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Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Well, thanks for letting me know...


Sometimes, I get the impression the author is trying to embed what she thinks is a nugget of worldly wisdom into a novel. Unfortunately, I'm not always grateful for those nuggets. How do you feel about this description of one heroine's mother, for example?
Laura Stanford was not much like her daughter. Although they were of a similar height and build, Laura's hair was brown and undistinguished, and now she wore it dragged into a rather severe knot which added years to her age. She wore horn rimmed spectacles, too, and looked every inch the university lecturer she was. Tamsyn had sometimes wondered whether it was her mother's lack of femininity which had driven her father into the arms of a woman who hadn't an original thought in her head. She couldn't really understand how they had ever got married at all. They were not alike. Her mother was so much that breed of American woman who needed to feel intellectually superior to her mate. (Mather 11)
Have you ever wondered what "breed of [...] woman" (or "breed of man") you are? If not, this is the kind of passage that might make you start wondering. And if you're female and happen to wear horn-rimmed spectacles and/or your hair in a "rather severe knot" you've now been warned! People you meet may think you lack "femininity." Or perhaps they'll offer you the kind of career advice John Sawyer dispenses in Barbara Delinsky's The Dream Comes True:
"You make time for what you want," he stated in a voice that was deafeningly clear. "You give a little here, give a little there. It may mean that one thing or another takes longer to achieve, but it all comes out in the wash."
"One thing or another," Nina echoed. "You mean work. If a woman is willing to sacrifice her career, she can have the husband and kids."
"She doesn't have to sacrifice the career," he insisted, "just defer the ultimate gratification. And that doesn't mean there isn't gratification along the way, simply that the achievements may not be as high until the kids are grown and out of the house."
"She's an old lady by then."
"No way." He sat back and linked his fingers, seemingly more relaxed, as though confident he had the argument won. "Take that woman. She had kids in her mid-twenties. They're out on their own by the time she's fifty. Fifty is not old."
"It's too old to start building a career."
"She's not starting. She started years ago. She may have taken a leave when the kids were babies, but after that she worked part-time, maybe full-time as the kids got older. Okay, so she didn't go running off on business trips, or push past a forty-hour week, and maybe that held her back a little. But look what she has. She has a solid career. She has a solid marriage. She has kids who probably give her more satisfaction than anything she does at work. And she's only fifty."
With barely a breath, he raised a hand and went on. "Then again, take the woman who put her career before everything else. She got out of school, entered the marketplace and worked her tail off. She started climbing the ladder of success, and the drive became self-perpetuating. The higher she climbed, the higher she wanted to be. The more money she earned, the more she needed. There was always something more, always something more."
"Her being a woman didn't help," Nina put in. "A woman has to work twice as hard."
To her surprise, John agreed. "You're right. And that made her all the more determined to make it. So she put off thoughts of getting married, since she didn't have time for that. And she put off having kids, because she didn't have time for that. Then she reaches her mid-forties, when theoretically she should be up there on the threshold of the president's office, only there are suddenly four other candidates vying for the job and one of them is the new son-in-law of the chairman of the board. So she misses out. And then what does she have?" He raised a finger. "She doesn't have the corner office." Then another. "She doesn't have a husband." Then a third. "And her childbearing years are gone." He dropped his hand to his lap. "Do you think she's happy?"
His eloquence left Nina momentarily speechless.
"She's alone, Nina," he said more quietly. "She's alone, and she's getting older, and she's beginning to wonder what she'll do with herself if she ever has to retire. Happy? My guess is she's scared to death." (165-66)
John's "eloquence" left me "momentarily speechless" too. But not for long. I wonder if he would direct this kind of helpful advice at men? At women who don't want to have children? Or who don't want to marry (and the assumption is that the marriage would be to a man)? Is he assuming (a) that a woman needs a husband and children to make her happy and (b) that a post-menopausal woman couldn't find a husband? Oh, and Nina the career-woman almost dies from a ruptured appendix, since she didn't stop working to get it checked out, and John's career-woman first wife "was driving home very late one night after a three-day symposium, fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree. Death was instantaneous" (163). Strangely enough, I can't help but see this as a not so subtle hint that career women are risking death by not slowing down to marry and care for children. Personally, though, I'd argue that it makes a better case for implementing a working time directive.

