Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

I’m back to reading romance, after waiting forever for my BooksFree shipment and having travel diaries to read. And I have to tell you, I love it when the hero fights his feelings for the heroine. I love it when the hero and heroine are friends and they fight and rage against all the feelings they have that they never touch or act on.  I love it when the hero wants the heroine and is scared to act on how he feels, to take that risk, even though he knows he won’t be able to stop himself. I love when the heroine gathers all that angst and fear from the hero and makes it all go away.

I am addicted to the attraction and the resistance to it, and it’s like tingles down my arms, I love it so much. This is why I read romance. Because aside from all the drama and the nasty and the mean and the petty, people can make each other feel incredibly loved and wanted and special. I love that every time I read a romance, I get to experience it again and again. 

After yesterday’s flap over inspirational vs. erotic romances, I’ve been thinking a lot about inspirational romances and why I feel so squicked out by them. Because to be honest, I am. One of our first Smart Bitch entries was about Religion in Romances, so if you haven’t read it yet go take a peek because we talk a little bit about the issue at hand.

It’s not that I completely avoid reading books with very strong spiritual themes, or that I am incapable of liking protagonists who have a relationship with God that I, personally, could never envision having. I’ve read and liked books featuring both. And yes, I’m going to bring up To Love and To Cherish by Patricia Gaffney for the umpteenth time on this website, because this book just does so many damn things right.

Shannon Stacey posted an entry on erotic romances on Romancing the Blog, and hoo boy, what an interesting furor. I started posting a comment, and then realized I was really running off at the mouth and was in danger of taking over the entire comment space with what I wanted to say. So I thought, what the hell, might as well run off at the mouth HERE. Let me excerpt some relevant passages here so you can follow my points:

“I detest vampire books, for instance, and Scottish historicals bore me to tears. But I could fairly judge those books on their technical merits. I could also judge (and, in fact, have read quite a few) books that espouse different religions from mine. Erotica is a different matter. I will not betray my moral standards by reading it."–Brenda Coulter

Then in the comments, a reader named Donna Spago makes this very interesting observation:

I have a question for the inspirational Christian author who says reading erotic romance is breaking God’s laws.

Do you read stories that have murder in them?
Do you read stories with characters who drink alcohol?
Do you read stories with characters who curse?

If you receive any of those books in the contest to judge, what do you do with them, the ones with murders or drug use or alcoholism or swearing?

Is your moral dilemma only in reading books with sex?

To which Brenda Coulter replied:

Donna, there’s a difference between reading stories that portray the realities of life (which may include illicit drug use, killing puppies, having sex outside of marriage, and so on) and reading books primarily for sexual titillation. Let’s be honest. Erotica readers aren’t just looking for good stories. They’re looking for good stories with a lot of SEX in them.

If you haven’t read the whole flap already, I fully encourage you to so you can view the whole thing in context, because I’m just excerpting bits here and there.

So going back to Donna Spago’s comment: I agree with her. Shouldn’t Christian judges abstain from reading most romantic suspense novels? I mean, talk about REALLY building a book based on a squicky premise, which is typically violent death--actually, usually several violent deaths. Take away the death(s), and the book will cease to exist. Oftentimes the hero/heroine won’t even meet. So somehow this is less morally offensive than a book that’s has the doggy-doggy style goin’ on?

But perhaps it’s morally acceptable because the bad guy is caught and punished (read: killed) in the end. That, however, raises other questions: do we go with justice Talion Law-style as expressed in the Old Testament, or do we go with the New Testament and all that “turn the other cheek” business? But then Jesus also said (and I paraphrase) “If thine right eye offend thee, pluck it out,” so, y’know, ARGH, what to do?

And I really don’t get how a devout Christian can be offended by reading spicy sex scenes but not be offended by books featuring other religions, because the first four commandments are centered around the proper worship of God (and God, upper-case, thinks it’s very, very naughty to even THINK about worshipping any other god, lower-case), and only one commandment explicitly talks about sex, and even then it specifically addresses adultery, with one vague commandment about not coveting your neighbor’s sundry possessions including his wife (which personally I find offensive--I may have a cow-sized ass, but I’m not an actual cow, thankyouverymuch). But the reader isn’t engaging in apostasy when they read a book featuring non-Christian couples, of course. Similarly, neither is the reader engaging in adultery, unless the books inflame the person so much that she runs off to the neighbor and has some hot monkey sex with him.

