With critics calling it “mindless content,” the romance genre has received a lot of backlash—and it may all link to policing female desire
that romance is self-actualization. The genre has also evolved from the typical bodice-rippers, with recent authors bridging the gap between romance and the “high culture” sort. Take for example novelists like Sally Rooney, who takes the genre to another turn by capturing young love in its rawest form in her novel “Normal People.
In all likelihood, the problem may lie in what romance stands for. Most of the time, it’s written by women for women, making it a so-called feminine genre. Romance’s pages—and screen time—are powered by the female gaze, laced in female fantasies. It’s true, not all romance stories are created equal. Criticism is valid when it comes to certain books. On the other hand, romance books of the past are considered canon in literature. Think of the Brontë sisters with “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” or the whole author page of Jane Austen. Just as how Shakespeare catered to the mainstream and the “lowbrow” during his time, it’s now considered high culture.
But now, the very label of romance still gets snubbed, because of that assumption that recent works are all trash. Novelist Jennifer Weiner, “It’s sexist when critics automatically relegate anything concerning young women’s lives to the beach-trash dumpster bin—especially when they’re automatically elevating anything about young men’s lives to the exalted spheres of literature.”
When a movie, show or a book is snubbed for being just “a love story,” there’s a knee-jerk reaction from me: So what if it is?
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