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In my life, I have always strived to fit in as well as I can with pop culture and lifestyle norms of my social stratum (girls aged 14-18). I will try on your Ugg boots, I will drink your pumpkin spice and I will wear your leggings.
But here's the thing: Uggs are comfy as all hell, pumpkins are delicious and leggings allow me to feel like I'm not really wearing pants three out of the seven days of the week. I have to draw the line somewhere, and that line is a line of quality. It is a line that John Green crossed when he wrote the book "The Fault in Our Stars."
Allow me to explain: In my quest to find a common ground with my peers, I picked up "The Fault in Our Stars." What ensued was a typhoon of pretentious BS that I'm still left reeling from.
From the first moment I met the book's main character, I knew that I was destined to be utterly annoyed with Hazel Grace Lancaster. From her insistence on wearing Converse to her condescending attitude toward her mother, I couldn't help but experience flash backs to a mopey "emo" middle-schooler who "no one understands." I get that she has cancer, and that's terrible. Writing a character that has cancer does not give the author justification to write that same character as completely unrelatable and unpleasant. I mean, the only thing I could find even remotely relatable and un-hatable about this character is her love for "America's Next Top Model" (Smize with me, girl).
Hazel only gets worse when her cigarette-pretend-smoking, beefcake boyfriend Augustus comes onto the scene. As soon as Green describes Hazel's eye roll when he states his greatest fear to be "oblivion" in support group, you can just feel the forced chemistry between them. She thinks he's ridiculous, he thinks she's beautiful, and the story unfolds.
Things are pretty vanilla-angst-teen-romance for a while until Augustus gets in touch with Hazel's favorite author, Peter Van Houten, and decides to use his "cancer kid Wish" to take her to Amsterdam to meet Van Houten. They arrive and, surprise, surprise, Van Houten is a cranky, drunken jerk. But that won't put a damper on this vacation! Cue cheesy canal boat rides, fancy dinners complete with champagne and Dutch duck and, of course, make out sessions in a somber Holocaust memorial site. Don't worry about the eight people that were led out of that house to their eventual deaths, guys! They would want you to have this moment. Really.
So, in short: Stop wearing that "Okay? Okay." shirt. Stop making your Twitter bios that ridiculous quote about fathoming thoughts into constellations. And for the love of God, stop Instagramming pictures of Ansel Elgort for your #mcm. Read a real book. Please.
Commiserate with the reporter about two-dimensional characters at ezentner@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @emilymzentner
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