Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained

by Maya Rodale

  —When the Duke Returns by Eloisa James

  When celebrated novelist and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave her famous TED talk, We Should All Be Feminists, she provided an elegant and eloquent description of feminism. This feminist also mentioned growing up reading “every single Mills & Boon romance published” before the age of sixteen.[121]

  Another notable feminist and champion of women’s rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali also mentioned how influential romances novels were. “Like many other girls in my class, I continued to read sensational romance novels and trashy thrillers, even though I knew that doing so was resisting Islam in the most basic way...A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings I felt when reading those books.”[122]

  While Adichie went on to say that those Mills & Boons were hardly feminist, she also mentioned that she struggled to read “classic femininist texts,” which makes me wonder if maybe she got some ideas about equality between the sexes from romance after all.

  There is a supposed disparity between romance and feminism. If the feminists were the man haters, the romance readers were the silly women obsessed with being submissive to dominant men. If feminism championed female empowerment, romance novels, which celebrated men who fiercely growl “you’re mine” to the heroine and then end with marriage, were about female enslavement.

  Both of these stereotypes are just that—stereotypes, particularly focused on the extreme fringes of each ideology. However, comparing some of the popular perceptions of the values of these two groups (whether they’re good, bad, or flat-out wrong) shows tensions between them—why feminists have a reputation for man hating and romances have a reputation for keeping a good woman down.

  Whether or not romance novels embody and promote feminist values can be considered from a variety of angles—from the relationship between the characters, the sexual acts they engage in, the topic of conversations between characters, and even how the books are produced.

  But what’s the deal? Are the feminists missing out on the greatest propaganda for the cause? Or are we, the romance readers and writers, seduced by the patriarchy?

  SIX REASONS ROMANCE NOVELS CAN’T BE FEMINIST

  #1 Because blow jobs

  “When I was called a feminist, during those days, my first thought was, but I willingly give blow jobs.”[123] writes Roxanne Gay in her outstanding collection of essays, Bad Feminist. Blow jobs seem to be the dividing line between feminist and not feminist.

  Elle Keck, an editorial assistant at Avon, tells a story about mixed reactions from her classmates in college when she presented romance novels as feminist works. The men were pretty cool with it, but it was the women in the class who expressed the negativity:

  I had a quote in it from Talk Me Down by Victoria Dahl and I read it in class to illustrate some of my points. And a girl said “I don’t think that’s feminist.” It was talking about how she really wanted to give the guy a blow job and I was talking about how empowering it was that she was talking about her desires. But this girl said “but she’s giving him a blow job. How is that empowering for her?”

  How on earth did we get to the point that blow job ≠ feminist?

  Is it something about the woman on her knees, a classic position of submission? Is it because it’s a sexual act that presumably only gives pleasure to the man receiving it?

  “I don’t understand how blow jobs are not feminist,” says Courtney Milan. “That makes no sense to me! Here’s the thing: Does the woman want to give the blow job? Ooh, yes she does. Does she get off on giving a blow job? Yeah.”

  It isn’t the act that is inherently degrading or empowering, but the circumstances and intention. Is there choice, love, lust, or pleasure? But if some women think that it’s antifeminist to please a man with a particular sexual act, then yes, romances would get a reputation for being anti-feminist. But this notion of “right” or “wrong” sexual acts can have the effect of making people feel ashamed of their desires. How is that empowering for anyone?

  In romances, there are many, many instances of heroes going down on heroines (or heroines on heroines, or heroes on heroes). On a note of personal observation, I have noticed an increase in historical romance novels published in the last few years that show heroines going down on their hero. And the heroines like it.

  #2 Because bodice ripping (said the bra burners)

  A clarification: The famous bra burning never happened. In a preview story about feminist protests at the 1968 Miss American Pageant, Lindsy Van Gelder, a New York Post reporter, wrote, “Lighting a match to a draft card has become a standard gambit of protest groups in recent years, but something new is to go up in flames this Saturday. Would you believe a bra burning?” Because the Atlantic City Fire Department refused to issue a permit “the ceremonial bonfire” never happened. But it was too late. The term stuck.[124]

  However, romance novels have indeed been known to show a blatant disregard for women’s attire. It’s often interpreted as a symbol of his power over her, and his utter disregard for her modesty or autonomy. Nothing, not even whalebone and heavy cloth or her resistance will stop him. But think about it: Is there any greater feeling than taking your bra off?

  Shouldn’t ripping off one of the most confining undergarments known to human kind be the most liberating thing ever? Shouldn’t the bra burners and bodice rippers go hand in hand off into the sunset? Besides infuriating stereotypes and a callous disregard for underthings, what is really going on here?

  The common critique of many romances, particularly bodice rippers, is that the hero is so dominant and thus the heroine must be so submissive. In 50 Shades of Grey and other books in that category, it was oh-so-clear by literally using the words dominant and submissive to describe the roles each would play in the relationship. Many people read no further before casting judgment.

