Call for Papers: Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica

From Jonathan Allan and Catherine Roach:

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the journal Porn Studies focused on 

“Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica”

In “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different,” American feminist scholar Ann Barr Snitow laid the groundwork for what has become something of a perpetual debate: is the romance genre pornography? For nearly fifty years, scholars, commentators, authors, publishers, and readers have debated this question, and truth be told, after fifty years, opinions are divided and there is no clear consensus. In particular, some feminist scholars favour the relationship while others dismiss it as pejorative. This Call for Papers is interested not in answering the “is it or isn’t it” question but in thinking creatively about affinities between “porn studies” and “popular romance studies.” What fruitful relationship exists between these two fields of inquiry?

To this end, the Call for Paper seeks new approaches to an old and often antagonistic question. What if instead of comparing romance novels to pornography, the relationship was about the similar ways both genres are scrutinized, dismissed, and controlled? For instance, it is very common for concerns to exist about the potential harms of pornography to the viewer and society. Strikingly, the 1970 Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography includes lengthy discussions of pulp fictions, such as love stories with sexual content alongside the visual medium. The history of American censorship debates can be written alongside the history of popular romance novels. In 1973, Miller v. California appears only months after the first blockbuster romance The Flame and the Flower (1972). During the 1960s, newsstands became sites of potential crime. In 2024, “obscenity” debates have returned in the context of book banning, library wars, and battles over school sex ed curricula. Age verification for pornography is becoming normalized in various jurisdictions. How might these moves affect popular fiction, especially erotic fiction and popular romance? It is not difficult to imagine age verification as a requirement for access to sexually explicit fiction or queer romance—or indeed to texts that challenge heteronormativity, patriarchy, or white Christian nationalism.

 More details can be found here. The closing date is 1 December 2024.

A new book (on Ethel M. Dell) and other new publications

Riding The Tosh Horse: Ethel M. Dell, A Written Life by David Tanner, published by Brown Dog Books:

The largely forgotten romantic novelist Ethel M. Dell (1881-1939) published alongside Rudyard Kipling and other literary giants but was vilified by George Orwell and P.G. Wodehouse among many. Ethel was a recluse, and actively avoided marketing herself as a personality in any way, but her formula was successful. She reached a very large audience publishing 98 titles and earning, at the height of her career, about £4M annually in today’s values. Her plots included a popular and heady mix of heterosexual, implicit same-sex relationships, sexual deviances, gratuitous violence, death and exoticised notions of Empire and masculinity. The veneer of Ethel’s plots was used to communicate her philosophies, her views on life and on her family.

Although being publishing alongside literary giants she did not receive establishment acceptance because of her style and no doubt envy of her substantial earnings. With an escapist and non-literary appeal to a lower middle class reader universe Ethel used a very successful multi-media marketing strategy with magazine serialisation, hard copy books, film, theatre and radio to reach this audience in the UK, the United States, Europe and the British colonies.

A forerunner to Mills and Boon’s success Ethel was very influential in setting the scene for mass market romantic fiction. Barbara Cartland stated that Ethel was her greatest influence.

Befeler, Paige (2022), LGBTQ(NA), Queer New Adult Fiction: The Emergence of a New Genre and Its Impact on the LGBTQIA+ Community. Thesis for Honors in Comparative Literary Studies, Wellesley College.

 

Kluger, Johanna (2024). "'On Thursdays We Shoot': Guns and Gender Binaries in Regency Romance Novels". Ladies in Arms: Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture. Ed. Teresa Hiergeist and Stefanie Schäfer, transcript verlag. 163-179. [The whole volume is available for free at the link given.]

 

Kluger, Johanna (2024). "Post-Trump masculinity in popular romance novels." Neohelicon. Online First. Open access.

 

Parnell, Claire (2023). "Algospeak and algo-design in platformed book publishing: Revolutionary creative tactics in digital paratext to circumvent content moderation." Paper presented at AoIR2023: The 24th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Philadelphia, PA, USA: AoIR. 

 

Pérez-Fernández, Irene (2024). "Black British love matters: Asserting the transformative power of love in Bolu Babalola’s Love in Colour: Mythical Tales Around the World Retold". Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Online First. Open access.

Ripoll Fonollar, Mariana (2023). Wording deeds: the figure of the suffragette in contemporary british fiction, Universitat de les Illes Balears. [This is a thesis which is not freely available. The abstract can be found here.]

New Publications: Brazil, Nigeria, Scholarship, Resisting Objectification, Politics, Readers and Marketing

Andrade, Roberta Manuela Barros de, Erotilde Honório Silva, Ricardo Augusto de Sabóia Feitosa, and Thiago Mena Barreto Viana, (2020) Um século de romances de amor: A trajetória da literatura sentimental no Brasil (1920 - 2020). [Details here.]

Haruna, Alkasim Kiyawa, 2021. "Female Readers as Literary Critics: Reading Experiences of Kano Market Romance Fiction." International Journal of English and Comparative Literary Studies 2.1: 34-45. [More details here.]

García Fernández, Aurora and Paloma Fresno-Calleja, 2020. “Competence, Complicity and Complexity: Hsu-Ming Teo on the Pitfalls and Nuances of Reading and Researching Popular Romance.” Raudem, Revista de Estudios de las Mujeres 8: 261-280. [More details here.]

Kolmes, Sara and Matthew A Hoffman, 2021. "Harlequin Resistance? Romance Novels as a Model for Resisting Objectification." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. [This was online first, so the year may change and I don't have volume or page numbers for it. It is available for free here.]

Michelson, Anna, 2021. "The politics of happily-ever-after: romance genre fiction as aesthetic public sphere." American Journal of Cultural Sociology. [This was online first, so the year may change and I don’t have volume or page numbers for it. More details here.]

Nibafasha, Spes, 2020. “The politics of the popular: Definitions and uses of African popular fiction.” Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 2.4. 59-75. [More details here.]

Reyes, Daisy Verduzco, Annika C. Speer and Amanda Denes, 2021. “White Women and Latina Readers’ Ambivalence Toward Fifty Shades of Grey.” Sexuality & Culture. [This was online first so the year may change and I don’t have volume or page numbers for it. More details here.]