So, after all this instruction on how women should change their appearance and behaviour, I was intrigued when I picked up Sharon Kendrick's One Husband Required! and saw this comment from the heroine:
there was no way he would look twice at her. Men like Ross Sheridan were never attracted to women with unfashionably curved bodies of softly cushioned hips, and breasts which looked like overripe melons. They liked their women slim. No. Skinny. With plenty of bones showing, like sleek race-horses. Classy women. (8-9)
I hadn't thought about the possible class connotation of slimness, so that was interesting. However, would Ursula be proved right about the preferences of "Men like Ross Sheridan"? No, because apparently he thinks she's "a beautiful woman [...] like a rich, ripe, beautiful peach" (172). But immediately after having had sex for the first time, which provides her with irrefutable proof that men like him can indeed like women who resemble ripe (or over-ripe) fruit, Ursula realises why she had remained a virgin into her late twenties and why she had acquired this body shape:
'When I was growing up, men frightened me. I knew so little about them. I'd grown up in an all-female household - my father died too young to be any kind of role model. [...] And all the other men on the estate where I grew up seemed to think of women as being good for just one thing.' That had been the beginning of her plumpness, she realised now. A cushioned body had protected her and meant that the ferret-eyed boys had left her alone. (175)
It reminded me of Susie Orbach's Fat is a Feminist Issue, in which Orbach suggests that "There is also something positive to be gained from being fat that we must explore. I am not suggesting that the desire to be fat is a conscious one. Indeed, I would argue that people are largely unaware of it" (42). She reports that "the most common benefits that women saw in being large had to do with a sexual protection. In seeing herself as fat, a woman is often able to desexualize herself; the fat prevents her from considering herself as sexual" (43). Orbach herself found that once she had thought about her underlying attitudes towards food and fat, she gradually began to lose weight. Something similar happens to Ursula: following her insight into why she ate
'[...] I just kind of lost interest in food. I never really found the time to snack once I started living with Ross.'
'You mean that sex replaced food?' queried Amber bluntly.
Ursula blushed. 'There's no need to put it like that!'
'Well, it's true, isn't it?'
Yes, it was true. Ursula's world had changed immeasurably - Ross had seen to that. It had become brighter, sharper, clearer - more real than real. Mealtimes had lost their allure as the focus of her day. Not that she had become an unsightly skinny-ribs - a woman obsessed with the amount of calories she put in her mouth - or anything like that. No, it was just that the rounded hips had melted away to firm curves, and she definitely had an hourglass shape now! (182-83)
Again, I think there's a lot one could say about this. But my conclusion from this week's reading is that if, as is often said, romance is written by women, for women (although RWA's latest statistics suggest that "men make up 9.5 percent" of the readership, and there are male authors), then perhaps in some ways the genre's the textual equivalent of a feminist consciousness raising group crossed with a storytelling session at which women reveal their internalised sexism.
Internalized sexism refers to women‟s incorporation of sexist practices, and to the circulation of those practices among women, even in the absence of men. [...] Everyday conversation is woven from the conventions, motivations, and negotiations that make up life in cultural communities. When sexism is part of a culture, sexism, and the internalized sexism that accompanies it, becomes one of the threads out of which conversations are woven. (Bearman, Korobov and Thorne 11)

----
  • Delinsky, Barbara. The Dream Comes True. Don Mills, Ontario: Harlequin, 1990.
  • Bearman, Steve, Neill Korobov, and Avril Thorne. "The Fabric of Internalized Sexism." Journal of Integrated Social Sciences 1.1 (2009): 10-47.
  • Kendrick, Sharon. One Husband Required! Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 1999.
  • Mather, Anne. Chase a Green Shadow. 1973. London: Mills & Boon, 1980.
  • Orbach, Susie. Fat is a Feminist Issue ... How to lose weight permanently - without dieting. 1978. Feltham, Middlesex: Hamlyn, 1982.

My thanks to Tumperkin, who gave me the Delinsky and the Kendrick.

23 comments:

  1. I've actually been thinking about this. Well, not the internalized sexism exactly but more about contemporary romances in general and why I usually can't stand them.

    In short, they are so old fashioned. I don't know what the average age of many published romance novelists happens to be, but many of the big names are surely in my mother's generation. Thus the heroines always seem to have concerns that are not the same ones that women currently in their mid to late-twenties and early thirties have. When I read contemporaries they always feel wrong. Like the books are all perpetually set in 1986, even down to the approach to fashion, make-up and dressing.

    I think this generational gap can be summarized in the way that many authors approach swearing. Everyone I know swears casually. Yet, in most contemporaries the heroines are not allowed to swear. It's so weird. They have the say things like "Oh fudge" or "Great Goddess" or something equally ridiculous. Nobody I know would say "fudge" unless they were talking about the delicious chocolate treat. Why can't contemporary heroines say fuck? or shit? or damn? or hell? Heroes are allowed to swear mildly. What up with that?

    Or the fact that nobody has any straight, male friends. I know the whole When Harry Met Sally thing but again, it is so dated. That is just not the case anymore.

