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

Wendy Duren posted a link to this article about Lauren Willig, and really it isn’t too bad considering it’s a mainstream publication covering something related to romance novels. But certain turns of phrase in this article have given me a pretty good case of Sand in the Vagina syndrome. You’ve been warned.

As Wendy herself noted, the use of “trashy romance” here seems completely unwarranted:

It seems a natural progression for a woman who got in trouble in the third grade for bringing a trashy romance novel to school.

OK, I know we have “Trashy” in our blog name too, but look, it’s kinda like a gay man calling his gay friends “queens” or “fags.” Or even a breeder like me saying something like “God, nothing more I hate than a fag on the rag” to my friend Garrett when he’s flipping out over his new hand-made rug getting its pile rubbed the wrong way. On the other hand, there’s a whole other dimension to those words when the person who uses them is a shitstomping homophobe who cheered when Matthew Shepard was killed.

OK, did I just compare homophobia to romance novel reading? Glurk. OK, just to make sure we’re clear, these two are NOT EVEN IN THE SAME UNIVERSE in terms of seriousness, but still, y’all get the sense of what I’m trying to say? Being “in the community” gives people a certain amount of leeway that generally isn’t afforded to people outside the community. And even then I know some people aren’t particularly thrilled with our decision to use the word “trashy.” (But interestingly enough, I have yet to see anyone saying anything about our use of the word “bitches.” Huh.)

OK, so that’s not even the worst of the cause for my current case of Sand-In-Vagina-itis. This quote, right here? UGH.

“There is a perception that romance novels aren’t intelligent books, that the only people who read them are stay-at-home moms. That just isn’t the case,” Chittenden said.

WHOA THERE. First of all: need we bring up the stereotype of the idle housewives wearing pink satin bathrobes and reading their romance novels featuring an “airbrushed Fabio” while munching on bon-bons? Because really, that is so 1986.

Second of all: Stay-at-home moms are somehow more stupid than a woman who decides to work outside the home? I mean, ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I have a good friend who’s a stay-at-home mom, and she’s creepily smart. Do NOT try to engage her in a discussion about Old Testament scholarship, because she will kick your ass. Even now, even though she got her BA a year ago and she doesn’t have to turn in any more papers, she will read big, clunky textbooks for fun--and make notes. And ANNOTATE. But wait, she doesn’t read romance novels. That must be what has preserved whatever IQ was left her when she decided to put off law school and look after her little sprogs instead.

And you know what bugs me a lot, too?  How the article just reeks of condescension. “Oh, how NICE that people with brains are reading and writing romances. Who would’ve thought people who read those heaving-bosom novels cared about accuracy?”

Gah. I’m off to cleanse my palate with some bon-bons now. Too bad pink satin bathrobes violate my company’s dress policy.

Romancing the Blog has a column today by Larissa Ione, who reads romance novels solely for the hero. In fact, more often than not she hates the heroine.

This is fascinating to me. It’s a very, very weird viewpoint for me to process. I know people have argued that romance novel readers tend to identify more with the hero than the heroine, or at least be more forgiving of the hero than the heroine, and I can see that. Personally, I tend to be a bit more forgiving of the hero’s foibles and weaknesses, but honestly, the hero doesn’t have all that much more leeway than the heroine. In fact, I tend to get much angrier with asshole heroes than I do bitchy heroines, but then there are very, very few romance novels in which the heroine puts the hero through the same kind of wringer an alpha asshole is capable of. (Hmmmm, a heroine assuming a hero’s a slut and proceeding to rape him with a strap-on might make for a very interesting scenario, though. Heh.) The reverse is much more likely to be the problem in romance novels: heroines tend to be either too perfect, or have martyr complexes so you big you can see them from outer space.

Well, damn, the next bit I was going to work on for Getting My Hackles Up involved pornography in romance, but Mrs. Giggles just recently posted a most excellent piece on just that subject. What is this, some kind of Malaysian mind-meld? (For those of you who haven’t read Part I of Getting My Hackles up, it concerns realism in romance.)

Anyway. So yeah, I was going to parrot much of what she has written re: the issue of romance novels being glorified pornography. This accusation especially chaps my hide when it comes from men who pay loads of money for actual pornography. They evince no embarrassment about displaying their issues of Playboy and Penthouse on their coffee table, or having 20 gigabytes worth of creampie shots from HotWetTeens.com on their hard drive, but they seem to assume that I should be ashamed to read romance novels because they contain sex scenes. Double standards much?

And really, I really don’t have a problem with porn at all, assuming that the porn involves only consenting human adults. Some forms of porn are kind of odd (sneezing fetishes) or gross (roman showers) or scary (bloodplay) or odd, gross and scary in a mind-boggling number of ways (fursuitsex.com), but hey, it’s not like I’m being forced to view it.

To be honest with you, sometimes I do seek romance novels for the sexual titillation. Not very frequently, because there are more efficient ways to go about it than hunting for 20 pages worth of sex in 380 pages of novel—for instance, I can much more easily search the alt.sex.stories.moderated archives for something that appeals to me ("leather daddy yellow discipline Pikachu"—oh wait, did I say that out loud?). But c’mon, why else would one pick up a book like Taboo if not primarily for the sexiness one hopes to find within? And why else would one (OK, OK, I) feel so damn disappointed when the sex scenes inspire narcolepsy instead of excitement? What’s so wrong with seeking to be stimulated sexually through the written word? Are there any logical, convincing arguments not based on religious dogma that can be made about how one should completely abstain from that kind of stimulation? Why are we being made to feel so deeply ashamed about indulging in something in private that doesn’t hurt anyone else? (Unless he asks nicely, that is. But really, I’ve never had any complaints from “anyone else” about the side-effects of my getting turned-on by romance novels—in fact, “anyone else” has always been pretty happy with said side-effects.) Why is something that’s fun and sexy and sexual also immediately associated with being immoral, tawdry, anti-intellectual and/or somehow unworthy of appreciation?