Saxena, Vandana, 2021. “Afterlives of Colonialism: Nostalgia, Reader’s Response and the Case of Noel Barber’s Tanamera.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. [Also online first, so I’m not sure if the 2021 date for it will change. It seems to be open access, so should be freely available. The novel discussed seems to be both a romance and a "saga" due to its length.]

Sutton, Denise Hardesty, 2021. “Marketing Love: Romance Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990.” Enterprise & Society. Online First. [More details here.]

Hoping 2021 is better than 2020

Romance is, after all, a genre of hope and

To cope with all the feelings of uncertainty that 2020 has brought, many have been turning to one place guaranteed to bring a happy ending and sense of optimism: romance novels.

Sarah Wendell, an author, podcaster, and co-creator of the romance community blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, has seen a 75% surge in traffic on her website since the pandemic began in March. Her site was so overwhelmed, in fact, that she had to upgrade to a new server. (Copeland)

Carolyn Copeland's article at Prism also offers a roundup of some of the romance activism that took place in 2020, most notably "Romancing the Runoff" which I haven't mentioned on the blog so far, I think, but which ought to be recorded here for posterity. It got a lot of coverage (including in the New York Times, but I couldn't read that because it was behind a paywall), and I've collected some of the items written about it below:

Bustle, Lily Herman, 24 November 2020

Entertainment Weekly, Maureen Lee Lenker, 25 November 2020

Jezebel, Kelly Faircloth, 25 November 2020

Newsweek, Katherine Fung, 25 November 2020

The Guardian, Lois Beckett, 25 November 2020

Kirkus Reviews, Michael Schaub, 27 November 2020

Slate, Rachelle Hampton, 7 December 2020

Vogue, Elena Sheppard, 8 December 2020

Just for the record, the last reference I saw to the total amount raised was (as of 17 December) $475k

I can't believe donations are still trickling in, BUT THEY ARE! We have hit $475k, which is the most amazing number. We are overwhelmed, overjoyed, and cheering on our Georgia friends as they get out to vote!

You can still contribute at https://t.co/1JdTr4U31F! pic.twitter.com/ZMbfbaoIfx

— Romancing the Runoff (@RomancingRunoff) December 17, 2020

Another thing I forgot to mention earlier in the year (but which maybe someone would like to contribute to as part of a New Year's Resolution) is that the Journal of Popular Romance Studies now has a new section.

This section will be a Notes and Queries section. It is meant to create a more immediate dialogue on issues and trends in the field. Moreover, it offers the opportunity for our community of scholars to share insights on aspects of popular romance that would not fit the scope and requirements of a more traditionally published academic article, but nevertheless, cultivates our shared knowledge and furthers our research.

You can find out more about it here. So if you have insights to share with romance scholars, please consider submitting to JPRS. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes up in the new section in 2021.

Racism and the Corporate Romance Buyer: a "little fiasco" involving Sue Grimshaw

Laura Vivanco

There's been a lot of discussion about readers and publishers and who has the greatest role in blocking the publication of particular books/preventing them becoming a success. There's also been discussion about how the RWA awards (which can help boost an author's career) might be shaped by racism and homophobia.

Recently, another type of player has been under discussion: the corporate book buyer. In particular, Sue Grimshaw. In 2007, Grimshaw was interviewed at Dear Author and the importance of her role was explained:

Sue Grimshaw is the romance buyer for BGI. She buys for Borders, Borders Express and Waldenbooks. Since she began her position with BGI, Ms. Grimshaw has increased romance book sales for BGI by 20%. She is a fan of the genre and is devoted toward getting the romance books into the hands of the romance buyer.

Can you share a little about how you came to be the buyer for romance for Borders?
Prior buying the Romance genre I bought for our non-fiction and children’s categories. Five years ago when our Romance Buyer left the company for a job in NYC, I jumped at the opportunity to interview for the position & thankfully got it! I am a voracious reader of the category and read anywhere from 3 to 5 books per week. I totally love the genre and enjoy seeing authors succeed.

What is your role as the romance buyer for Borders/Waldenbooks? I.e., what exactly is it that you do!
The merchandising structure in the company begins with the buyer who reports directly to a category manager, who manages various categories in a segment of our merchandising business. Each buyer has a seasonal/financial plan that they build and adhere to. The decisions are made by the buyer then supported by the category manager.
My position includes all of the responsibilities pertaining to buying: purchasing and marketing books, placement in stores, financial plans, industry support, which includes but is not limited to attending conventions and chapter group workshops. [...]

What books are you looking for to stock in the stores? Does it differ from region to region? How can readers affect what is stocked in their stores?
To put it simply, I am looking for books that I think our customer base would be interested in.

The next year "Sue Grimshaw, buyer for romances at Borders for the past 7 years, was awarded the 2008 Vivian Stephens Industry Award from RWA." Down in the comments section at Dear Author, though, strong concerns were raised about the practices at Borders and about Sue Grimshaw's role in upholding them, particularly the way that romances by African American authors/with African American authors were shelved not in the romance section, but in the African American section:

Black romance

April 10, 2008 @ 7:42 pm

Borders tolerates and puts forth some of the most racist industry practices towards black romance authors with no reason or rhyme for it coming from Grimshaw who has been directly queried about it by black romance authors.

and

AA response

April 16, 2008 @ 1:50 pm

Borders treats black romance authors as Southern black bus riders were treated several decades ago. Plenty of folks said blacks shouldn’t complain because lots of blacks got to ride buses down South. Lots of folks didn’t notice blacks had to sit in the back. Some could rationalize it that black bus riders didn’t want to sit up front with the other riders anyway. And what was the black’s problem? They were on the bus too (carry a lot of segregated AA romance).
Black authors writing romance aren’t considered romance authors by Borders, but put in a racial category of fiction. The romance specialists don’t deal with the black romance authors. Blacks are not a part of Border’s romance initiatives.

[I've truncated the comments, but you can follow the links to read them in full.]

Matters came to a head recently because Grimshaw was announced as an editor for Marie Force's publishing company. Thanks to Grimshaw's Twitter account, concrete evidence was available of the kinds of tweets Grimshaw "liked". This was not simply about one tweet: there was a consistent pattern to the tweets Grimshaw "liked." Grimshaw subsequently removed much of these from her timeline but Ella Drake has screenshots of just a few of the liked tweets, which she summarised as including "likes of "Trump's [...] tweets, ICE raids, articles calling Elizabeth Warren a hate monger".