    If a guy told me what John told Nina, I would just stare at him blankly and confused. "Who am I? Diane Keaton in Baby Boom? Did I accidentally go back in time? Have you been reading Newsweek circa 1986?" Perhaps I live in a little bubble, but no female of my acquaintance believes she has to choose between a successful career and marriage. I'm not saying that the concerns about how to balance these things aren't there, but I don't know, it's just not the same.

    I do feel like I'm getting advice sometimes, but it is antiquated advice of another era that doesn't offend me so much as leave me totally confused ("Wash your hair only once a week? But that's just gross!").

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  2. Before getting to your general point about contemporary romances, I feel I should be fair to the novels I quoted and point out that two of them are somewhat vintage romances. The Mather's from 1973, and the Delinsky was published in 1990.

    I think this generational gap can be summarized in the way that many authors approach swearing. Everyone I know swears casually.

    I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there are women of that age who don't swear. I'm in my mid-thirties (which admittedly is a bit older than the age-range you're discussing), and plenty of people I know don't swear (at least, not around me). That's not to say that I feel that contemporary romance heroines are like me, but I wouldn't necessarily put it down to the age of the authors.

    I wonder if part of the problem with contemporaries, as opposed to historicals, is that one has a higher expectation of having something in common with the protagonist of a contemporary, and so it's more jarring when one comes across significant differences. Maybe that theory only applies to me, though.

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  3. then perhaps in some ways the genre's the textual equivalent of a feminist consciousness raising group crossed with a storytelling session at which women reveal their internalised sexism.


    I'm writing a series of posts about this, actually-- the empowering and disempowering characteristics that can be found in romance novels, with particular emphasis on the potential for and the role of internalized sexism. Part 1 is posted, and another 2 parts should follow sometime in the next week. I don't doubt that romance is a reflection of women's multi-layered, sometimes contradictory desires and experiences, or that books are written in a vacuum, sealed off from real-world social norms and women's varied reactions to those social norms.

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  4. I'm not so sure I'm looking for heroines with something in common with me as say heroines who have something in common with people my age. It isn't so much that they don't swear as that when they do it always comes off as . . . quaint.

    It's hard for me to precisely pinpoint why I find most contemporaries old fashioned, but I do. Perhaps the generational divide isn't the right aspect to focus. Perhaps it is another aspect of the book, even the subtle promotion of ideologies that I don't agree with or find dated. This is true regardless of publication date. I've read some contemporaries recently published that feel more awkwardly old fashioned than say Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married which was published in 1996. Of course, I guess that book is technically chick lit.

    Maybe you are correct and what I find jarring is that neither the protagonists nor the secondary characters seem like anyone I know. I think what might make it worse is that the author intends identification or at least, commiseration. I don't think I would find it so jarring if the stories didn't feel as if they were attempting to speak to me.

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  5. Bloody hell and I was worried that writing m/m was anti-feminist!

    What's sad is that you see modern romance readers who clearly hold and promote anti-feminist beliefs even more insidious than you've described here. These books don't come close to the nastiness of blaming rape victims for their own rapes, though I'm sure you'd be able to come up with plenty of examples of books that do just that :(

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  6. I'm writing a series of posts about this, actually-- the empowering and disempowering characteristics that can be found in romance novels, with particular emphasis on the potential for and the role of internalized sexism. Part 1 is posted

    Thanks for mentioning this. I'll add a link here, to Part 1, to make it easier for others to find.

    Re the tensions you mention in that post between the "feminist community" and the romance community as regards expressing criticism of the genre, have you seen the articles in Paradoxa (1997) and the followup, in a 1998 volume of Paradoxa, by Kay Mussell and Tania Modleski? It was an episode in romance scholarship which demonstrated the kind of conflict that could arise when discussing the genre, even when many of those doing the discussing were women who openly identified both as feminists and as romance readers/writers. However, while many of the younger generation of romance scholars (many of whom were also romance writers) were claiming that the romance genre was feminist and empowering, Modleski (who identified as a romance reader, but not a writer) was expressing her concerns about some aspects of the genre. It's really obvious, despite the fact that all of the essays were written for publication in an academic journal, that feelings ran very high. And, as I said, that was a group which was identifying as both feminist and pro-romance.

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  7. It's hard for me to precisely pinpoint why I find most contemporaries old fashioned, but I do. Perhaps the generational divide isn't the right aspect to focus. Perhaps it is another aspect of the book, even the subtle promotion of ideologies that I don't agree with or find dated.

