Janet B Taylor- Writer of YA/HisFic/Time Travel

What is a universal theme that all Teens through Time, all characters in YA Hisfic or YA Time Travel have in common?

“Issues” with their Parents.

That’s right. It doesn’t matter if we were born in medieval days, the Victorian era, or if we’re walking the earth today..There is something inside us all that–once we reach a certain age–makes us inherently want to rebel against the folks.

Things have changed over the years, believe it or not. Modern teens may think they have it rough. That they have little say in how they live their lives. But when we look at the kind of control parents once had over the lives of their young ones, kids today have it pretty easy.

Up until a relatively short time ago, parents made all life decisions for their children. Particularly their daughters. Sure, the sons may have been given freedom to take off on adventures. Go to University. Take fun vacations with their friends around the ‘continent.’ Boys could even decide to go to war–against the wishes of their parents–and their wasn’t much Mom and Dad could do about it.

For girls it was much different. Can you imagine? We of the X chromosome still had to OBEY. Totally and completely. From the time they we were born till the day our dads walked us down the aisle and “gave” us to another man, (sometimes against our wills) where we vowed to…you guessed it…OBEY him. (Who’s glad we removed that little clause out of modern wedding vows?)

*shudder* Can you imagine? Little to no freedom. Your entire life ruled by one man or another. It’s astonishing when you think about the fact that in the course of history, women have only gained a significant measure of freedom in the last century. And when I say ‘women,’ that freedom still didn’t apply to teenagers.

And maybe–in this day and age, and in most cases–that’s a good thing. For those of us who are “slightly” past the teenage years, we can look back on some of the decisions we wanted to make in those days and thank our lucky stars we had parents who said…. “NO WAY!”

Coming next week in Teens Through Time….BOYS.

Teens Through Time–Part 1 Fashion

OK. Raise your hand if your fave thing about historical fiction, YA Time Travel or YA Hisfic is imagining that you get to wear some of the freaky awesome hats?

Instead of “how low can you go” the theme during this time for headgear was…”how high can you fly”?

In my current WIP, the teens travel to different eras in time. Of course, one of the most important aspects of their prep is fashion. They have to be able to blend in. So….voila! COSTUMES!

What little girl doesn’t love to dress up like a princess? As I mentioned in the previous post, being an actual princess pretty much sucked. Oh sure, they had lots of cool gowns and accessories. But would having no choice in who you married be worth it? What if your parents foisted you off on some old geezer? It happened all too often, and only changed within the fairly recent past!! Think about that. Even Princess Diana of England was basically hand-picked by the royals and her folks to be the Princess of Wales. (And we all know how that turned out.)

Still… ahhhh the clothes.

If Time Travel were real, where would you go? Though I think it would “royally” blow to have to wear a corset, it might be worth it to wear such sumptuous gowns. Am I right, girls? For hundreds of years, from the time a girl was twelve or so, it was time to put away the relatively comfy kiddee clothes and make the transition to women’s garb. The first move was to cinch up into a corset.

The corset–by the way–has been around in one “shape” or another for over 500 years. If you’ll recall the shape of women’s garments around the time of Queen Elizabeth, the corset was used to flatten a woman’s shape, rather than accentuate curves. Shortly after the French Revolution, the corset went out of fashion, in favor of looser gowns that draped the body. That didn’t last long, however, and during Victorian times, the corset returned with a vengeance. I found a wonderful article on the history of corsets, from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. You can read it here.

I plan to send my “travelers” to all kinds of different eras in time. See if you can guess where, based on the pics below.