I’ve been reading romantic stories since childhood:
Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. I started on the ubiquitous
Harlequin romances in the 1970s. By the time I was fourteen, I’d figured out
the formula for a successful romance novel: boy meets girl; boy and girl hate
each other; boy manhandles girl; girl falls in love with boy; boy and girl get
married and live happily ever after.
I wasn’t sure that was an improvement upon the
damsel-in-distress scenario featured in fairytales and mythology.
In the 1980s, heroines in romance novels began to grow up.
They no longer aspired to grand career goals of serving as underpaid nannies to
wealthy widowers. They acquired post-secondary educations and found
professional employment. I’ve seen few romances about women in the skilled
trades, but doctors, lawyers, and business owners seemed an improvement over
uneducated 18-year-old girls who needed a rich man either to restore them to a
lifestyle they once enjoyed before their daddies went bankrupt or to lift them
from the lives of poverty into which they’d been born. These heroines might not
have been obscenely affluent, but they held their own in a man’s world. These
heroines served as role models of women who got it all: a great career,
husbands devoted to them, and, presumably, two-point-five children and a dog.
Heroes began to evolve, too. Not much, because women
continue to enjoy the fantasy of an alpha male who’s successful, confident, and
skilled in the bedroom. But those heroes began to see women as competent,
intelligent adults, not just soft, warm receptacles for their lust to be used
once and discarded like toilet paper.
Over the last ten to fifteen years, romance has been
backsliding. Sure, the Cinderella story remains popular. It always will. My own
books take full advantage of that. But somewhere along the line, up and coming
authors began to subscribe to old archetypes and to create new ones that really
don’t flatter their own gender:
●
The ingénue.
This is the innocent, young virgin, usually poverty-stricken, who hasn’t gone
beyond high school and is sweet enough to rot every tooth in a reader’s head.
●
The party girl.
This is the shallow, promiscuous young woman who thinks one night stands carry
no consequences, is often too fascinated by pricey, name-brand shoes or coffee,
and lives with roommates who are also giddy, squealing, fashion-obsessed
dimwits.
●
Cinderella.
This standard character harkens back to the original. She’s hardworking,
employed in a menial job for which she is ostensibly overqualified, and either
in college or recently graduated with a degree.
There are, of course, variations on the romance heroine
tropes, but professional, competent, and intelligent heroines have become
scarce. I find that worrisome enough.
Adding to the disappointment are today’s popular heroes.
They’re tall, handsome, wealthy, and confident. They go beyond confidence into
arrogance. These guys don’t walk into a room, they swagger. They’re unrepentant
womanizers and most enjoy having a different woman in their beds every night.
The willingness of women to join the vast, lust-riddled hordes that parade
through their bedrooms invites contempt toward the entire gender. These heroes
fall into standard slots: CEO, biker, fighter, elite military warrior (pick
your preferred military branch), cowboy/rancher.
So, there they go, working hard and enjoying the vast
variety of female flesh happily presenting itself for their entertainment
when--boom!--our heroine appears. She either needs rescuing from danger or
poverty, or she’s his administrative assistant (secretary), or he kidnaps her
because he wants her and he always takes what he wants.
What a jerk.
Of course, our heroine is so overcome by her raging hormones
that she succumbs to his blandishments, thrills in the liberties he takes, and
loves that he doesn’t take “No” for an answer.
In the real world, we call this sexual assault and rape.
But wait, there’s more! Let’s go further into the sub-genre
of “dark” romance with its descent into the world of BDSM. Yes, we all know
who’s dominant and who’s submissive, don’t we? We know who’s obeying whose
orders and who gets punished for disobedience, don’t we? And, oh, it’s so sexy
that he gets to tie up our heroine and strike or whip her, leaving welts and bruises
on her skin.
In the real world, we call that abuse.
Now let’s compound this with recognition of the
people--mainly women--who write this stuff. The days of Nora Roberts, Danielle
Steele, and Jayne Ann Krentz are far from over--they’re still pumping out
novels. But a new generation of authors cranks out an overwhelming number of
romance novels that negate the progress women have made over the last fifty
years. These writers are women in their twenties and early thirties who don’t
remember being denied an opportunity because she was cursed with that second X
chromosome. These are women who don’t recognize the term “Women’s Lib.” These
are women who romanticize and glorify Stockholm Syndrome in their abduction
fantasies and send their heroines back a couple hundred of years when women
were chattel. Yet these heroines are content to be treated like chattel, as
long as their heroes settle them into lives of luxury and pamper them like
prize poodles.
These authors offer their young, impressionable audience heroines
that exhibit traits we’d hate to see in our own daughters: unjustified
obstinacy, terminal stupidity, promiscuity, shallowness, and an abject
acceptance of poor treatment from their heroes because a heady orgasm makes
everything okay.
I write romance. I’ve even written heroes who aren’t nice
guys. I wrote an abduction romance. But my heroine was clever enough to escape
his clutches and evade recapture for years while my hero suffered greatly for
his hubris. (Credit that to an early influence of Greek mythology.) My heroines may be underemployed and
occasionally pigheaded, but they aren’t too stupid to live. These characters
have human flaws and a level of self-respect lacking in too many of today’s
heroines. They’re people you wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce to your family.
So, if you’re a woman of Generations Y or Z, what message do you want to send to yourself and to the young women born in the following generation? One that shows women as helpless, stupid, and enslaved by their hormones? Or one that shows independence, self-respect, and a happily ever after because she wants to be with the hero, not because she depends upon him for her existence?
Romance is the only genre that’s mainly written by women for women and which validates women’s happiness and fulfillment. It should inspire us to become better, not reduce us to weak-minded chattel.
I sat so merry in my abode
Loving hands around me
I dreamt of such glorious days
One day i would see
I remember the day I left
My room
I closed the door behind me
One quick look again
Then walked away
The room which would always remind me
The glorious days I had dreamt
I did merrily spent
How little did I then know
Life turns on a dime
My room is now not as it was
When I closed the door
Behind me
My room now is a prison
But not how one would invision
It is one of sorrow and grief
Sadness burns into the bare walls
I catch my breath
And weep
Why did thou'st doth betray?
The room which once embraced me
I ask with riddled heart
Jagged and torn
Which wicked riddles have I thus sought?
I sit still
I am now my room
No dreams as once before
I age before my open door
In my room long ago
I sat merrily in my loving abode
Loving hands did hold me
All gone
My room and myself
Now one
Two thrust to be together
Forever
Alone