On 16 August Marie Force announced that she and Grimshaw had parted ways:

However, Grimshaw remained employed as an acquisition editor at Suzan Tisdale's Glenfinnan Publishing and the bio there continues to stress Grimshaw's influence in romance publishing in a variety of roles:

["With more than a decade in the publishing industry Sue has done it all. From bookseller to buyer, acquisitions and developmental editor with a proven successful history of working with New York Times bestselling authors ensuring accuracy and quality of content, Sue knows what readers want to read. Now freelancing with Glenfinnan Publishing, Sue manages her own editing services at www.editsbysue.com."]

Concerns were then raised with Suzan Tisdale, who responded on 24 August with a video. I have transcribed this in full below. Although, as you can deduce from her comments at the start, Tisdale would no doubt prefer you to watch her video, I feel a transcript is useful for analysis and for those unable to watch/hear a video or who simply prefer text. I've inserted screenshots of commentary, followed by the text of those comments in square brackets.

Hi everybody, it's me, Suzan Tisdale and I decided to do a live video so that you could see my face, hear my tone of voice. Sometimes when we write things, you can write one sentence that can be taken twenty different ways by twenty different people and I want to try to avoid that. So this is regarding Sue Grimshaw and the little fiasco, I guess is what we could call it, that's going on regarding Sue. This all started because Sue liked a tweet by Diamond and Silk. Now, for those of you who don't know, Diamond and Silk are two lovely African American women who are conservatives and huge supporters of President Trump.

[LV: Just to provide more context, Diamond and Silk have their own show on Fox News: they are not simply a random couple of people (lovely or otherwise) with strong opinions.]

The tweet that she liked was one where Diamond and Silk were discussing white supremacy. Suddenly we've gone from "Sue Grimshaw is a great acquisition editor, congratulations Suzan, great decision you made bringing her on" to everyone, well not everyone, to some people, accusing her of being a racist and a bigot.

[Jayce Ellis notes that "Suzan pointed to *one* tweet by them as the genesis of this "fiasco" (her words). Not the ones by Pence, or C. Kirk, or any of the 700 that Sue Grimshaw deleted over the course of a night, but the one by Diamond and Silk. And she made sure to point out that they're African-American. Multiple times she referenced it. They're ganging up on Sue for liking a tweet from BLACK people. Can you even imagine it? We're so often in publishing accustomed to people using Blackness as a shield. Well, my Black friend said it's okay. Well, I'm married to a Black man and have Black kids so I can't be racist. And on and on. This time, Suzan used it as a cudgel."]

And I'm here to tell you that Sue is neither of those things and I know this is going to piss a lot of people off, and I know it is, but I felt compelled to do this. Sue is no more a racist or a bigot than I am.

[Jackie Barbosa: 'True, Suzan, true. It's just that you aren't NOT a racist. I'm sure you don't see yourself as one, though, which is why you don't think Sue is one, either.']

She is a conservative woman but not the kind of conservative woman that you might be conjuring up images of. The last time I checked, this was America, and we were all allowed our political opinions and Sue is a Christian, she has conservative leanings, but that does not mean that she's a skinhead or a member of the KKK or an antisemite or anything like that. OK.

[Inserted screenshot of a response by May Peterson, pointing out that 'What people like you keep failing to understand is that it isn’t skinheads, Klan members, etc, the extremists that you think of as “truly bad” that are the problem—the problem is nice, normal people who support harmful ideologies and systems of society.']

She's a lot like me. We have conservative fiscal values but liberal social values, OK. I just don't understand how liking a tweet by two African American women who were discussing white supremacy makes anyone a racist. And it's probably going to surprise a lot of you but I have liked some of Diamond and Silk's tweets, I have liked some of their videos, because I, I am open to all opinions, OK.

I am a fierce, fierce, independent. I have no political party and I don't like discussing politics, especially in today's current political climate. Now here is my personal opinion, just my personal opinion on politics: both sides, regardless of what letter's behind their name, want us, the people of this country, to hate and despise each other. It boils down to a couple of things: my team's better than your team, OK. The Republicans want you to think that Democrats want everybody to be able to run around naked and bark at the moon, in public, and whatever, they just want you to think that liberals are bad, bad people, who want, you know, excessive gun control and they want to become socialists and bla, bla, bla. The Democrats want you to think that the Republicans are evil and they want babies to starve. OK. So, they've pitted us against each other, and they only do that so that they can maintain all the power that they have accumulated over the years. So when we're hating on one another, and hating each other and despising whatever political views, you know, the other people have, we're not paying attention to them and all the crap that they're pulling.

[LV: Tisdale seems to have produced a conspiracy theory in which politicians on both sides of the US political system are intent on stirring up hate. Be that as it may (and bearing in mind that not everyone involved in this discussion is even from the US), party politics are not the issue here. As Janet Lee Nye has observed, "Problem is not being conservatives or Christians. The problem is a history of problematic behavior towards people of color."]

Each of us has a standard of conduct and morals that we live by. Each of us. And it is not up to me or anyone else to tell anyone that they're wrong for thinking or feeling the way they're feeling. It is not up to me or anyone else to tell anybody how they should live their lives. Unless they're hurting children or they're calling for the annihilation of a race or group of people. That's where I draw the line. Those idiots can flip and bite me.

[LV: Re "hurting children" it's possibly worth pointing out at this point that one of the screenshots of Sue Grimshaw's "likes" preserved by Ella Drake includes news of a raid by ICE.

Many of those detained had children, whose misery was recorded by the media. And since reference was also made to Grimshaw's Christianity, it may also be worth noting that 'Mississippi’s Catholic bishops joined with the state’s Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran bishops in condemning the Trump administration’s Aug. 7 raid on seven food processing plants in the state to round up workers in the country illegally. Such raids “only serve to … cause the unacceptable suffering of thousands of children and their parents, and create widespread panic in our communities,” the religious leaders said in an Aug. 9 statement' (Catholic Philly). More details of individual statements made by the religious leaders can be found here.]

