revitalizing romance reads

When people ask me what my favorite book of all time is, my go-to answer is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore that book — I have nine different editions of it sitting on my bookshelf to prove it. However, a small part of me loves to share this title with others to fulfill my elitist tendencies when it comes to reading. Something in me feels satisfied when the person I am talking to seems to register that I read classics. I’m one of those people who love Charles Dickens and avidly pore over behemoth Russian novels.

And yes, I do love a good classic. I’ve read every single Jane Austen novel there is (for fun). I love the Brontës and I own all of Leo Tolstoy’s books. However, this more pretentious side of me is just one half of my reading persona, the Dr. Jekyll of my bibliophile personality. But, just like in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel (one that I have incidentally read), there is a Mr. Hyde hidden in the shadows, obfuscating the part of me that loves... saturated, sickeningly sweet, cutesy, lovey-dovey romance novels.

Ordinarily, I would be ashamed to be admitting my obsession with romance books on the Internet so boldly. However, this is a large part of the problem that I hope to discuss and dissect in this article. I have on my personal book blog written a detailed, multi-paragraph review about each and every book I have read since 2016 and so the world has already been exposed to my obsessive reading tendencies (though my blog is still fairly underground). People who know the real me know that my reading tendencies stray towards the romance genre quite often.

Love and romance has been the central theme of books, poems, sonnets, plays, and songs since ancient times. Men, for the most part, lamented about their unrequited love for angelic women and wrote sorrowful lines about the women they loved.

However, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century with the rise of my personal favorite author, Jane Austen, that the “romance novel” truly became known as its own entity. Of course, before, love was an accepted part of the literary world and nobody questioned William Shakespeare’s neverending sonnets about the emotion. But enter a woman, writing about the same exact feelings, albeit with a more “feminist” take on commonly-accepted institutions that come with love (i.e. marriage), and suddenly, the romance genre took a turn for the worse.

The rise of the romance genre as its own field in the nineteenth century was created by women, about women, for women. And here lies the issue that still plagues the romance genre to this day. As we all know, we live in a patriarchal society where just about anything a girl loves is automatically looked down upon, be it implicitly or explicitly. I’m not about to restate America Ferrera’s feminist speech in the latest Barbie movie (go watch it yourself) but in this day and age, women cannot do or say or feel anything without feeling some judgment from someone.

An entirely new style of writing that was catered almost exclusively to women was bound to attract the attention and criticism of those who simply cannot allow a woman to find enjoyment in anything. A century later, with the rise of Harlequin novels and mass-market paperbacks sold in drugstores, supermarkets, and just about anywhere women were often

present, the romance industry seemed to “take off.” It became a space where women, tied down by the oppression of patriarchy and in the midst of the seemingly brand-new first and second waves of feminism, could escape from the real world and find their happily-ever-afters in a fictionalized universe. As the feminist movement began to take off, women began to embrace their sexuality and femininity, and the ensuing boom in the romance genre highlights this newfound boldness and acceptance of the female self.

However, with this rise in self-acceptance for women came the simultaneous increase in stigma around the romance genre. To this day, non-readers and non-romance-readers often hear the word “romance novel” and giggle awkwardly about the automatic correlation of shirtless, six-pack-laden, 6’5 men on the covers of cheap, tacky, plotless paperbacks sold in airport shops. Images of bored housewives and twelve-year-old girls are quickly depicted in the minds of these individuals. Ridicule and scoffs often accompany statements like, “So, like, you read porn?”

When I tell people I read romance novels, I am met with instant questions saturated with biases and superiority complexes. “Why don’t you read a real book?” “What happened to real literature?” “Oh, you’re one of those?” “Oh, we all know why you’re reading those kinds of books.” “Typical female behavior.”

If a man asked me what type of books I like to read, I would never say that I love romance novels. I actively go out of my way to not buy physical copies of romance novels, especially if they happen to feature a conventionally attractive man on the cover, or a raunchy illustration of a couple in some scandalous position. Why would I want the world to know that I’m reading that kind of a book?

Even on my book blog, I hunt down pictures of the most discreet editions of a specific book and I never mention the almost universal feature of (adult) romance books — what we readers like to call “smut.” I paint a picture of the most vanilla, cutesy little story, dialing back the “steam” and focusing on the character development or a specific trope rather than the plot of the book.

Why is this? Men are frequent viewers of certain types of videos that are reminiscent of the same things that are present in most of these books. This is not to say that women also do not but there is a much stronger correlation with male audiences and these types of films. On top of that, romance books are entirely fictitious and completely made-up. They are simply just words on a page. The pornography industry has its own issues with exploitation and sexual harassment and objectification that merits its own separate article. And yet, men are free to continue with their partaking in such “entertainment” whereas women are made to feel ashamed for reading the latest Tessa Bailey novel.

I have recently been trying to be more open about all sides of my reading persona. I love to read, and not just 18th century literature. I will choose a cartoon-y, neon-colored, cutesy little cover with the enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, only-one-bed tropes over an 800-page Russian novel any day. I love Dorian Gray but I also love Christian Grey (though, 50 Shades of Grey is overrated and there are so many better romances out there, trust me).

I’ve found so many friends (predominantly women) who also love the romance genre. When we are together, suddenly the shame and humiliation of reading a book that happens to have a shirtless man on the cover falls away. TikTok (BookTok, actually) has helped to decrease some of the stigma that comes with reading romance novels. The BookTok community is able to find other readers who also eat up the most insane tropes and the wildest “dark” romances that the genre has to offer. While we still may face censure and ridicule by men and non-romance readers, women have found a community through BookTok and BookTube (and any bookish social media) to let go of these guilty feelings and rave about the six foot tall, roguish, witty little man in the latest Elena Armas book.

I’m sick of feeling ashamed for partaking in a genre that I know thousands of other women are also engaging in. I’m tired of pretending that I solely read classics and literary fiction. I’m done hiding my little girlish tendency to pick up anything that classifies itself as having the enemies-to-lovers trope. The romance genre is in the top most popular literary genres in the world, with a majority female audience. Why should I be ashamed of loving what so many other people love? Why should I deny myself the ability to partake in a silly little happily-ever-after? Why should I have to pretend that I am above it all to be accepted as a reader?

I will forever love love and reading about love and watching my favorite characters fall in love. Today I am breaking my silence. I am a romance reader until I die.