Clichés and Clasps

I absolutely enjoy the Goodreads Contemporary Romance Forum. It has an active community that cover off on many interesting topics. One of the discussions going around at the moment is “What annoys you most in a hero/heroine”? Following on from that I would like to talk about one of the common clichés that annoys me the most in the contemporary romance genre.

Now this may sound stupid to you, but here it is, the thing that annoys me most in contemporary romance books are.. That the vast majority seem to have the heroine wearing a front clasped bra. There you go, I have said it. Why, you may ask. Well simply because most women don’t wear them. Not to mention they are actually almost impossible to buy even if you would want to wear one. There are many obvious reasons why they aren’t popular, such as they would be much harder to adjust size wise, and would probably irritate the more sensitive skin around the cleavage.

Anyway, as part of my intrigue into this topic of annoyance I even went so far as to scout stores in the US and Canada when I was there recently to see if they were popular over there and I just hadn’t realized. But no, searching store after store I came up empty handed in my search. Ditto for Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.

So the question is why does author after author use the front clasped bra when they know that they are almost non-existant outside training bras and the contemporary romance genre? Is it because it is so widely used by others, or is it simply easier to get across on a page rather than saying the hero reached around to unclasp the hook on the bra?

I have no answers, but I would dearly love to hear if there are any clichés that are used in your favorite genre that don’t quite make sense.