  To be fair, there are many romance heroes who are too arrogant, too controlling, too in need of a restraining order. Jane Litte, blogger at Dear Author, offers an alternative understanding of those stories or elements:

  Even where there are problematic tropes, like glorification of the borderline abusive boyfriend, or as the stories delve into even darker realms, those characters obviously appeal to some particular emotional interest of a reader. And if we’re saying that feminism is the right to choose and to be in control of your own body and desires without judgment, then even the most problematic stories are still feminist stories.

  A recent Time magazine article also describes 50 Shades of Grey as a story of female subjugation. Christian is one of those borderline abusive boyfriends. In contrast, many romance readers would see a different story: one in which a heroine is able to open up an emotionally repressed man.

  Instead of bodice ripping being a way of showing a man’s domination of a woman, what if it’s a symbol of liberation? In tearing asunder restrictive undergarments, the heroine is freed by strictures of society to be her full self. And in the relationships in these books, the heroes are also given the liberty to feel their own emotions.

  #3 Because they’re focused on men

  Because romance novels are predominantly about a man and a woman falling in love, getting married, and living happily ever after, it’s easy for a casual outsider to assume that’s all it’s about. Indeed, one nonromance reader described them as “insipid male-focused nonsense that put women down.”

  It can be easy to assume women devour these books because they’re all about the men and getting the richest, hottest, most powerful one to love YOU and only YOU!

  But it overlooks, oh, everything else that happens and all the other situations and characters the characters face. While some romance characters seem to exist in a vacuum, many others show their characters engaging with friends and family. A good number also examine friendship between the female characters. (It also overlooks all the gay romances, some of which are indeed all about men and some of which are not about men at all. )

  The Bechdel Tes
t, created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, is a way to identify any gender bias in works of fiction and it poses the following questions:

  Are there at least two female characters, who talk to each other about something other than a man?

  Do the women have names?

  This test is an easy way to determine if a work of fiction is “all about men.” Or a man. Most films fail the Bechdel test. A study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media showed that only 31 percent of named characters were female and only 23 percent had a female protagonist or coprotagonist.[125]

  But how do romance novels fare? I would say every romance has a heroine with a name, and in most, every other female character has a name (with the possible exception of some male/male romances, which does not signal misogyny in the same way that, say, an action movie with the only female being the “hot girlfriend” does).

  The female characters in romances also have conversations and ones that are not about a man. Of the last four romance novels I read, (including a paranormal, two historical, and a contemporary, not all recently published), three of them included female characters with names talking to each other about something other than a man. The one that didn’t was a male/male romance, though it did feature a female character with a name who spoke to the heroes about things other than men or relationships.

  Another way in which romance novels are not, in fact, all about the men are the ways in which they are, in fact, all about the women and focus on things that matter to women, like personal acceptance or balancing work, love, and family. When asked to name feminist heroines, many survey responders identified the ones that work or had some sort of occupation, such as Courtney Milan’s historical heroines or Julie James’ contemporary, high-powered professional women, and that didn’t give it all up at the end.

  If women want to see a portrayal of women as more than men-obsessed creatures, they might want to pick up a romance novel.

  #4 Because damsels in distress

  On the tumblr Women Against Feminism, women photograph themselves with a handwritten note saying why they don’t need feminism. This is in response to the incredibly popular tumblr Why I Need Feminism, which features photos of people holding handwritten notes saying why they do need feminism. Many of the Women Against Feminism posts want you to know that they are not victims of gender discrimination at all. Nor are they objectified. They don’t want “special treatment based on gender,” and they can take responsibility for their actions, thanks.

  Similarly, many romance novels are slammed because the hero “rescues” the heroine from some god-awful situation, probably involving poverty, pregnancy, kidnapping, highway robbery, being tied up somewhere, sexual dissatisfaction, etc., etc. It’s hard out there for a heroine three-quarters into a romance novel.

  But the heroine also has some saving of her own to do. There are many instances of kick-ass women physically saving the day. But what we often see is that the heroine saves the hero from a life in a vast, emotional wasteland where not even the slightest feeling can survive.

  Women are “the ones that are supposed to be emotionally fluent and men are supposed to be like ‘feelings, what, I have feelings?’” says Smart Bitches blogger Sarah Wendell. But she points out that this stereotype is incredibly detrimental not just to the women trying to have a relationship, but also to men. “Emotional fluency is healthy and normal,” she says. “And this whole thing about boys not supposed to have emotion is bullshit.”

  The heroine not only makes him experience all the feelings, but through the constancy of her love, respect, and attraction for him, she also shows that a man can have said feelings without compromising his masculinity or giving up his maleness. This is appealing to women and one reason for the growing popularity of male/male romances written and read by heterosexual women. “It’s incredibly powerful for women to see two men doing all the emotional lifting in a relationship with no female there to be emotionally fluent,” says Wendell.

  Feminism is the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. I motion that we include sexual and emotional equality in that, too.