Good sex scenes, for me, can enhance the appeal for a romance novel, but they’re not necessary for my enjoyment of them. I have several books on my keeper shelves that have the hero and heroine barely kissing each other, much less savagely slaking their breathless lust, loins a-quiver and arousal a-surging. Those who don’t want to read sex scenes will find plenty of romance novels catering to their tastes, while those who do want sex scenes—lots of them, in excruciating detail, in every configuration possible and with the maximum number of synonyms for “vagina” one can humanly come up with—can find them too. For me, the primary appeal in romance novels lies in the love stories. Well-written sex scenes aren’t even the icing on the cake; they’re more like the little curled shavings of dark chocolate on top of the icing that add that extra bit of flavor and texture where it’s needed. But at the end of the day, I’ll take my cake with or without the dark chocolate shavings, thank you.

So in short: I don’t think romance novels are pornography. It has certain pornographic elements, and no doubt some people do use them pornographically on occasion, and some books do focus a bit too much (and a bit too tiresomely) on the quivering mounds o’ desire, but I think the people who accuse the whole romance genre as being directly equivalent to porn must’ve been sleeping through the vast majority of the book in which the hero isn’t boning the heroine. Either that, or they’re prurient bastards who have obsessively fixated on something that typically makes up less than 10% of the average romance novel.






For those of you who don’t know: I lived in Malaysia for the first 19 years of my life, specifically in Kuala Lumpur, so when Mrs. Giggles talks about getting pirated DVDs from Bukit Bintang, I have a most excellent idea of what and where she’s talking about.

After looking at Amazon.com last night and seeing on their site that Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible had been out for about two weeks, off I toddled to the Borders that’s sort of near my workplace to get a copy of my very own in my hot little hands. I even checked the store inventory on-line beforehand to ensure they had it in stock. The webpage assured me that yes, it was available at the store.

Well, guess what?  THAT PIECE OF SHIT WEBPAGE LIED. According to the nice lady who helped me scour the whole store for the elusive tome, the release date is actually March 1, and it won’t be available until tomorrow.

Now at that point I wasn’t particularly bothered. I had a few other books by other authors I wanted to check out: Duchess in Love by Eloisa James, The Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley and Lady-In-Waiting by Kathryn Caskie. I found the Caskie book, no problem, but it didn’t grab me by page 15, so I put it back on the shelf and started looking through the shelves for the James and Ashley novels.

And I couldn’t friggin’ find them. I checked the nifty web-based inventory at the store. Yup, allegedly they were in stock and on the shelves, and unlike Mr. Impossible, these books have been out for a while. I looked for about 10 minutes more before I gave up, and decided to go to the Barnes and Noble that’s sort of near my house. And I HATE Barnes and Noble with a passion because they ran the bookstore for my university and charged the most outrageous prices for textbooks (I mean even more outrageous than usual), plus I dislike how damn monolithic they are. I mightily resent having to go to B&N for ANY reason and having to give them my money.

Well, I needn’t have worried. Because freakin’ Barnes and Noble didn’t have what I was looking for either. They had every other goddamn book Jennifer Ashley and Eloisa James have published. I’m not kidding. They had Fool in Love and The Care and Feeding of Pirates and Much Ado About You and The Pirate Hunter and A Wild Pursuit etc. etc. etc. But the two books I was actually looking for? HA.

So now I’m in a royal snit. I went on-line and got all the books from Amazon.com because it was just much easier all around. But now I have to wait at least a week before I get Mr. Impossible. And I don’t wanna wait. I’m sitting here thinking things like “GODDAMN STUPID-ASS COCKHUMPING WHOREMONGERS WHERE’S MY LORETTA CHASE GNAAARRRRRRRR.” Oh sure, I could’ve fought my way through traffic on I-5 again to get my copy tomorrow, but then I would’ve been yelling out other expletives, this time out loud at all the buttwipes cutting me off on the freeway. I don’t feel up to it. So here I sit, and stew, and wait. And really, it’s all my fault, a realization that Does Not Help Matters.

Yeah, and you thought I was a regular model of sweetness and light. Now you know: waiting for something I want is not my strong suit.

This is going to be the start of a multi-part series in which I examine (bitchily, natch) the various claims typically leveled against romance novels. Romances are unique in that it’s the only genre I know of associated with stupidity in the reader who enjoys them. Reading children’s books, thrillers, horror novels, science fiction, hell, even the lurid pulp novels of the 40s, 50s and 60s with titles like Nude Roller-Skating Venusians Attack! is generally regarded as acceptable, perhaps even ironic and hip, but once people find out you like romances—woo boy, you can pretty much bet on hearing several threadworn jokes about your IQ, or seeing somebody’s respect for your intellect drop several notches, if not bottom out completely. This happens even if you’re head of the class or a top-notch professional; I’d even argue that the drop in esteem is much more severe if you’re somebody who’s considered “smart” because people assume you should “know better"—an attitude that makes me want to “suggest gently” that they “stick their snobby opinion” up their “unwashed asses.”

Just about everyone takes potshots at romance readers, even if (actually especially if) the person has never read a romance novel. I’m tired of these assumptions, and I’m tired of the double standards. This particular tirade deals with the claim that romances are bad fiction because they’re so unrealistic—one of the most common accusations levelled against romance novels.