    I certainly wouldn't want to rule out the datedness hypothesis. I'm sure it's true with regards to some authors (in fact, it was one of the things mentioned about Betty Neels). It's just that (a) not all young people are the same and (b) in any case I'm not sure it explains all of the instances which jar.

    Your "promotion of ideologies" theory seems more convincing to me. I have the impression that the genre generally seems to try to avoid discussing politics and political issues, but yet (because most things are political one way or another: secret baby/abortion, billionaire tycoon/capitalism, makeover romance/beauty norms etc) it can indeed sometimes feel as though there's a "subtle promotion of ideologies."

    "I think what might make it worse is that the author intends identification or at least, commiseration. I don't think I would find it so jarring if the stories didn't feel as if they were attempting to speak to me."

    Yes, and I think this is a particular issue with romance reading because of the way we're expected to feel about the protagonists. Obviously not all readers have similar experiences with regards to identification but I nonetheless have the impression that, on the whole, the reader is supposed to want the central relationship to work, and to feel that the couple deserve their happy ending. And sometimes who's deemed deserving can seem to fit a particular profile which aligns with certain ideologies. In the Anne Mather I quoted from, it's made explicit that the career-focused, non-feminine woman (Laura) will not get the same reward as her feminine daughter (Tamsyn) who's prepared to drop out of college in order to be with her man:

    Laura found it all a little hard to take, Tamsyn realised. Her mother had never experienced the kind of love she [Tamsyn] and Hywel shared, although she thought Charles [Laura's second husband] genuinely cared for her [Laura].
    Tamsyn herself was ecstatically happy.
    (188)

    Or how about this view of the heroine as a woman who strikes the right balance (like Baby Bear's porridge), this time from Cathy Williams' The Italian's One-Night Love-Child, first published in 2009:

    Sandwiched between her intellectually gifted older sister and a younger sister whose radiant beauty had boys banging on the front door from the age of eleven, Bethany had happily occupied the middle ground, content with being reasonably clever and averagely, in her eyes, attractive. From her comfortable background position, she had been able to watch Shania, wrapped up in her elitist world of books and heavily intellectual boyfriends, and Melanie, prancing from one dishy guy to another and changing them with the sort of regularity that other women changed outfits. (15-16)

    Am I the only one who detects more than a hint of anti-intellectualism in the characterisation of Laura and Shania?

    I don't think I would find it so jarring if the stories didn't feel as if they were attempting to speak to me.

    Exactly. To go back to Laura and Shania, it's probably not a surprise that I'd feel I have quite a bit in common with them, and yet the authors don't seem to present those characters as admirable in any way. So I'm the real reader, but I don't feel like the intended reader.

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  8. "What's sad is that you see modern romance readers who clearly hold and promote anti-feminist beliefs even more insidious than you've described here. These books don't come close to the nastiness of blaming rape victims for their own rapes"

    Ann, did you have in mind the recent comments by AAR Rachel and others on the same thread?

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  9. Exactly. To go back to Laura and Shania, it's probably not a surprise that I'd feel I have quite a bit in common with them, and yet the authors don't seem to present those characters as admirable in any way. So I'm the real reader, but I don't feel like the intended reader.


    I think this confirms a larger problem for me in romance, one that is not exactly feminist or anti-feminist or even necessarily about internalized sexism. It overlaps with those things but I think it might have as much to do with a broader cultural ideal than any one of those things. Namely, mediocrity. That passage you quoted from above pretty much sums it up. A heroine cannot be too anything (except occasionally too beautiful). Maybe this is why I have the issue with the swearing. By having heroines who pointedly do not swear ("Oh Fudge!") there's an implicit commentary about vulgarity.

    And I would agree with you about anti-intellectualism. I think there is a very strong strain of it, especially in the United States and I would say that it is very much connected to mediocrity and ideas about being middle class. I haven't worked this out, but essentially I believe that there is connection between mediocrity, the middle-class, and anti-intellectualism.

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  10. What struck me first is how *Victorian* that Delinsky passage sounds. I'm thinking of someone like Sarah Stickney Ellis, who wrote that women's most important work was in the home, but herself was a popular writer, founded a school, did missionary work with her husband . . . . There seems to be some hypocrisy here. Anyone who has written as many best-selling novels as Barbara Delinsky has (even in 1990) has surely devoted a lot of time to her career, yet she managed to have a husband and children too, even while suggesting her life trajectory was impossible or undesirable for other women. This is a very common 19th century pattern. It's pretty disheartening seeing it still around in the 21st. But then, I am a spectacle- wearing American college teacher who sometimes feels intellectually superior to her spouse, so what do I know?