Which, come to think of it, might be a pretty cool premise for some erotica. Any takers? Make the hero bisexual and throw in his hot poolboy, Andre, and I’ll be all over that book.

What about books featuring protagonists who are witches? “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and all that. Wouldn’t those be morally offensive too?

And then there’s Coulter’s assumption that people who read erotic romances are doing so solely for the tittilation. I won’t lie: I sometimes read them for the sexual tittilation, and I want my tittilation to be well-written too. But I don’t always read romances for the sexy sexy, and I certainly can’t speak for other people. Why does Coulter think her blanket assumption that we read erotic romances solely to get our rocks (nubbins?) off is correct?

Sigh. And then, of course, we open a whole can of worms in terms of associating the reader’s morals with the types of books she enjoys. What kind of emotions and responses are horror novels meant to elicit? Are these emotions and responses somehow more appropriate and less morally outrageous than sexual feelings? Etc.

To be fair to Coulter, she isn’t condemning or trying to prohibit other people from reading erotic romances. And just to be clear: I don’t want her to be forced to read material that she finds distasteful; I respect her right to NOT read something just as I respect her right to read whatever the damn hell she wants. I just find her stance, well, puzzling and inconsistent. She does explain it further by adding this in the comments:

Would we expect a Kosher-keeping Jew to judge the pork dishes in a cooking contest? I don’t think so, because most of us understand that to a practicing Jew, taking even a single bite to demonstrate her “objectivity and professionalism” would be a grave sin.

But that’s not a very good analogy for what she’s doing. She’s picking on erotic romances, and only erotic romances, as morally objectionable, when most other romance novels are built around elements that, from a Biblical standpoint, are even more heinous than the nookie. She’s a Jew who won’t eat bacon, ham or ground pork, but Spam is just fine by her.

There’s an interesting interview with Sandra Bullock, queen of romantic comedies, on CNN today. Among the questions asked is a request for an explanation: why is she refusing to do more romantic comedies, and why do female buddy movies like ‘Miss Congeniality 2’ instead?

I like the challenge of that a lot more than the comedy being revolved around landing the dude....

No one ever shows women watching out for one and other. We’re either scratching each other’s eyes out or stealing each other’s husbands or there’s a lead woman and there’s a best friend who usually is a better written role and has two scenes.

After Candy and I went off on the whole “sassy sidekick best friend” icon in romantic fiction, it’s interesting to see an actress pick up on the lack of strong roles for women in romance-focused movies, while the best friend is often better developed and more interesting as a character, but shafted in the screentime department. This imbalance makes me think of actresses like Janeane Garofalo or Joan Cusack, who often end up as the romance heroine’s sidekick but rarely the heroine herself.

The idea of women as their own enemies is interesting to consider when one looks at the annoying and ill-written sidekick, or the absent but fabulous best friend found in movies, contrasted with the recent surge in chick-lit and contemporary novels with groups of women as best friends. Jennifer Crusie for one has a good number of supportive groups of women friends in her novels - and as a reader I’ve liked just about all the heroine’s friends. Wonder if Hollywood will take a cue from current contemporary romance stories in novel form for future scripts. 

Sarah and I were e-mailing each other about purple prose, and Beatrice Small’s name came up. And we started talking about codpieces. I mean, of course. When talking about Beatrice Small, sooner or later the conversation will involve discussions on cones, orbs or codpieces. Hopefully the first two will be quivering as well.

Anyway, I was extremely curious about why the codpiece was called, well, a codpiece. It had never occured to me before that the first bit of the word is a freakin’ fish. What, did codpieces smell especially piscatorial, what? So off I trundled to Merriam-Webster On-Line to look it up.

And I promptly start having a monster case of the giggles. Check it:


Main Entry: cod·piece
Pronunciation: ‘käd-"pEs
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English codpese, from cod bag, scrotum (from Old English codd) + pese piece


DUDE. Codpiece = scrote-holder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And if you go to a restaurant and order cod en croute, you’re actually ordering an Encrusted ‘Sack. *laughs so hard she starts wheezing*

God. I don’t know why I think it’s so funny, but I do. Somewhere inside me, there’s a 13-year-old boy who thinks fart jokes are really, really funny. And I’m not talking about deep inside, either. I’m talking just-barely-lurking-under-the-surface.

Anyway, most of you writer types and history afficionados probably already know this. But I didn’t, so obviously I have to share my unholy glee with all of you. And oh dear, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look cod in the eye again.

And yes, of course I’m talking about the fish.