So, as far as it goes for Sue Grimshaw, she is a lovely person and instead of calling for her head on a fricking platter, I would suggest that people try to get to know her better. There's a lot of misinformation going on out in the Twittersphere. Someone, I believe, said that when Sue worked for Kmart that she refused to buy books by authors of color. Sue didn't buy books for Kmart. She bought cosmetics.

[LV: As these tweets by Courtney Milan from 17 August demonstrate, it was Grimshaw's position as the romance buyer for Borders which was of concern.]

["Sue Grimshaw was the romance buyer for Borders, one of the biggest buyers for romance. She received the Vivian Stephens industry award for her work buying romance. She was capable of making a romance novelists’ career by putting their work front and center around the country. [...] And the corollary to being able to make someone’s career with favorable placement? Is the ability to break it by not buying the book at all.

We don’t know. We don’t KNOW. But for decades, Black romance authors heard there was no market for their work.

But we heard that in a time period when one of the major bookstores was being headed by a person where we now have serious doubts as to whether they could review their work. If you were not in Borders, you would not have a career."]

Now, as far as Glenfinnan is concerned, yes, Sue will remain an acquisition editor. When we receive a manuscript from anybody for Glenfinnan, we don't know who's written it, 98% of the time we don't know the author. It's just a blind submission. The only thing we look at, ever, is the manuscript. Is it beautifully written, is it funny, is it compelling, is it intriguing, is it written well? Those are the only things we look at, ever, under any circumstance: it's the manuscript.

[E. E. Ottoman observes that 'There is literally no single bigger red flag for me than a publishing professional claiming that they "only care about the quality of the writing" when talking about gatekeeping, systematic discrimination and diversity in publishing' and Jessica concurs, adding that 'This [is] dog whistle pitched language for "its not MY fault WOC aren't any good".]

If it is compelling and beautifully written or funny or intriguing or whatever, we move to the next step, which is reaching out to the author. And again, 98% of the time we don't know who that author is, we wouldn't have a clue what color of their skin is. It doesn't matter: what matters is the writing.

[Alisha Rai draws from her own experience to illustrate how "There is no such thing as a blind submission": "I heard this line a lot when I first started. But when I was submitting (my very marketable, it did pretty well when it finally was published!) first book in 2008, the repetitive feedback I got from NY was that I needed to change my character’s ethnicities and hide my own. I didn’t lead my sub with my ethnicity. I didn’t have an internet presence then. It was as blind of a submission as it could be. And yet SOMEHOW the acquirer could suss details like my name or the character’s races out! A mystery! So be wary of a publisher who says this. Maybe she means “We don’t know what color or orientation you are, so long as you write white and straight characters!” but that’s not a publisher you want. Or a publisher that can do their fucking job, which is selling your books.]

So I would ask everyone to please just take a deep breath and stop and look at the whole great big picture. Sue's not a racist and she is not a bigot. She is a really nice lady and I've talked to her lots of times.

And this is what boggles my mind: when I first made the announcement that Sue was going to be acquisition editor, not one person, not one person, came to me and said "Ooh, Suzan, that was a bad idea, did you know x, y, z". No-one did that, not one single person came to me and said anything bad about Sue. Suddenly, because she liked that tweet, suddenly, people are coming out of the woodwork saying "Oh, I've known for years that she was a racist and a bigot". Why didn't anybody come to me? If that was the honest-to-God's truth, why didn't somebody come to me? Nobody did. Not one single person. Because that's not true. It's just not true.

[Courtney Milan: "Uhhhh why is @SuzanTisdale gaslighting us? At this point people have talked about Sue’s editorial behind the scenes. I have heard from multiple people at this point that she explicitly had issues with race being mentioned in books."]

We are each of us entitled to our political opinions. Each of us. And gone are the days where we could have polite civil discourse to discuss politics. We can't do that anymore. The moment anybody opens their mouth with a political opinion, especially in the Twittersphere, there are a thousand people ready to jump on that individual and call for their heads to roll.

Sue is one of the nicest women that I have ever had the pleasure of working with or talking to.

Glenfinnan is important to me. We take all manuscripts. The only thing we're not taking right now is erotica, because I simply don't know how to market that. We will take LGBTQ books if, if, the story is compelling and beautifully written and a wonderful story, OK? We will take books by authors of color if the writing is beautiful, intriguing, funny, compelling, whatever. But we never look at those things. We don't care about your sexual orientation and we don't care about the color of your skin when it comes to writing.

[LV: There is, as OMGReads observes, a significant pause part-way through that sentence, between "color of your skin" and "when it comes to writing".]

What we look for are authors who can tell a great story. Because that's what it all boils down to: it's the story, it's the writing. And sometimes it is the message that the author is trying to get across. Those things are really, really important to us.

Now, I'm sorry if this is going to disappoint people that I'm not presenting to you Sue Grimshaw's head on a platter. I'm not going to do that. I think that we are all adults and we should be able to have these important conversations without getting upset. And again, this all boils down to the current political climate in this country, that has been this way for years and years and years. Both sides of the aisle want us pitted against each other. When you and I are taking time out of our busy day to argue about these things, to hate on one another, to despise on one another, again, we're not paying attention to what the actual politicians are doing. And that's what they want in this country. They want us hating each other. And I don't hate anybody. I don't. I hate paedophiles, I will tell you that. I hate paedophiles. Don't like skinheads. Don't like KKK members. I don't like anybody who wants to hurt a child or see the annihilation of a specific group of people. That I can't stand. That is when I will get up on the table and shout at the top of my lungs that these people are idiots. But Sue has done none of those things, absolutely none of those things.

[Courtney Milan: 'if your line of acceptability is “calling for the annihilation of a group of people” but you don’t have an issue with systematically excluding a race of people from bookstores and publishing contracts? Then you are DEFINITELY a racist.']

So that is my public response to the current outcry over Sue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I would be glad to have these discussions with you. But for now, Sue remains, until someone can show me something worse than her liking a tweet by Diamond and Silk.

That's all I've to say on that. I love all of you. I hope everyone has a great day and God bless each and every one of you. Goodbye!

---
That's the end of the video. I have checked the transcript repeatedly in order to ensure its accuracy, but I'm willing to listen to the video again if anyone spots a serious error.