    I think Angela is right to imply, as she does, that chick lit often feels more modern than contemporary romances. Chick lit heroines have jobs, however crappy, career aspirations, and friends. Romance heroines (especially in shorter categories) have love. One reason I've enjoyed Nora Roberts' Bride Quartet novels is the dedication the heroines show to their work, even though it is the wedding industry. (I am 42 and a lot of contemporary heroines feel old-fashoined to me, too.)

    And I think there is *always* an implied ideology in the depiction of the romance hero/heroine, intentional on the writer's part or not. It is a didactic genre, even when not overtly preaching, in my view.

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  11. "A heroine cannot be too anything (except occasionally too beautiful)"

    And the beautiful ones are often unaware of it or think their beauty is flawed. The heroine of the Kendrick novel I quoted has a sister who's a model, "But even Amber - her gorgeous model sister - had once told her that there wasn't a woman in the world who was completely happy with her bottom!" (121).

    It reminds me of something Amanda Hess wrote recently about "The Work of Making Femininity Look Effortless":

    It seems to me that a good deal of a “woman’s work” actually lies in satisfying these contradictions over what a “woman’s work” should look like. She must make men see an effortlessly beautiful woman, without revealing any of the work that went into the effortlessness. But she must also tip her hand to other women, to let them know that she’s not upsetting the order of things. In this sphere, no amount of work is good enough; women must all work very hard to reach the ideal, but also perpetually situate themselves as failures (”I’m so ugly!”) in order to validate other women.

    I have the impression that this dynamic is often at work in romances because romances reflect this aspect of many women's lives.

    One novel I read recently which was really fascinating in how it explored gender/beauty/misogyny was Janice Kay Johnson's Revelations (a Silhouette SuperRomance from 2004) because the heroine has always tried to behave like one of the guys to please her father, who wanted a son. This means that when the heroine makes changes to her appearance she's having to learn behaviours which seem natural in other women, but which are revealed by the novel to be learned. So the cultural and other work involved in femininity are laid bare.

    Regarding the question of work, the heroine's a police officer (and one who's acknowledged and shown to be good at her job). To solve a mystery, she has to acknowledge her father's misogyny and the level of misogyny among his friends (e.g. the way they took the man's side in cases of rape and domestic abuse, and/or abused their own wives and daughters). To be with the hero, the heroine does give up her job in the homicide and assault department, but she transfers to the Domestic Violence Intervention Unit, and the hero also transfers out of homicide and assault, in his case to join the Fraud department.

    And yet, the heroine does end up adopting a beauty regime which is shown to involve a lot of effort, and cost a lot of money. And this is what helps her to find a female friend and identify with other women. Which is quite a "revelation" in itself, I think, in terms of what it implies about the genre and the relationship between heroine and implied readers.

    I haven't worked this out, but essentially I believe that there is connection between mediocrity, the middle-class, and anti-intellectualism.

    As someone from the UK, I don't really understand the US class system. I've got the impression, from reading comments and posts that Americans make re what's "classy" and what's "trashy," the comments that are made when someone running for President mentions arugula, and from reading romances in which one or other of the protagonists is from "across the tracks," that class is actually quite important in the US (and it also intersects with race). But at the same time, quite a few Americans seem to vehemently deny that class even exists in the US. Which is something I've felt is reflected in Regency-set romances written by Americans, in which an American character appears and shows him/herself to be no respecter of class hierarchies.

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  12. "I'm thinking of someone like Sarah Stickney Ellis, who wrote that women's most important work was in the home, but herself was a popular writer, founded a school, did missionary work with her husband . . . ."

    Would Phyllis Schlafly be a more recent example? According to Wikipedia

    Critics of Schlafly have emphasized an apparent contradiction between her advocacy against the ERA and her role as a working professional. Feminist activist Gloria Steinem and author Pia de Solenni, among others, have noted what they consider irony in Schlafly's role as an advocate for the full-time mother and wife, while being herself a lawyer, editor of a monthly newsletter, regular speaker at anti-liberal rallies, and political activist.

    Re

    Chick lit heroines have jobs, however crappy, career aspirations, and friends. Romance heroines (especially in shorter categories) have love.

    I sort of agree with you, but at the same time I think that lots of romance heroines do have friends and careers, even in category romances. The Janice Kay Johnson heroine I mentioned above has both, for example (at least by the end of the novel).

    I feel I should preface this by admitting that I haven't read much chick lit, but the reason I agree with you is that I have the impression that in romance a heroine's friends and career probably do tend to fade into the background more than they do in chick lit novels. I suspect this may be, at least in part, because romances are centered round the development of a romantic relationship and it takes centre stage, whereas chick lit seems, to my admittedly rather ill-informed mind, to be much more focused on the heroine and various aspects of her life.

