Eek, this is a rant; fair warning!
I remember going through one or two historical romance novels a week as a teen. I don’t know WHY that genre appealed to me so much at the time; maybe because there were always teenage heroines going on unbelievable adventures. Stowing away on Viking ships; escaping from medieval convents; stealing into the night in disguise, only to be captured by evil villains-- I mean, I gobbled those stories up. They were so different than my real life. The romance was heavenly, the action and adventure beyond my wildest dreams, and nothing in the YA section could even come close.
I LOVE romance novels, YA or otherwise. I’ve loved them since I was twelve. I can’t be alone. Sales-wise, romance is the most popular genre in fiction (there are statistics here from RWA and also here listed on Wikipedia, I’m sure AAP has something but I have a query to re-write and a synopsis that wants to kill me, so I don’t have time to dig up the exact numbers. It’s crazy though, like 46 percent of paperback sales, and twelve percent of ALL sales-- that’s more than one in ten books-- which means romance dwarfs all other genres in sales *gasp*).
So what’s up with romance being a dirty word? My friend-- a guy-- told me that when he sees someone reading a romance novel, it’s like they’re advertising that they’re lonely and sex-deprived. What the-- seriously dude? Nooooooo!
When I see him reading a horror novel, I don’t AT ALL imagine that he wishes he could be out murdering people!!! Since when do we read the things we want to happen to us in real life? Do readers of sad literary novels want the endings of their favorite books to actually happen? With tragic deaths and all that? No-no-no-no!
But that’s just one person, right? Or so I thought. My other friend, also a guy, told me he thinks it’s weird that I have romance novels in my bookcase, “like all your trashy books are classic literature or something.” Ummmm, guy, I love you, but I have books that I enjoy reading on my bookcase. Some are hard-core fantasy novels, some were written five hundred years ago, some are romance novels, some are young adult fiction, some are historical dramatizations-- the bookcase is about the books I love! Me. It’s MY bookcase GAH!!!
So in his opinion, I’m allowed to have all the books I love on display... except romance novels because they’re somehow less??
Is it a guy thing? Is it??? (Sorry, that’s more rhetorical nonsense for anyone playing the rhetorical questions game). NO IT’S NOT A GUY THING! It’s a Diana’s-friends-thing, apparently. My awesome friend-who-I-adore rolled her eyes at a book I chose because it was from the romance section of the bookstore. Her words were, “Come on Di, really? A romance novel?” It was accompanied by her head dropping sideways, look of embarrassed pity. Hey friend-who-I-adore, I refuse to feel embarrassed about the books I choose to read. I hadn’t read a historical in a while and it looked good. Don’t try and shame me, please :(
There’s nothing wrong with reading any genre, in my opinion. But that brings me to the reason for this blog post. I googled up “YA romance” because I wanted to see if any new books came up. You all know by now, I’m a huge fan of romance novels, and much like my little sisters, YA romance especially gives me that intense, brand-new love feeling I like to read about. So almost at the end of my search page I come across a post by someone trashing YA romance. And I find a few more articles and posts like it. It makes me want to defend the genre.
Just like horror-readers don’t read about murder because they’re on the brink of a killing spree, romance readers-- YA or otherwise-- don’t read about love because they’re about to go find a stalker boyfriend or give up everything for an unhealthy love. Not now, and not as a teen did I ever model my real-life relationships after books, tv shows, movies, or anything else. No more did I expect to find real-life dragons and ogres after reading a fantasy novel-- come on people, are YA romance-haters really suggesting that teens can only read realistic romance books? Does that mean they can only read about realistic everything-else? No science fiction, no horror, no fantasy, because they might start believing the world is really that way???
As a teen, I would NOT have been a reader if the only books out there portrayed normal, balanced, healthy relationships with normal, balanced, healthy characters. That’s what I wanted out of my REAL life, not in the stories I read.
The stories I read were there to thrill me, shock me, make me think, make me laugh. I wanted the girls in the story to do horrible things that I would never do in my safe little life. If books hadn't shown me, I'd have watched television shows that showed me. I'd have found a way to see exciting, marvelous things. Somehow
The Twilight Factor:
One article suggested that Twilight started girls on a crazed desire for unhealthy stories. I can’t agree. Unhealthy stories have always been popular with teen girls. It’s not like teens were reading wholesome, well-balanced books and all of a sudden Twilight came along and they went off the deep-end. Teens were finding their way to unwholesome stories-- be they in book form, TV shows, movies, music, whatever-- and Twilight merely directed an energy that was already there. If Twilight hadn’t come along, those teens might not have turned to BOOKS for their unhealthy stories (unless they were like me, and knew where to look), but they would have turned to something. They might have latched on to the latest 90210 or Buffy spin-off, or found some other outlet, but whatever the case, girls who enjoy that kind of story are going to find a way to hear it.
There is a kind of girl-- and I was one of them-- who liked to watch princess movies and pretend to be Ariel/Jasmine/Belle/whoever for a little while. Not every girl is this way, but a lot of girls are, or there wouldn’t be a market for them. Some of those girls grow up and want older versions of those tales of romantic adventure. It doesn’t mean they’ll defy their father and ask a sea-witch for legs, or disguise themselves and escape the palace, or agree to live with a beast with rage issues. It just means they like a story about romance and adventure.
They. Just. Like. The. Story. So, let them like it.
They’ll still grow up and be successful if that’s what they choose. If they’re smart enough to pick up a book, they’re already showing signs of intelligence, especially considering all the other ways they could be spending their time.