---
Edited to add: For the sake of clarity, and because it has subsequently been mentioned on Twitter that when Grimshaw was a romance buyer for Borders this did not include purchasing African American romance, I thought it might be useful to provide a bit more information. Obviously I can't guarantee the accuracy of all this, since I'm reliant on what I could find online, but here is what's available via LinkedIn:

The dates of 1995-2011 (16 years) as Romance Fiction Buyer at Borders Group followed by a position as Category Specialist & Editor at Large at Penguin Random House (2011-2019) fits with information on the Penguin Random House website, on a page about

Sue Grimshaw, Category Specialist and Editor at Large, who celebrated her fifth year with the company on March 28, 2016!  Get the scoop on Sue by checking out her interview below:
Describe your role at Penguin Random House.
My title is Category Specialist and Editor at Large. I’m an acquiring editor for the digital division for the Loveswept and Flirt imprints and have also acquired for Bantam during my five years of employment.
Why did you decide to join Penguin Random House?
The first sixteen years of employment in the book industry were as romance buyer for Borders Incorporated.  A year before their closing, Scott Shannon contacted me asking if I’d be interested in working in a new division. The timing was perfect.

However, it seems that at Borders, the Romance Fiction Buyer was not responsible for African American romance. A comment here suggests that these novels were handled separately, by a Borders employee called Sean Bentley. Elsewhere, I've found reference to an article in the

May 2008 Romance Writers Report [...]. It was a decent article, but one thing in particular struck me and that is that “literary segregation” (not my term) is being practiced in the name of sales-without-data. [...] The article cites Sean Bentley (Borders Group International) as portraying several interesting things (his direct quotes will be in “” marks; otherwise, I’m just quoting the article):

Most Borders stores shelve fiction and nonfiction books by and about black people in an African American section…Bentley says the exception to the rule is science fiction and thrillers by African American authors, since “their readers are more likely going to be looking for sci-fi or thrillers, rather than books that reflect their ethnicity.”

This gives more context to the comments by "Black romance" and "AA response" which I quoted at the start of this post. It's not got a direct bearing on the current discussion of Grimshaw's Twitter "likes" and Tisdale's response. However, it does paint a picture of a system, of which Grimshaw was an important part, which normalised the segregation of African American romances. Moreover, this history is important to bear in mind when Tisdale refers to novels being "compelling" and "intriguing", as though these are objective qualities. They clearly are not given that Borders' policy of shelving AA romance separately (particularly when it treated AA "sci-fi or thrillers" differently) demonstrates that AA romance was considered inherently not compelling or intriguing to white romance readers.

Diversity and Inclusion at RWA 2018

Diversity and inclusion were important themes of this year's Romance Writers of America conference. Avon have announced the creation of "The Beverly Jenkins Diverse Voices Sponsorship [...] to encourage Own Voices writers to be more fully represented at the RWA annual conference" in coming years. Prior to the event the RWA had announced that

In continuing its commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion within the organization and the romance industry, Romance Writers of America will hold its second Diversity Summit at the 2018 RWA Conference in Denver on Friday, July 20. The Summit is a meeting that gathers high-level publishing professionals, key contacts at major retailers, members of the RWA staff and Board, and selected committee and chapter leaders who are registered for the conference. A summary of the Summit will be provided to membership by August 6, 2018.

The Diversity Summit will once again be moderated by 2016’s Librarian of the Year recipient Robin Bradford. We'll be discussing the results of a survey RWA commissioned from NPD Book focusing on the buying habits of readers across ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation, as well as revealing initiatives within RWA to promote inclusiveness within our own organization and the industry. We will be inviting publishers to share their ideas, in-house initiatives, and ways in which RWA can be a resource for them.

Key speeches given during the conference were also indicative of the depth of the Board's commitment to "increasing diversity and inclusion".

The 2018 Librarians Day Luncheon Keynote Speech from award-winning author Sonali Dev (this is an audio file) called for librarians to think about the voices which have been silenced and pledge to help them to be heard, because librarians have power when they make decisions about which books to order for their libraries.

This is really important. We hope our library and archives colleagues take the time to sit and listen and then use our enormous power to take action. https://t.co/07YqewLXPj

— Browne Pop Culture Library @ BGSU (@BGSU_PopCultLib) 26 July 2018

LIBRARIANS!!!!! This amazing speech is for you. #CollectionDevelopment librarians, this is ESPECIALLY for you. https://t.co/En8EEoPnXL

— Robin ⚾️🍹🎼📚 (@Tuphlos) 26 July 2018

From something Dev says in the speech, I think it was given after Suzanne Brockmann's Lifetime Achievement Award Speech (link to a transcript on Brockmann's website) in which Brockmann recounted how, at the very beginning of her career, she was asked by an editor to make a gay secondary character straight. She acquiesced, but vowed that in future she 'would not write books set in a world where gay people [...] were rendered invisible, [...] erased “because that’s just the way it was.”' Brockmann also referred to current US politics.

The video below is of the entire awards ceremony. The section relating to Brockmann begins at 45:35 minutes (Brockmann herself appears just after the 56 minute mark).


Lisa Lin relates that "During her speech, I saw some who did not appear to react well, and I have seen some negative reactions on social media". Lin is among the many authors who have responded online in support of Brockmann's speech. Nicki Salcedo's response includes examples of how her writing has been marginalised:

Much of the feedback on my books was related to race. There weren’t comments on plot or pacing. No issues with dialogue or themes. The feedback was:

“We don’t have an African-American imprint at this time…”

“Your manuscript might find a better home with [insert publisher of Black books in completely unrelated genre]…”

“Are your main characters Black?” [I pondered this for a long time before responding and decided to say yes. I did not get another response.]

“I find your main character completely unbelievable…” [She was Black from an affluent family]

“We don’t know where to shelve your book in the store…” [With fiction? Or maybe romance? Just a guess…Or somewhere near the Colored People’s water fountain?] [...]

and then there's this, about the different ways the same novel was treated when Salcedo

removed all references to race in the novel. I did not revise or alter my manuscript in any other substantive way. All I did was make the main character “not Black.”

In 2012, that same manuscript became a Golden Heart Finalist. I wish I could say I was surprised. But I wasn’t.

