I was wrong — it wasn’t easy to pick me out of the crowd after all. Some of the potential Queens of Teen had even come all in black, and it was an altogether friendly, sophisticated, jolly affair, not gratuitously sparkly, and with the greater part of the pink action restricted to cupcakes and petit fours, which is exactly where pink should live.
So the talented and delightful Cathy Cassidy is now officially Queen of Teen, and a fine queen she is too, despite a few crown-balancing issues. There were one or two tense moments, but Louise Rennison did not, as threatened, stage a punch-up when she didn’t win again. Along with the other eight worthy contestants, she accepted the voters’ decision with great good cheer.
A lovely afternoon, a triumph for reading, for cupcakes, and for the very articulate and enthusiastic girls who came along to cheer on their favourite writers.
Hail to Queen Cathy (and Prince Kelpie, right). Long may they reign.
Kelpie has eaten her tiara already… oops. Thanks Meg for your support and for being the best elf ever. Trust you to find a pic of me in pink, lol!
xxx
Turncoat.
It was good to see you there Meg. For me, the joy of books is and always will be, that there’s something for everyone, however they jacket them. Cathy X
Very true, Cathy, and yet certain things continue to bother me. Pornography, for one thing, which is the number one reason most people use the web, high heels (as I said) which cripple women in the cause of….of what? Plastic surgery, esp breast enlargements, talking down to kids, telling girls (no matter how subtly) that they’re not as good as boys or their job is to be decorative rather than smart. Despite the way a good number of people would like to pigeonhole me, I have no problem with pink covers on pink books. What I don’t like is the assumption that in order to sell stuff to girls you have to be pink and sparkly and trivial. (Which is also very outdated, given the vast proliferation of black and red covers. which don’t bother me at all.)
I don’t think the assumption is that in order to sell to girls you have to pink and sparkly or that a bit of glitter equates trivial on a book cover. I think, simply, some girls go through a phase when they like pink, they often grow out of it and repaint their bedroom and throw out their pink clothes but while it does appeal, some smart publishers use the colour to attract them in to read. And not that I’m particularly pro pink, but there are apparently 256 shades of it, maybe more.
I’m not going to go on with this discussion. I’ve been telling people I don’t mind the buggering colour till I’m blue in the face (see also the background to this blog). But somehow the discussion always manages to avoid the serious issues and get back to pink. Someone isn’t paying attention and I don’t think it’s me.