Why do I Write? Part 3
Specifically, why do I write romance? (I also write fantasy, but that’s a post for another day)
I’ve been thinking about this lately. There are a number of reasons, but a recent review article in The New York Review of Books made me consider it more deeply.
The authors of the books under review (Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex; Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers) don’t have a great deal to say that’s positive about young women’s experiences of sex or the role of social media in sexual objectification. Social media aside (yes, I know it’s huge, but I’ve only been on FB for a year or so and still don’t have a smart phone, and it didn’t exist when I was in high school…so I can’t say much about it), what struck me in the article was Orenstein’s conclusion: [girls have been trained] “to reduce their worth to their bodies and to see those bodies as a collection of parts that exist for others’ pleasure…to perform rather than feel sensuality.” The reviewer paraphrases the rest: “As a result, they are eager to be desired, but largely clueless about what their own desires might be, or how to satisfy them; they go to elaborate lengths to attract male sexual interest, but regard sex itself as a social ritual, a chore, a way of propitiating men, rather than as a source of pleasure.” (Zoë Heller, “‘Hot’ Sex & Young Girls,” The New York Review of Books, August 18, 2016).
Their conclusions about what characterizes girls’ and young women’s experiences of sex, which focus on male pleasure (the review only addresses heterosexual relationships), and the role of social media in informing understandings of sex, sexual pleasure, and relationships made me think about what most influenced my own thoughts and choices as a teen and college student.
Of course I was influenced by peers, parents, and media, BUT my media consisted almost solely of books. I read widely and eclectically and thus discovered a variety of relationships: love triangles, adultery, abuse, unrequited love, grand but destructive passion, and steadfast love, to name a few. Then I read my first romance novel: Seduction by Amanda Quick. After that romance became a staple. Looking back, though, I can see how these novels influenced my thinking about sex, desire, and relationships.
I thought about my own desires. I thought in terms of selfish and generous, and I made a decision early in college that I was going to wait for intimacy, for someone who would care about me and not just his own pleasure, who would love me without putting a timetable on sex. Romance novels taught me that sex, love, and intimacy are not interchangeable, that sex can but doesn’t always lead to intimacy and not all intimate relationships involve sex, that the pleasure should be mutual, and perhaps most importantly in light of the two books in the review, that my worth was not my body. My body was part of me, but I was more than a body. It seems, at least based on Heller’s review, these are lessons most girls and young women aren’t learning. They certainly aren’t learning it from social media, and it appears they’re not learning it in sex ed, either (Orenstein found that “even the most comprehensive sex education classes…fail to mention the existence of the clitoris”).
Now, social media didn’t exist ‘in my day’ (which was when MTV actually showed music videos–shocking, I know), and my high school sex ed class didn’t even accurately explain how the menstrual cycle worked never mind actual intercourse. Romance novels filled that vacuum for me. So here’s my answer:
I write romance because it was the romance novel that taught me about sex. Not the mechanics of intercourse–my mom gave me a technical book on where babies come from full of precise anatomical terms, which is why I have to look up slang–but the relationship, the fun, that the pleasure was and should be mutual, that I had the “right to a thoughtful, respectful, loving, non-agressive relationship” (thanks to Eloisa James for saying that in an outtake from Love Between the Covers). Romance showed me that women could and should find pleasure in sexual relationships. Sex wasn’t something I had to endure for social acceptance but something to enjoy. I want to pay that forward.
I write romance in gratitude to the romance authors I read.