I submitted my manuscript for the final round of judging and included my characters as I intended. Black, brown, and white. At the RWA National Conference, I sat in an appointment with an editor from a Big 5 publisher. She was a final round judge for the Golden Heart Contest. “I read your manuscript,” she said. “I hated it.” This is a direct quote.

Individual contest judges who are biased would seem to be an ongoing problem. This year, for example, Alana Albertson reported that her inter-racial romance received a very low score for the ending:

Received my RITA scores. 1 "judge" gave my interracial romance, Invaluable, 2.9 out of 10, and checked no to the question
Is the resolution of the romance emotionally satisfying and optimistic? The book ends with him proposing to her. Hmm #Rita #ritassowhite pic.twitter.com/hRpzWwSzMX

— Alana Albertson (@AlanaAlbertson) 2 August 2018

The RWA Board had already made changes to the rules governing the judging of the RITAs but these will only come into force next year:

OK, this is the new RITA judging rules for next year. It contains a warning that judges can be asked to explain their scoring, and possible consequences of up to lifetime disqualification from the RITAs (and, one hopes, from judging as a PAN member also). pic.twitter.com/He36DNbqiU

— KJ Charles (@kj_charles) 2 August 2018

RWA responded swiftly to concerns about this year's judging process with the following post:

RITA scores went out to entrants last night and we have heard the concerns of those who believe their entries were subject to biased judging.  ​This year, one of the major focuses of the RWA Board has been to evaluate procedures for the RITA Contest in light of the existence of bias among some judges. This bias results in an unfair scoring of books representative of marginalized populations, and harms the integrity of the award. ​At the July board meeting, the Board passed a new policy that we hope will allow patterns of biased judging to be identified and for actions to be taken against those judges if deemed necessary. [...]

While these policies only apply to the 2019 contest and beyond, we can begin documenting judging patterns this year. If an entrant feels their submission was judged unfairly due to invidious discrimination against content, characters or authors​, we ask that the entrant reply directly to the scoring email with this information. Deputy Executive Director Carol Ritter will review the complaint and will make a record of possible biased judging. These files will be carried over each year and if a pattern is identified, action can be taken as set out in policy.

It is the Board's goal to create a RITA Contest that allows for fair and equitable judging of all entries, and we hope the changes made put us on a path to that reality.

Call for Papers: PCA/ACA 2019

From https://pcaaca.org/area/romance

Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

17-20 April 2019 – Washington, DC

In response to the 2019 conference’s location in Washington, DC, the US capital, this year’s romance area will foreground the topic of popular romance and politics. Romance has arguably always been political, but recent years have seen political engagement in romantic spaces become more explicit.
We encourage you to define “politics” broadly, not simply as party politics in a particular national or regional arena, but also as the ways that power dynamics among social groups are reproduced or challenged, naturalized or destabilized, along such faultlines as gender, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, and class, among others.  In the world of romance, such politics often has to do with inclusion and representation.  Consider the pins Alisha Rai distributed at a recent author event, which proclaimed, “HEA belongs to everyone.” 
If we think about the romance “genre world” as a “social and industrial complex in which people work together to create and circulate specific types of texts” that functions at the industrial, social, and textual level (Fletcher, Driscoll and Wilkins 2018), we can see everyday politics in action at every level:  Which authors and works get published?  Who gets taught in college classrooms?  Who gets awards?
 Paper topics on this special theme might include the following:

• The politics of the popular romance novel, romantic comedy, or any medium involving romance
• The multicultural romance as antiracist pedagogy
• M/M romance and the straight female readership/viewership/etc
• Racial segregation in the romance industry
• Politicians, activists, and elections in popular romance
• The academic politics of studying popular romance
• Party politics and military romance
• Romance as resistance and romance writers/creators as activists
• Politics within the RWA or other writers’, creators’, or makers’ organisations
• Pushing historical romance beyond the straight, white, and narrow
• Making consent hot
• The dialogues between romance and specific social movements, such as #metoo
• Mapping politics among romance readers, viewers, consumers, etc
• The politics of publication and the current industrial status quo
• Romantic love in a time of political upheaval

If you are sick of politics, or simply want to pursue your own intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so. The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. We would like to emphasise that you do not need to write about romance novels to participate in this area (although that is obviously welcome!): the Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio; film; television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling.
We are deeply interested in popular romance both within and outside of mainstream popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world. Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, and any combination of the three are welcome: you do not need to be an academic to be part of the Romance area.
As we do every year, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field of Popular Romance Studies. All are welcome to attend. In addition, if you wish to organise a roundtable, special session, or a film screening, please contact the Area Chairs, Jodi McAlister and Heather Schell.

Submit 250-word abstracts to https://pcaaca.org/node/add/presentation by October 1, 2018

Paperback of Pursuing Happiness and Bonus Material

Laura Vivanco

Pursuing Happiness: Reading American Romance as Political Fiction is now available in paperback via Amazon (.com, .uk and others) and to celebrate I've put up some bonus material on my website.

It's a short discussion of just one category romance, which raises a lot of the issues I discuss in much greater detail in Pursuing Happiness.

Out Now! Pursuing Happiness: Reading American Romance as Political Fiction

Laura Vivanco

My new book is out at last! Here's the blurb:

The dominance of popular romance in the United States fiction market suggests that its trends and themes may reflect the politics of a significant proportion of the population. Pursuing Happiness explores some of the choices, beliefs and assumptions which shape the politics of American romance novels. In particular, it focuses on what romances reveal about American attitudes towards work, the West, race, gender, community cohesion, ancestral “roots” and a historical connection (or lack of it) to the land. The novels discussed include works by Suzanne Brockmann, Beverly Jenkins, Karin Kallmaker, Pamela Morsi, Nora Roberts, Sharon Shinn, Linnea Sinclair and LaVyrle Spencer.

"Pursuing Happiness explores the ways that popular American romance novels engage such matters as US gender roles, attitudes toward disability, the myth of the frontier, individualism and community, and racial violence and discrimination. A thoughtful study with a refreshingly topical focus.” — Prof. William Gleason, Princeton University, co-editor of Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?

“Pursuing Happiness is an insightful and entertaining look at the inherent, often invisible, politics that underlie America’s most popular genre of fiction.”— Isobel Carr, romance writer.