    It's not just the friends and careers of romance heroines which get relegated to a lesser status by romance's focus on the central relationship: romance heroes usually have careers, and may have friends, but often they're not given a lot of space either. Jan Cohn suggests that

    putting the hero to work is not a simple matter. On one side lie all the cultural values inhering in male work and male success; on the other, the ways in which work threatens the fantasy resolution of romance fiction, which promises the heroine a full-time husband and lover. (42-43)

    I wouldn't want to lose sight of the "implied ideology in the depiction of the romance hero/heroine," but I do wonder if one could argue that the genre's very form, its centering of the love relationship, reflects the nature of the early stages of falling in love: in many ways the narrow focus on a single person and a single relationship does reflect the kind of obsessiveness that can arise when someone falls in love. A person who falls in love doesn't automatically lose all their friends and their careers, but friends and career can suddenly assume much less importance in their thoughts.

    ---

    Cohn, Jan. Romance and the Erotics of Property: Mass-Market Fiction for Women. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1988.

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  13. "Ann, did you have in mind the recent comments by AAR Rachel and others on the same thread?"

    I thought it was fairly obvious that was exactly what I referred to.

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  14. "I thought it was fairly obvious that was exactly what I referred to."

    It did seem so to me, but I thought I'd better double-check, just to be absolutely sure. And since not everyone follows all the online romance controversies, this way I've put in a couple of links for anyone who wouldn't have understood what you were referring to.

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  15. As L. Vivanco comments, the necessity of having a relationship central to romance fiction, so infuses it with "biological imperatives," it's a surprise to me that feminist issues even get lip service. Mating dances, by their very nature, suggest a culmination that brings traditional biological roles to he fore, and almost insist that one or the other of the genders will "labour to be beautiful" in order to get asked to participate.

    dick

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  16. "As L. Vivanco comments, the necessity of having a relationship central to romance fiction, so infuses it with "biological imperatives,"

    Dick, I did mention that romance has a "focus on the central relationship" but I didn't say anything about that infusing the genre with "biological imperatives." As you know, there are romances in which the protagonists explicitly state that they will not be having children.

    so infuses it with "biological imperatives," it's a surprise to me that feminist issues even get lip service.

    Dick, this makes me wonder if you have a rather limited idea of "feminist issues". Reproduction is an area of human activity which has received a lot of attention from feminists.

    "Mating dances, by their very nature, suggest a culmination that brings traditional biological roles to he fore"

    When you use the adjective "traditional," doesn't that imply there's some cultural element involved?

    "almost insist that one or the other of the genders will "labour to be beautiful" in order to get asked to participate."

    Firstly, human beauty ideals have varied across time and place, so there's a cultural component to them. Secondly, beauty (e.g. a peacock's tail feathers) is only one of the ways in which an animal may demonstrate its fitness to a potential mate. Humans are pretty complicated creatures, and so lots of factors other than beauty come into play when we make decisions about reproduction.

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  17. As usual, this discussion is going off in so many different, interesting directions.

    1. Laura, you're right, I'm exaggerating, and your point about falling in love making friends and work temporarily fade into the background, and romance reflecting that, is a good one. Still, I think many romance heroines--and heroes--are oddly isolated, with no good reason given. How about at least an off-hand reference to friends? Who want to know why you're never free? Is it because you're shagging Mr. Alpha in all your free time? The worst is the high-powered hero or heroine (pro athlete, lawyer, corporate honcho, or, come to that, Regency duke) who never seems to have to do any actual work. How can they stay up all night making love when they've got to be in court or the boardroom bright and early the next day? Don't these people sleep? It's one mark of a good writer, I think, to leaven this fantasy with some reality (and I'd agree Johnson is a good one. That book sounds fascinating).

    Yes, Phyllis Schlafly is a good example of what I mean. There are a number of younger conservative figures at whom the same criticisms could be levelled.

    2. Dick, these "biological" questions are precisely where our feminism became more than an abstraction for me and my peers. When we fell in love, we had to confront all kinds of questions: would we marry? have children? adopt traditional gender roles in our marriages, and to what extent? would one or both partners make career sacrifices, and if so, whom? Sure, there's a biological element to these choices (more than I was willing to acknowledge before I actually bore children myself), but they are choices, not foregone conclusions. These are real questions for modern couples, and not just high-powered ones. I'd like to see contemporary romance couples confront and negotiate them more often. I find it hard to suspend disbelief in those who don't. Because for me, part of love has been negotiating and compromising on these issues, BECAUSE my husband and I love each other.

    3. This ties in to Angela's excellent point about the "average" nature of so many heroines. It's precisely average people (as opposed to Italian billionaires and their bought brides) who have to worry about this stuff. So why don't more of them?

