Romancers and Raincoaters

Susie Bright

 

 

Recently, I attended a romance novel convention in St. Louis called the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention. I joked that I was going where pornographers fear to tread—but I was closer to the truth that I suspected.

I was asked to speak about erotica—an unprecedented invitation coming from an organization of romance writers. Even though romancers know that their genre is soaking in sex, the public impression is that romance is for ladies, while “erotica” is for hussies.

But the Romantic Hussies are getting brazen. Sex is what drives the romance field. That’s where I came in. I was on a panel with Robin Schone, M. J. Rose, Jacqueline Deval, and Laurel K. Hamilton.

Before I arrived, I quizzed Robin to explain the romance jargon to me. Romance writers have dozens of terms to describe their subgenres. There’s Sizzling, Spicy, Sensual, and Sweet—to name a few—and their meanings are just as distinct as the porn terms Gonzo, Pro-Am, and Classic.

Because romances are written so tightly to genre, and the predictability factor is so important to their buyers, their authors can’t overhaul their image too much. The explicitness of the sex scenes is the only wiggle room they have. Now that every sexual taboo has been broken, they’re a little anxious, because if they add any note of realism or literary feeling, their books won’t be “romances” anymore and the genre will crack. It already has.

When a woman buys a traditional romance, it’s like a hardcore porn fan buying a XXX video. She wants her money shot. She does not want distractions. She wants familiarity, she wants to connect with the childhood masturbatory feeling, as my friend and offbeat romanticist Pam Rosenthal so perfectly described it to me. I say this with the utmost sympathy, but fans would probably feel exposed by that description. Still, I believe romances are stroke books—they are not so much read as used. The tension between erotica and romance isn’t about sex; it’s about writing style. Romance publishers are dishing out hard core. Romances have fisting scenes, and gay couples as major characters. They are overt about interracial sex, rape, S/M, incest, and every other top-ten American taboo. Harlequin and other publishers are not shy about finding out exactly what their readers want; they’re notorious for their focus groups.

Let me examine one of these desires as an example: interracial relationships. Even though this is an exploding statistic in American life, interracial relationships are still frowned upon—to say the least. They are rarely discussed outside the alternative media. In the mainstream, there’s nothing except a few Hollywood celebrities who are held up as a lofty ideal. In real life, when it’s happening to you, there are confrontations with various racist hysterics and ultimatums from your family, who swear they’ll never accept you, never speak to you again, etc. etc. Of course, sometimes it works out for the best, but those of you with multicultural families know what I’m talking about! We are not supported by the mainstream media or institutions.

However, in Romance World, the heroine is frequently in bed with someone of a different color. White women with black men, and black women with white men—this is a hot ticket. This year, “Mr. Romance” was black and most of the attendees were white. The specialty line of romances marketed to black women is also filled with these couplings, which would be a total scandal in black literary circles. As in all romances, these love couplings occur in completely unrealistic stories where the beauty and nobility triumph—aided by pots and pots of juicy lust.

Another romance fetish is overt bondage and domination/ submission. Rape-like or forced sex is terribly popular. By comparison, “porno” has become more politically correct over the decades. The mainstream stuff that you see on cable TV avoids the above-mentioned taboos, and the videos that focus on such material keep as low a profile as the naughty romances do.

The next time you prepare to be scandalized by a degrading bimbofest in an X—rated DVD, please consider that the identical thing is being described, from a female perspective, in romances. It’s just that the objectification happens in the opposite direction.

You know how, in porn, the women’s bodies are the ones that always have to be perfect, while the men can be kinda droopy or overweight? In romance, it’s the reverse. The men’s bodies are all pumped; the women can be—whatever. Her imperfections are irrelevant, or sympathetic; but the hero has to be an oiled studmuffin. Fabio is Jenna is Fabio.

The biggest difference between my Best American Erotica and one of the “Sexxxy” romances isn’t the sex—it’s the style of the writing: literary fiction vs. genre. Every romance has a happy, monogamous ending, while Best American Erotica stories are more diverse, offering no such guarantee.

In the same way that sci-fi and mystery novels have become more psychological and complicated, romance—which has remained the infantile genre for the longest time—is maturing. Women still love their romances—the way they love their Barbie Dolls—but they’re buying other things now, too.

Romance readers are not remaining “monogamous” in their tastes; their reading interests are diversifying. Even the readers of inspirational (that is, Christian) romances read the sexy titles, too. Romance is losing readers to Chick Lit and to mainstream women’s fiction. Those readers are the types who are apt to like erotic literary fiction as well.

Military stories, thrillers, and mystery/PI/cop stories are making a big splash too—another example of fusion. The most interesting writers I interviewed were a group of female Vietnam vets who turned to writing. There were lots of PIs, cops, retired cops, cops’ wives, etc.

One exception to the Dowdy Look at the conference was the Goth-vampire crowd, which is openly into S/M. They were few in number but visible. Laurel Hamilton personifies this group. She appeared in a corset, accompanied by bodyguards who were also in corsets. She offered sex-positive encouragements one minute but made protective, conservative warnings the next. She is in favor of S/M explorations but against what she called “casual” sex. She is delighted to investigate kinky practices for her stories, but she warned her fans not to look at the Web pages she’d devoured in her research. I’ve never heard an author try to protect her fans like this before, while simultaneously titillating them. You’d never hear John Grisham tell his fans, “You’d better not look at the legal files I’ve seen; they’d be too much—but wow, I can’t wait to show you my racy version.”

I have no dispute with the romancers about sex—I appreciate their unapologetic fantasy life. It’s funny, no one finds it “dangerous” when women have taboo fantasies, only when men do. There’s this sense that women have realistic boundaries, no matter how cockamamie their fantasy life may be. But if a man reveals a taboo fantasy, everyone assumes that he’s about to run out and perform it.

No, what I found myself advising the conference was rather contrarian—it was about writing, not about sex. I urged the authors with ambivalence about writing romance novels to abandon ship—to abandon genre writing altogether. When these writers find themselves in struggles with editors and agents over “formula,” I’d ask them to realize the stakes. If they break with the formula, they’ll be better writers. There is no literary future in subservience to clichés. The commercial choice, to go with formulaic demands, may or may not prove to be a moneymaker. You can’t count on it. Frankly, I don’t know what path leads to superstardom in romance.

I do know this: if you write authentic, emotionally truthful, graceful prose, you won’t experience a moment of artistic regret—and you’ll have a reputation you won’t have to put a corset on to defend!