I've got more detailed information about each of the chapters here.

At the moment it's available in Kindle format from from Amazon  .ca, .com, .de, .es, .fr, .it, .uk, in paperback from Lulu and in pdf (and I think epub) from my publisher, Humanities Ebooks.

The paperback should become available from other booksellers in about six weeks or so.

New to the Wiki: Latvia and Bertlatsky

Laura Vivanco

In addition to the bibliography of academic articles and books, the Romance Wiki also has two pages for reporting of romance in the media (A-I; J-Z). I thought I'd mention a new item I added to that today, because it quotes Eric:

Why is romance such an easy target for politicians? Eric Selinger, a professor of English at DePaul University, and the academic adviser to the Popular Romance Project, pointed out that conservative politicians have been increasingly sceptical of funding for the humanities as a whole. Within the humanities, popular culture is seen as especially unimportant – and then: “Within popular culture, popular romance is a particularly tempting target because it has to do with women, it has to do with sex. It’s long been seen as a fairly trivial cultural enterprise.” [...]

In fact, the legislative antipathy to romance is an acknowledgement of its high cultural profile – and is therefore a kind of backhanded validation of the genre. Eric Selinger pointed out that politicians used romance as an example of government waste because any discussion of romance novels is sexy and arresting; it generates headlines. [...]

If romance matters enough to be an object of hatred and political manipulation, therefore, it seems like it should matter enough to be an object of study as well.

 

Berlatsky, Noah, 2016.

'Why books like Fifty Shades of Grey are worthy of study: Lawmakers are calling for Missouri academic Melissa Click to be fired – in part because she conducts research on romance novels, and the hypocrisy is revealing,' The Guardian, Friday 8 January 2016.[29]

Dreimane, Jana, 2015. 

"Authors, Publishers and Readers of Popular Literature in Latvia in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s." Interlitteraria 20.2: 56–70. Abstract Full text

The Politics of the Australian Rural Romance

Laura Vivanco

In a newly published article, Kylie Mirmohamadi argues that

A number of the literary themes and preoccupations of nineteenth-century Australian society and literature loom large in today ’s rural romances. The most significant of these shared concerns is with the idea of an Australian female type. Australian rural romances work to produce an image of a “typically” (and yet ideal) Australian heroine: hardworking, committed to community, resourceful and, when required, assertive, including sexually. Journalists point to the “ feisty ” and “ strong ” qualities of rural heroines. (9)

That might be called an observation on the gender politics of these novels. In addition, their

post-colonial context both informs and influences some of the recurring and dominant motifs of Australian rural romance. These include the idea of rural land as just inheritance, a site of belonging and home, and, importantly, a space for autochthonic place of return. The drama of the homecoming (or making) of the heroine and the coming together of the romantic protagonists, in other words, takes place against the background of larger, unresolved dramas of history still being played out in Australia.

Landscape in colonised countries is never innocent. It is discursive as well as material space, criss-crossed with competing claims of indigeneity and contested assertions of ownership. To write about land in such countries is to enter culturally loaded debates surrounding the questions of who owns territory, who can claim a belonging to it and how land should be used. (10)

------

Mirmohamadi, Kylie, 2015. 

"Love on the Land: Australian Rural Romance in Place." English Studies. Published online 19 Jan. 2015. Abstract

Funding for Studying Romance: "Unwarranted"

Laura Vivanco

Pamela Regis has described romance as "The Most Popular, Least Respected Literary Genre" (xi) and for years romance readers and authors have been mocked. Now, though, our genre is being used to attack Government spending.

I've been watching the story unfold over the past few months. On the 17th of December, under the headline "Federal government has spent nearly $1 million on romance," Yahoo News reported that funding for the Popular Romance Project had been

highlighted in the 2013 “Wastebook,” an annual report released by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that highlights taxpayer-subsidized programs that he argues are questionable or unnecessary, especially during a time when lawmakers are viciously debating spending levels and how to trim the nation’s $17 trillion debt.

The Romance Project is just one of nearly 100 programs targeted by Coburn’s report, which also includes a documentary on superheroes, promotion of a Green Ninja character to educate children about climate change, and a zombie-themed video game for math education.

Someone obviously has their doubts about the seriousness of popular culture (and possibly doesn't believe that climate change is happening). But what strikes me is that out of "nearly 100 programs," the one which gets the most attention involves romance. Presumably that's because romance is seen as a particularly frivolous subject.

Details of the "Wastebook" report were also published at The Blaze under the headline "Here Are the Top Six Most Ridiculous Things the Gov’t Spends Tax Dollars On." Their selection of programs was different but yet again, romance was on the list and Breitbart's Frances Martel decided to focus almost entirely on romance.

Romantic Times immediately attempted to stage a fight-back, with Elisa Verna arguing that

romance is important. It's important to readers, to the publishing industry and to how we connect with and make sense of our culture. It's important because it promotes female sexual agency in a positive way.

Specifically addressing the funding for the Popular Romance Project, Eloisa James was quoted as saying that

The National Endowment for the Humanities recognized the importance of documenting women’s lives [and] women’s industry. Documentaries are expensive … especially if you’re following people for three years. It’s a huge, huge project capturing an industry. The website is merely the vocal piece for what will be the film. It’s a very intellectual pursuit and study of a huge business.

On the 19th of December, however, Fox News was reporting "'50 shades of no': Critics slam taxpayer-funded romance novel website." While it included a rebuttal from the NEH, it also quoted Matt Philbin, managing editor at Culture and Media Institute's Media Research Center, who felt that "This is a perfect example of an unaccountable government arbitrarily wasting our money. A $1.4 billion private leisure industry obviously doesn't need federal assistance." Of course, it wasn't the whole of the romance publishing getting a subsidy, but I suppose that's just an inconvenient detail.

Debates about government funding will probably continue indefinitely but I had hoped that this would be the end of the story as regards the funding of the Popular Romance Project. No such luck.

At the end of January USA Today published an article by Windsor Mann: "Romancing Uncle Sam: Nothing is Too Stupid for Washington to Subsidize" and that article was quoted on 10 April 2014 when:

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, [...] released a letter sent to National Endowment for the Humanities acting chairman Carol Watson regarding certain projects her agency has funded, including an expansive “Popular Romance Project.”

