Author Spotlight: 'American Voyeur' By Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Today’s Author Spotlight is on New York Times Magazine writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis (see our Friday Forum inspired by his piece on students coming out in middle school) and American Voyeur: Dispatches from the Far Reaches Of Modern Life, a collection of feature articles written for the Times and other publications.

The anthology is split into two sections—youth and sex—with stories that spotlight various subcultures under each label. As you’d imagine though, the two hardly remain mutually exclusive. Case in point, the 2004 cover story on hook-up culture, “Whatever Happened To Teen Romance?” which takes a pre-sexting look at the impact technology can have on teen sexuality. There, as with the broader snapshot Benoit paints of youth culture, it’s striking both how much has changed over the course of a decade, and also what teen truths do hold up against time.

American Voyeur is out in bookstores now, but we’re giving away free copies to the first three commenters who share a difference between teen culture 10 years ago and teen culture today.

Ypulse: How did you start writing about teens and why do you think you gravitate towards youth culture, in particular?

Benoit Denizet-Lewis: As I mention in the introduction, a good friend of mine actually said I dressed like I was still a teenager for much of my 20s. And in general, I’ve always appeared younger than I am. When I was 27, I looked like I was 19—so I’ve always had that advantage of looking younger (and some might say, acting younger) than others my age. A lot of editors probably came to me when they had a story that was related to young people because I could more easily immerse myself in their lives than a reporter who was 45 and already a dad. It was easy for me to hang out with a group of teenagers, and go to a party on a Friday night with them. It didn’t feel so awkward for them or for me.

I think I also gravitate toward writing about young people because I find adults to be much more guarded when they’re being written about. They throw a lot more bullshit at you. I find that writing about teens, in my experience, they’re much more open, much more willing to be themselves. They have fewer facades and there’s less difficulty in getting them to open up.

YP: In your introduction you talk about gravitating towards “people who are ignored, misunderstood, stereotyped or outside the mainstream.” How do you feel we as a society view teens today? How has the digital divide affected that?

BDL: I’m definitely not on the “youth” side of the digital divide. I’m 34 now, so I’m getting up there, and I feel more disconnected from teens now than I did 5-10 years ago. Whether it’s teens or adults, I’m really worried about us as a culture. We’re spending much of our days looking at screens. We just interact with screens all day long, and I don’t think that’s what we’re meant to be doing. I worry about kids who need to be distracted all of the time. That’s what these screens do. They distract us and give us a false sense of connection, when in reality we’re only truly connected to the screen. It was bad enough when we could only lock ourselves in our room and look at screens, but now we walk around with screens, too. It’s bizarre, and I would argue that none of this makes us happier.

In general, though, I’m less worried about teens than the parents who raise them. I’m always dumbfounded by how many parents are poorly equipped to do their jobs. Some just don’t care. Others do care but just don’t have the tools. To be a good parent, you have to have worked on yourself and have come to some understanding of yourself. If you haven’t worked on yourself, then you’re likely to repeat the mistakes your parents made without even realizing it. The bottom line is teenagers and kids need two things: 1) They need to be consistently told, and shown, that they are lovable just as they are. 2) They need parents who set consistent and sane limits.

YP: What was the most challenging aspect of immersing yourself so intimately with different groups of teens?

BDL: One of the challenges is that teenagers (like anyone) are known to exaggerate and hyperbolize. It’s sometimes difficult to take what they say at face value so you have to figure out, are they exaggerating this? Are they trying to look a certain way?

Emotionally, I had an incredibly challenging time writing two stories about young people that are in this collection. The first is about two young brothers who committed suicide. The second is about homeless gay teens in San Francisco. It’s hard not to feel the pain that the people you are writing about are feeling.

YP: Are there any topics or groups featured in “American Voyeur” that you’d like to revisit now that a few years have passed and certain aspects of modern life (i.e., “sexting” and hook up culture) have changed? Which ones and why?

BDL: I think the story that people ask me often to revisit is the piece I did about a transgendered middle school student who is biologically a girl but living as a boy in secret. I lost contact with him and I’d really like to follow up now. I heard from a teacher that he might be involved with gangs, which would be extremely sad.

I also wrote a “New York Times Magazine” cover story in 2005 about hooking up and “friends with benefits,” and the fact that few teens were really dating anymore. It was actually considered poor form to be dating someone from your school. I think now we’re seeing a slight reversal on that, with a little more dating.

YP: In your research with teens, what struck you as the biggest difference between adolescence now and when you were young? What are the advantages of growing up today? What, if any, are the disadvantages?

BDL: One of the biggest differences is how kids today are just growing up younger. They know more about a lot of things, including sex. For gay kids in particular, it’s totally different to grow up today. You can now go online and see that you’re not the only one in your position—you’re not the only gay kid in the world. You’re not doomed to a live of depression and unhappiness. Now, online or in popular culture, you can find images and information that refutes the lies and misinformation that your family, or the bully at school, might be saying to you—that you’re a bad person or you’ll never find love. I think the Internet has been an incredibly important tool to help those teens.

Kids in general definitely know more about sex than when I was growing up. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a great thing. I’m a proud Democrat, so I hate to sound like a conservative Republican when I say this, but here I go anyway: The number of kids growing up with unfettered access to internet pornography scares the hell out of me. There’s a big difference between doing what I and others in my generation did (discovering Playboy magazines under your dad’s bed) than what kids are doing today—looking at hardcore, degrading pornography online every night before going to bed. The brain of an 11- or 12-year-old is not equipped to see that stuff. I worry about how this will affect the sexual templates of these kids, especially those that are pre-puberty.

YP: Who should read American Voyeur? What do you hope they take away from the essays?

Well, I hope some teenagers read it. Do teenagers read anymore? Just kidding. Heck, they can even read it on a screen as long as they read it! =)

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