Los Angeles.
“What if Nancy Drew existed in the present? How would she fit in? Because she dresses demurely, and she’s organized, polite, and an achiever, she would seem like a freak. I think it’s time to reconsider how girls—and boys, really—have no rules anymore. Ultimately, there’s such a focus on style, how you roll, and what you wear—Nancy doesn’t really care about that stuff. She’s focused on helping people and getting to the bottom of the mystery,” Fleming said.
Once I started reading Nancy Drew to my son I began noticing her everywhere: a new computer game on the shelves at Target; Nancy Drew websites; collectors posting on eBay for rare editions of the books; a trailer for the new movie on the internet. Somehow, for an archaic character, she remains very popular. But having read more than a handful of Nancy Drew mysteries, something in the trailer disturbed me about the way she was portrayed by actress Emma Roberts: This Nancy Drew seemed uncertain, unintelligent, and boy-crazy—qualities opposite to those the original Nancy Drew possessed.
According to Fleming, the trailer for his movie is deceiving. If Nancy appeared ditzy and boy-crazy, he said, it was due to clever editing by the studio’s marketing department. Fleming said he met with “every girl in Hollywood” and chose Emma Roberts (Julia Roberts’s niece), because she “is very intelligent, and Nancy is very intelligent, and you can’t fake that.” Even so, Fleming’s studio bosses felt that girls would be more attracted to a movie with a stupid, sexualized Nancy Drew than a smart, modest one.
A recent study backs up Fleming’s assessment of the “mean girls” phenomena (to borrow the title of another movie about girl culture), and the idea that Nancy Drew would find her teenaged peers in today’s L.A. much less empathetic and more egotistical than in her time. As part of the study—discussed in the newly published Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before—1.3 million teenagers participated in a survey called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; the resulting data showed that young people today are more self-centered than any previous generation. The researchers say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, thirty percent more than in 1982.
The experience of Dr. Mary Ann VerSteeg Halbert, a Minneapolis-based psychologist, bears that out. “I’m seeing many more girls these days who cannot feel empathy; they cannot walk in somebody else’s shoes. People around them—teachers, parents, friends—feel as if they’re being sucked dry. These girls make poor friends because they demand all the attention.” Asked about a possible comeback for the once-popular girl detective, she added, “We need Nancy Drew as a model for girls in our society, if for no other reason than she has respect for others.” It’s generally acknowledged in psychiatric literature that some three-quarters of narcissists are men; after all, we tend to accept self-centeredness as a normal masculine feature. But what happens to individuals and the larger community when more women—the traditional nurturers—become narcissistic?
Researchers offer a host of reasons for this rash of narcissism, including the sexualization of women in media, and both overly nurturing parenting (the self-esteem movement run amok), and neglectful parenting. VerSteeg Halbert sees another possible connection: “I think the mothers of today’s teenage girls, in their fight for equality, had to throw away some of their nurturing side and say—as we are used to hearing from men—that it’s all about me. I wonder if we took it too far?”
Jennifer Baumgardner was in her late twenties when she wrote the best-selling Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. She believes society expects too much of young women, and that it’s time to stop judging girls for “reveling in their youthful sexuality.” For example, she says Paris Hilton is much more than a narcissistic sex object. “[She] has built a global brand around her image, which means she’s a good businesswoman. Before people judge her they should keep in mind that she’s still in her twenties. It takes time to discover a larger purpose in life. Girls are judged all the time for being under-evolved.”
Still, even Baumgardner concedes that a “resurgence of Nancy Drew” would offer a positive alternative to the choices for role models. “She was so wholesome, so nonsexualized. She would be the kind of example that isn’t currently part of the cultural agenda. I think every girl would benefit from seeing this kind of representation.”
In ten years Malcolm will be old enough to attend prom, and I wonder what his evening could be like if his date is one of these newbie narcissists. Would he appreciate how his date revels in her youthful sexuality, or would he be stuck on the sidelines while she spends the night freaking on the dance floor to capture the attention of every other guy? Given this possibility, I have two hopes for my son’s romantic life: that he become a callous young man, or that he hook up with a girl like Nancy Drew.