My letter

I wrote my letter to President Obama. I didn't really know who else to talk to and since he is pretty much the ultimate authority in our country I figured he would be as good a person to appeal to as any.

President Obama,
I am an avid reader. I love to pick up a new book and become immersed in new worlds, ideas and cultures. They are amazing stress reducers, educators, entertainers, and enlighteners. However, some books can be horribly misleading. There are no warnings, no ratings, and no information on the cover to convey the nature of the content within, I personally had the experience in high school of picking up a book I thought would be a simple adventure/love story. Little did I know that within the first twenty pages I would be exposed to sexually explicit literature. If I had known what lay in the pages ahead I would never have opened the book.

Many seen to believe that putting ratings on books is unconstitutional, hindering our freedom of speech. That this would be a form of censorship with the next step being to ban books altogether as in Nazi Germany. This viewpoint is not only extreme, it is ridiculous. Why is it ok for movies, video games, and TV shows to have ratings, but not books? Why are alcohol commercials prohibited during children programming and cigarette commercials banned, yet books remain untouched? Why is the written word held to such a higher standard and above all restrictions that other forms of media must be subjected to?

Rating may no be the answer. Books cover a wide range of genres, age groups, and subject matter which could make them difficult to categorize fairly. However, content warning messages would be an efficient and effective way of letting the public know exactly what to expect from the book. With simple messages of "contains explicit sexual content" or "high profanity" the average reader would be forewarned of what lies within the pages. Books would in no way be "censored", they would just reveal more about the subject material than the romanticized book summary found on the back or in the jacket cover.

Book are remarkable, but readers deserve to know exactly what they are getting in to before becoming invested in the story. These warnings would be a wonderful resource for parents, to help them know more about what their children are reading and if it is appropriate for them at that time in their lives. But this is not merely a way for parents to monitor their kids. Children, adolescents, and adults all have the right to know what is in books so they can make educated decisions about what they want to expose themselves to.

I personally want to know if the book I pick up contains gross amounts of profanity or sexual material. I do not want to waste my time reading a book only to have to stop half way through because of content I did not know would be present. I am not alone in this. Every person i have talked to, be it mothers, college students, working professionals, or high school students, have agreed that warning messages would be a wonderful thing to have on books. This is not the end of freedom of speech; it is simply enhancing the freedom of choice.