    4. Of course Americans have class, despite our apparent fantasy that we are all both middle-class and class blind. And fat is definitely a class issue here (surely similar in UK?). Richer, better-educated people are likely to be thinner. Probably because they have better access to, and money for, healthy food and safe places to exercise. The dearth of grocery stores in poor inner-city neighborhoods, for instance, is well-documented. If you can only feed yourself from 7-11 and McDonald's . . .

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  18. As an American, one of the problems I've encountered often (though not here!) with people from other countries is this assumption that they somehow understand American-ness because we export certain aspects of our culture abroad through music, chain restaurants, corporations, etc. etc. But they don't because those aspects are only half the story of American identity.

    As you pointed out, Laura, class identity is America is confusing, to say the least. Despite the power of our Federal Gov't, we are not a centralized nation like say, France. There is a real regionalism in the US. More than that, I think that the anti-intellectualism is actually a misguided antagonism towards hierarchy and class. Most Americans identify themselves as middle class despite their income. Moreover, earned income--that is wealth that has been made not inherited--is what is prized. I think that Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism really nails a lot about American class culture.

    I also agree with Elizabeth, concepts of beauty and class are so linked in this country. Along with race. My grandmother, who was born in America but whose parents were Sicilian, did not think of herself as white. She was also obsessed with maintaining a clean house--they were poor but they weren't trash.

    As for beauty, well that's complicated. For myself, I love glamor and have a lipstick fetish. And I know for some women dressing is an aesthetic pleasure. Where I think beauty becomes problematic goes back to my idea about mediocrity and your point, Laura, about having to balance between the ideal and hating yourself. This to me is best articulated by the show What Not To Wear. When the women--and they are overwhelmingly women, despite the fact I know more men who are in desperate need of this program--get makeovers, they are homogenized. This doesn't seem so bad when the person on goes from being kind of dowdy to dressing well. But when the person clearly is just odd, it always seems sad to me. As if by making them over, they are eradicating the person's own personal style and aesthetic sense not in the name of beauty but in the name of good taste. And good taste is always bland. I think really beauty is always startling and somewhat disturbing. Homogeneity helps to sublimate that power and I'm not sure if it is for the benefit of other women alone. I think too beautiful women are just as disturbing to men.

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  19. And fat is definitely a class issue here (surely similar in UK?)

    According to the Poverty Site, in England

    * 23% of working-age people are now obese. This is a much higher proportion than a decade ago (18%).
    * There no obvious relationship between obesity and income. The groups with the lowest levels of obesity are poor men and rich women.
    * There is no obvious relationship between obesity and social class.
    * In England, the proportion of working-age people who are obese is lowest in London.


    According to a report from the Scottish Public Health Observatory

    The regional data from SHS (Scottish Health Survey) 2003 [...] show essentially no difference in obesity prevalence which can be related to social, educational or geographical factors. [...] There is some suggestion of a social class gradient in children

    ----
    "As an American, one of the problems I've encountered often (though not here!) with people from other countries is this assumption that they somehow understand American-ness because we export certain aspects of our culture abroad through music, chain restaurants, corporations, etc. etc."

    Angela, if I were to judge the US by what I read in romance novels, I'd have to assume that most American men are ranchers, cops, SEALS or business tycoons (who are all very large and handsome). Somehow, though, I'm a little doubtful that this can really be the case ;-)

    "Despite the power of our Federal Gov't, we are not a centralized nation like say, France. There is a real regionalism in the US.

    I don't know a great deal about France, but "The introduction of regional elections and regionalisation of some political and administrative powers, a scheme presented by President Mitterrand in 1981 and implemented in 1986, was a break with a tradition of centralisation" (Schrijver 171). If you follow that link, there's a whole section about French regionalism, and regional identities (with particular mention of regional movements/sentiments in Corsica, the French Basque Country, Brittany, Alsace and Occitania.

    ---
    Schrijver, Frans. Regionalism after Regionalisation: Spain, France and the United Kingdom. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.