Sessions asked the NEH to

identify any additional romance projects and the amount of funding for each project NEH has funded the last five years. In addition, please explain how these films or projects have deepened the understanding of the humanities or contributed to public support and confidence in the use of taxpayer funds.

I can't help but wonder if romance being used as a weapon to humiliate the NEH has potentially serious implications for popular romance scholarship.

-----
Adams, Becket. "Here Are the Top Six Most Ridiculous Things the Gov’t Spends Tax Dollars On." 17 December 2013. The Blaze.

Mann, Windsor. "Romancing Uncle Sam: Nothing is Too Stupid for Washington to Subsidize." 30 January 2014. USA Today.

Martel, Frances. "Feds Spent Almost $1 million on Romance Novel Website." 17 December 2013. Breitbart.

McKay, Hollie. "'50 shades of no': Critics slam taxpayer-funded romance novel website." 19 December 2013. Fox News.

Moody, Chris. "Federal government has spent nearly $1 million on romance." 17 December 2013. Yahoo News.

Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2003.

United States Senate Committee on the Budget Republicans. "Sessions Questions National Endowment For The Humanities Over Dubious Expenditures." 10 April 2014.

Verna, Elisa. "In Defence of the Popular Romance Project." 17 December 2013. RT Book Reviews.

Intellectual Freedom and the Politics of Reading: Libraries as Sites of Conservative Activism, 1990-2010

Laura Vivanco

I've just come across Loretta Mary Gaffney's thesis, Intellectual Freedom and the Politics of Reading: Libraries as Sites of Conservative Activism, 1990-2010. I thought I'd quote from it as a quick follow-up to my previous post about "mommy porn," and Smart Bitch Sarah's report from the fourteenth of May that,

as reported by Dianna Dilworth on GalleyCat: Brevard County Public Libraries in Florida have pulled their 19 copies of 50 Shades of Grey from the shelves.

Why?

HuffPo has a quote from Don Walker, a spokesman for the library, who said, "it's semi-porgnographic." The HuffPo article indicated that several other libraries in Florida had refused to purchase copies, but Brevard bought 19, then took them out of circulation, sending notices to the 200 or so people on a waiting list.

Library services director Cathy Schweinsberg told Florida Today: Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”

They may not have been asked to take it off the shelves in this particular instance, but Gaffney's thesis describes the socio-political context in which many US libraries make their decisions:

During the 1990s and 2000s, conservative activists not only appropriated libraries as battlegrounds for causes like antigay activism, but also incorporated libraries and librarianship into the issue base of the pro family movement. A collection of loosely linked, well-organized grassroots campaigns around issues like opposition to abortion and gay marriage, the pro family movement was a resurgence of conservative activism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that brought libraries into the culture wars crossfire. Pro family library challenges went beyond objections to particular materials in order to target library policies of open access, collection diversity, and patron privacy. Pro family activists also mounted an explicit critique of the American Library Association (ALA), opposing the ALA’s defenses of intellectual freedom for all ages and all types of media. These activists described their own struggle as a quest to wrest libraries away from the ALA and restore them to parental and taxpayer control.

Gaffney's thesis can be downloaded from the University of Illinois' digital environment for access to learning and scholarship (IDEALS). It focuses on young readers: "The reason their reading is monitored is, in part, because some adults believe the young are more vulnerable readers and will be irreparably harmed by 'dangerous' media without adult intervention" (5). Nonetheless, some of the metaphors invoked in debates about their reading are more widely applicable:

Catherine Sheldrick Ross’ analysis of turn-of-the-century library discourse on the “fiction question” reveals that there were two persistent metaphors used to describe reading: reading as eating, and reading as a ladder. The two metaphors helped librarians to establish their professional expertise as guiders and selectors of “healthy” reading, as well as to articulate a hierarchy or ladder of reading tastes. Sheldrick Ross’ study not only highlights a pivotal moment in the development of librarians’ emerging professional identity as reading experts, but also reveals that metaphors, far from being mere “stylistic flourishes,” are powerful ways of structuring our experience of the world as a way to “discover new meaning.” [...]

Sheldrick Ross’ study has two key insights that inform pro family models of reading. In the case of the “reading is eating” metaphor, particularly when it is combined with the ladder metaphor to establish a hierarchy of taste, it is far easier to tell a tale of passive readers than of active ones. And passive readers are more likely to need monitoring and guidance: if reading is eating, and eating can be nutritious, bad, or downright poisonous, then readers (particularly vulnerable and inexperienced ones) will need help to discern the good from the junk. It is easy to see why the “reading is eating” metaphor is so prominent in pro family discourse. The second insight from Sheldrick Ross’ study is how reading metaphors are used to dismiss and demean reading (and eating) for pleasure. Along this ladder of taste, the closer reading materials were to pleasure for its own sake, the lower they were on the ladder. A similar hierarchy structures how pro family critics understand youth reading as an overwhelmingly didactic exercise, either ignoring pleasure and aesthetics as part of the experience of reading, or viewing them with suspicion. (9-10)

It's not difficult to see how these metaphors would be applied to romances and romance readers and

In “Reading is Not Eating,” an extension of her groundbreaking research in Reading the Romance, Radway analyzes the “reading is eating” metaphor in order to reveal its role in broader social and cultural critiques of mass media. The eating metaphor not only creates a hierarchy of taste—with the “nutritious” reading at the top and the “garbage” that is bad for one at the bottom—but also structures our understanding of media consumption in such a way that the only response to “bad” reading is censorship: if readers consume or are consumed by mass media, then the only way to save them from degradation is to stop destructive forms of media from being produced in the first place. The passivity that the eating metaphor suggests makes it more likely that critics of mass culture will focus on “objectionable materials” instead of “…actually looking at specific encounters between
audiences and mass cultural products.”

Radway’s study of romance readers and her critique of the “reading is eating” metaphor have important connections to the politics of youth reading. As with female romance readers, the eating metaphor has been used to simultaneously dismiss the agency of young readers, make pleasure suspect, and cast the popular and mass media as the villain of the educational piece. (12)

The image was made available under a creative commons license by Mace Ojala (xmacex on Flickr).