“I Don’t Know How To Feel About This”
Recently, I was having a discussion with a couple of friends about why romance, as a genre, embraced such stupid terminology. Why say “molten member” when you can just say “cock?” Doesn’t suddenly encountering a loving description of his “tumid shaft of love” kind of…take you out of the moment? I mean, what kind of masturbatory material is that?
My proposed explanation was–is–that “romance” equates to, in most people’s minds–even if they don’t recognize this as such–non-challenging relationships, non-challenging sex, and general conformity to the most simplistic set-ups possible. People like to know how to feel. It helps them to enjoy the book and, indeed, a certain segment of the reading population can’t enjoy a book unless they know how to feel. Writing about themes of gender identity, slavery, and sexually motivated violence, one has ample occasion to consider this issue. People want “this is bad, this is good. These people wear the white hats, and these people don’t.” And then you come along with your solidly gray–no pun intended and no, I don’t intend to read it–and everyone just freaks out. “Music to my dick” may be some of the worst writing going, but E.L. James succeeds in presenting a narrative that comes pre-equipped with talking points.
Christian Grey, as a character, is de-fanged by being “flawed.” The “man who needs saving” being that other classical trope of romance. He’s not really responsible for his actions and, anyway, what it really turns out that he needs is mothering. Which, this particular dynamic–and why it’s so popular–is the subject of another post. It’s quite the different proposition altogether when you present a male lead who assuredly is flawed, not because he’s secretly a wee little lamb who just needs squeezing but because we are all flawed. Whose character traits aren’t a convenient plot device, to be disposed of in the proper moment but rather a part of who he is.
Personally, I’d always found the idea rather comforting that we could be accepted for who we are. That one doesn’t need to change, to be worthy of love. After all, isn’t this real life? Isn’t the best that any of us can hope for, as flesh and blood readers (and writers) rather than elements of fiction that we can, in fact, be loved for exactly who we truly are? That we will? I’ve been happily partnered for ten years now and it’s not because either of us are perfect. Far from.
Rather, the traditional viewpoint is what’s always discouraged me. That isn’t “love,” it’s bait and switch. Which is, I suppose, why Kisten doesn’t stop being a sex addict and Ash doesn’t lose his M.M. Kaye-esque yearning for the Raj and Tristan doesn’t morph back into a human being. Incidentally, too, I find it supremely ironic that many of the same readers who bemoan my inclusion of “pointless” details like where Ash is from in India and what it’s like for him to return there also wax poetic about how my characters seem so real. They’re real, precisely because I don’t leave out those parts that make them real. Because Ash being Indian, for example, is more than the most convenient explanation for his being a brown person. He’s Indian, like Kisten is Indian, because I have something to say about life in India.
The fact that most romantic heroes these days seem to be blindingly white and dressed in kilts right there leaves one hanging. Where are the Huffpost mini-articles explaining how this fits into the conventional narrative of feminism? Romance is escapism, and no one wants to think on their vacations. Which, from that perspective at least means I’ve failed. Although I’ve always agreed with the sentiment that, expect a fish to climb a tree and it’ll spend its whole life believing itself stupid. Fortunately for me, I’m not trying to write romance.
Begging the question, I suppose, how much romance is too much? At what point does “meandering doorstop of a tome that includes romance” require a reevaluation of balances? Bringing us, eventually, back to the first question: how should I feel about this?