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  20. @L. Vivanco: Sorry. Syntax got me into trouble. I meant: As L. Vivanco comments, romance fiction requires a relationship central to the story; in my thinking, that relationship so infuses...."
    I think, though, that at least 90% of romance books eventually end with the implication that children will follow, and that's often so even when the one or more of the protagonists have stated they do not wish children. In fact, that pregnancy occurs despite intentions often supplies part of the conflict--or all of it, as in Howard's "Sarah's Child."
    Well, by "traditional" I meant both biological and traditional.
    And you're right of course. Just exactly what is included in "feminism" is difficult to pin down, for it varies from feminist to feminist. But I think central to it is as much equality as possible between the genders. I'm not sure that romance fiction, because of the genre restrictions, lends itself well to touting that idea.
    I don't think it really matters that ideas of attractiveness are cultural and temporal. The point is that a relationship implies attraction based on something one or both do to create it. In human relationships, as romance fiction takes great pains to indicate, the attraction is beauty. Even the heroine will often comment on the hero's "beauty."

    dick

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  21. Dick, I don't get this logic:

    "But I think central to [feminism] is as much equality as possible between the genders. I'm not sure that romance fiction, because of the genre restrictions, lends itself well to touting that idea."

    For real life women I know, (heterosexual, at least) romantic relationships are one of the main areas in our lives where we explictly confront and negotiate issues of equality, reciprocity, and gender roles. Equality doesn't have to mean sameness. It does mean we don't assume the wife will quit her job to raise the kids. It means the marriage isn't based on the idea that one partner's desires, wishes, goals in life trump the other's.

    Recently I've read at least 3 historicals where the heroine's desire for an "equal" relationship is explicitly stated, and the HEA requires the hero to accept that (in these cases, that means not needing to protect her, letting her risk her safety to help him accomplish some task--it's an equality of respect and trust rather than of rights or opportunities). This is rather anachronistic, perhaps. But it makes these novels seem more "modern" in some ways than some contemporaries I've read in which these questions never come up (and it's precisely the biological "imperative" of having children where it should).

    I'd find it a lot easier to believe in the HEA of, say, an FBI agent and a US attorney, or a lawyer and a baker/wedding-planner who works a lot of nights and weekends, if they MENTIONED the fact that maybe their plans for marriage and children will require sacrifices from one or both. I can't help thinking there are some big fights ahead for these couples because they're ignoring these questions. So I end up wondering if the author expects me to assume that one day Ms. Career will happily dump it all to have Mr. Hero's babies. I don't think the genre conventions require that assumption. Romance in real life doesn't. And there are some contemporaries I'd like a lot better if they didn't implicitly and often rather unbelievably embrace those traditional roles in their HEA. (By "unbelievably" I mean that if you give me a character who loves her career, I don't believe that deciding how to go about having and raising kids won't be a difficult question for her).

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  22. @Elizabeth:
    Actually, I agree with the gist of your second paragraph.

    But, the relationships in most of the romances I've read are at base descriptions of mating dances, biological urges in action. The entire thrust of the story is to somehow, someway, get the h/h together as a unit. In the greater majority of instances it is either implied without much subtlety or directly stated that the unit will reproduce. Even in those instances when the conflict develops from a contest of some sort between the hero/heroine as in the examples you mention, that end is implied. The genre seems bound to that basic biological sequence. In that sequence, equality of male and female isn't possible, is it?

    dick

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  23. "In human relationships, as romance fiction takes great pains to indicate, the attraction is beauty. Even the heroine will often comment on the hero's "beauty."

    Obviously many people do find physical beauty attractive, and many romance protagonists are physically beautiful, but there are also plenty of characters in romance who aren't considered beautiful by anyone except the person who's in love with them. And even in some of those cases that person may begin by not thinking their soon-to-be-beloved is beautiful. One famous example is Darcy's initial comment about Elizabeth being "tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me." It would seem that in those cases, it's love that causes the beloved to be perceived as beautiful, rather than the beloved's beauty causing the love.

    the relationships in most of the romances I've read are at base descriptions of mating dances, biological urges in action.

    The descriptions are not simply about biological urges. They're about how those biological urges are expressed in particular personal and cultural contexts. And that means that some of the relationships depicted may involve more, or less, equality than others.

    The entire thrust of the story is to somehow, someway, get the h/h together as a unit. In the greater majority of instances it is either implied without much subtlety or directly stated that the unit will reproduce. [...] The genre seems bound to that basic biological sequence. In that sequence, equality of male and female isn't possible, is it?

    It seems to me that perhaps your understanding of the word "equality" is different from mine or Elizabeth's. If equality is understood as "an equality of respect and trust" then there are many, many things about courtship, sex, marriage and co-parenting which can be arranged in different ways, to suit the two individuals involved, rather than to merely suit gender norms or "traditional" ideas about marriage and family life.

    "Equality," does not, to my mind, imply ignoring real differences such as the fact that someone who lacks a uterus is highly unlikely to be able to gestate an embryo/fetus inside their body. Equality should mean that the possession or lack of a uterus does not shape assumptions about actions which are not determined by the possession or lack of a uterus. For example, women are no less or more capable than men of proposing that a couple get "together as a unit."

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