Girls in YA

If they didn't sell, they wouldn't be in fiction. The only way to change the climate of YA fiction targeted at girls is to change how young girls think of themselves.

Frail, clumsy girls become ballerinas later in the book because young girls view themselves as awkward and clumsy. The characters change because the reader wants to see them change in that way, because the readers want to see that change inside themselves.

MC loses logical function when they see a boy because young girls feel like they lose the ability to think around boys.

Maybe there's a way to change the psyche of young readers, but until that happens, people will write the tropes that sell copies of their books.

/r/books Thread