  #5 Because they got married and lived happily ever after. With babies.

  Does anything reinforce the patriarchal status quo than glorifying marriage with babies as the ultimate in a woman’s happiness? After a few hundred pages of a heroine venturing out, traveling the world, sexploring her desires, having conversations with females with names not about men, she ends up right back where she started: in the home, in the nursery.

  While there is much to say on the happy ending and how it’s not the Worst Thing Ever, let’s take a moment to talk about happiness.

  We talk so much about how women feel guilty for being too sexy or not being sexy enough, for staying at home or for going to work, for not sticking to her diet or missing a workout, for checking email during soccer practice, or even for indulging a “guilty pleasure” when reading a romance novel.

  But romance novels tend to focus less on guilt and more on happiness, and that is a really nice antidote to the pressures we can feel as we rush through the day. “My feminism is that I have the right to be happy,” says bestselling author Megan Mulry, who writes smart and sexy contemporary romances with powerful professional women as well as erotic historicals. In a culture always telling us what we should and ought to do to make everyone else happy, the idea of pleasing your own damn self can be pretty revolutionary.

  “The female’s happiness is the most important part,” says Maddie Caldwell. “They're always books by women, for women, about women being happy. That is so fucking good. What I need is a woman writing a book where a woman is happy and she gets what she wants and that is feminism. Hell yes.”

  When a woman reads a romance novel, she is choosing happiness. She is choosing her own pleasure. She is choosing to take care of herself. She is declaring that her pleasure is equal to anyone else’s.

  #6 The ultimate feminist industry?

  In conversations about how feminist romance novels may or may not be, so many people I spoke with pointed not to the contents of the books but to the whole business of romance. What started as a few women scribbling stories in their drawing rooms has blossomed into a billion-dollar industry through which many women have found financial and/or personal empowerment.

  “I think the business of romance writing is very feminist,” Jane Litte of Dear Author says. After all, it is dominated by women—the authors, the editors, the publicists—who are finding success and happiness not by denying their femininity but by reveling in it. Kensington editor Esi Sogah explains just why romance is special: “I think the romance industry is feminist in terms of the ability it gives mainly women to run businesses, earn incomes, express themselves, explore all these things women were told not to think about too deeply.”

  * * *

  In my survey of romance readers, I asked if one identified as feminist believed in equality but wouldn’t use the term feminist, or not at all. Sixty-one percent of respondents replied in the affirmative to the first option. While many commenters expressed their ire at the believe-in-equality-but-wouldn’t-use-the-term-feminist option, 35 percent selected this. Just 3 percent said not at all (“The third option makes me cry,” one self-declared feminist wrote).

  The more I read from both sides, the more I realized that we’re more alike than we let on. Whether you call it chivalry or manners, we all want someone to hold the door open for us. We don’t want someone else to determine our self-worth—whether that someone else is a man, The Man, feminists, or whomever/whatever. No one wants to be a victim.

  We all want equality.

  THE COVERS

  HOLD ME, KISS ME, THRILL ME, CLINCH ME

  Clinch, n: an embrace

  Everyone agrees that if there is one thing that contributes to the bad reputation of romance, it is those god-awful tawdry covers with the hulking shirtless man and the bosomy woman who can’t keep her dress on. And the unicorn/stallion/coyote/castle in the
background. Everyone is probably wrong.

  The truth is, the romance genre had a bad reputation long before Fabio was born and long before there were even covers on books. As early as 1717, romance was considered “a dirty word.”[126] And in the romantic period, cheap, mass-produced novels didn’t even come with covers. These books “normally reached the public in paper wrappers stitched with thread or temporarily bound in cardboard covered with blue or grey sugar paper,” writes William St Clair in The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Nope, no Fabio. Nope, no books to be sold or judged by their covers. “The first thing most buyers in the romantic period did, before they even took a new book home, was to place an order to have it rebound in leather.” Still no Fabio.

  The early Harlequins weren’t much fancier—they all had unattractive brown bindings. “And the ladies used to ask in the shops for the books with the brown bindings or ‘the books in brown.’”[127]

  The common wisdom regarding the creation and perpetuation of the clinch cover (that I have heard repeated but wasn’t able to verify) depicting an attractive couple locked in a heated embrace is that they were designed to appeal to the merchandise buyers for stores. These were mostly men, presumably ones who liked boobs. One blogger writes, “At that time print runs were determined by preorders from sales reps who bought by the cover. The sales reps were men. It turned out they ordered more books when the covers had busty women, the bustier the better.”[128]

  Thus it may or may not be surprising that one of the master illustrators behind the covers of many historical romances today is a man. Jon Paul originally turned down an offer to do romance covers because “I saw myself as fine artist.” But he was eventually persuaded by the work of Pino Daeni, one of the greatest romance illustrators. “I was blown away by how beautiful it was.” Rather than seeing these covers as tawdry illustrations, Jon Paul sees them as close to classical art.