***Please be aware - this review contains SPOILERS!***
Rating: 3/5 stars
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We live in a world where there is a lot of pressure placed on women to dress a certain way, to achieve the perfect body. Celebrities are shamed in magazines for daring to go out in a bikini if they have cellulite, and teenagers and children are constantly bombarded with sexualised images - one only has to look at shows like Toddlers & Tiaras to see that this has become very controversial issue, and kids are having sex at younger and younger ages.
In addition, in Australia at least to some extent, we are dependent on the media for information about the world around us and what's acceptable and what's not. Government looks to the media as a guide to what issues are important to people. That's part of the way international movements like Kony 2012 were able to garner such a huge response so quickly. They used the media to draw attention and force governments to take notice of the issue they were promoting - not that this worked particularly well in Australia when push came to shove. Another example of expert media manipulation is the Liberal Parties 'STOP THE BOATS' line. Such a policy is simply fear mongering - seaborne asylum seekers represent such a low percentage of refugees and immigration in general that it should not be an issue for Australia today. But support from the media and the constant campaigning of the Liberal and National Parties made it a major issue.
But can we actually trust the media to present us with fact and not sensationalised sop? To refrain from engaging in unethical practices? Looking at events like the Murdoch phone hacking scandal...perhaps not.
Karr successfully shows us what a world where the media was corrupt and the government had that level of control over our lives would actually look like. The media in XVI is a powerful force of social control, subjugating women and teaching kids about the way they're expected to behave. People growing up in this society are raised with a barrage of propaganda. Little wonder Sandy acts the way she does, or Ed can hurt Ginnie without consequences.
Other reviewers have noted (nastily) that that alot of this book is really really critical of women - that you're either super conservative like Nina and denying yourself even basic school yard crushes or you're a whore. just because you want to look nice - that means that you're a slut.
HOWEVER I disagree - I think maybe the author was trying to show how living in such an extremist society would affect those raised within it. Nina is fighting so much with her sexual identity and what's expected of her, that between society in general, the nasty men she's met in her life and her family she has no room to accept herself as she is and the desires that come naturally. Not having sex doesn't have to mean that you don't have a boyfriend, or that you don't dress a little provocatively (or a lot if you want to) but in Nina's world there IS NO imbetween. Rape is almost expected - men have all the power really and in such a society dressing a little provocatively - the MEN in that situation can use that and be like... she wanted it. I was provoked. I couldn't control myself. they've been socialised to believe that those kind of responses are ok. So whilst we know that Sally isn't a slut - the way she dresses unjustly allows others to justify their own sick actions in the eyes of the law. It's wrong - but it's a symbol of the degradation of the society that Nina is living in.
At the end of the book Nina finds herself in a different environment to what she'd been in before. She was safe, the men in her life actually cared about her. She had a boyfriend who wasn't going to hurt her just coz she was 16 and he could, and the people that had terrorised her were no longer a threat. Her sexuality (and her life in general) was back in a domain where she had the control. She was empowered to be able to just be a teenager and have a boyfriend if she wanted to, to muck around and think dirty without someone threatening to take that away. I think at the end of the day the real message that could be taken from the death of Sandy is that when people don't have any options available to them, to make their lives better, to be the people they want to be then innocent people get hurt. At the end of the day Sandy didn't have many options to get out of a tough situation. She was reliant on Ed and others like him and that imbalance in power cost her her life
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