About two years ago, when I was starting my senior
year in high school, I sat down for one of the many “what-are-you-doing-about-college” talks
around the dining room table with my parents. My mom
asked if I had started thinking about essay topics. “You
know those are one of the most important parts of your
application,” she said. “You can write;
if you put effort into it, yours can really stand out.”
“Well, I already started one,” I said,
with a bit of trepidation, thinking of the half-formed
document on my computer.
“Good,” my dad said. “What is it
about?”
I paused. “Romance novels.”
My parents shared a glance, and then looked at me. “Are
you sure that’s a good idea?” my mom asked.
She was clearly skeptical, and for good reason. I would
be applying to several highly competitive schools.
I would be competing for admission against students
who are fluent in three languages, spend their summers
feeding orphan babies in Africa, have coded the DNA
of sea monkeys, and, in their free time, work on mathematical
proofs. And I wanted to tell admissions counselors
that I enjoyed reading the Weekly
World News of the
literary world.
I was undeterred. “Yes, I think it’s a
good idea,” I replied. “I can make it work.”
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“Okay,” my dad replied. “We’ll
see.”
So, with that half-hearted endorsement, I wrote. After
several awkward editing sessions with my dad (“This
sentence, about the ‘handsome and virile hero,’ doesn’t
quite work…”), approval from friends and
English teachers, and much skepticism, I sent it out
with my transcripts, SAT and AP scores, letters of
recommendation, and all of the other assorted things
colleges demanded from their applicants. And I waited
anxiously, like all of my classmates, for acceptance
letters.
When they came, it was clear my romance novel essay
did not doom my future in higher education, as I was
accepted by the majority of the schools to which I
had applied. One dean of admissions even said, in a
personal acceptance letter, that my essay was the best
part of my application.
When I started classes last year at American University,
one of the most difficult decisions I made packing
was choosing which books I would bring. I limited myself
to two shoe boxes full, about 10 books. This did not
last long, however. Between the books I received to
review for AAR and 10-cent used books from library
sales, my collection soon took over an entire dresser
drawer, probably about 50 or 60 books. Not a large
collection for most people (I have at least ten times
that many books in my room at home), but college students
don’t always buy the required textbooks, much
less books for their own reading. Most of my friends
only brought two or three of their favorite books from
home. And here I was, with my drawer of
books.
My roommate teased me about my “sex books,” and
occasionally would just shake her head in disbelief
when she saw me pull out the drawer, with rows and
rows of brightly-colored spines, as I searched for
a new book to read. One day, while hanging out with
my new friend Katie in the dorm lounge, we were talking
about our life goals. Mine included one of the following:
becoming Ambassador to a foreign country, opening a
bakery, and/or becoming the next Nora Roberts. My favorite
was the last one. I expounded on this a bit, until
she asked, “Wait, do you actually read books
by her? Like, romance books?”
“Um, yes. Have you not seen my drawer full of
romance novels?” I asked. She followed me down
the hall to my room, where we then sat on the floor
in front of my dresser, and I pulled out the drawer.
“Oh… my…God…Jane,” she
said, laughing. “Oh my God.” She sat there
for about five minutes, just staring in disbelief at
my drawer of books and laughing, telling me over and
over again that she couldn’t believe it. She
then felt the need to announce my obsession to whoever
we knew on the floor who was in the hallway at the
time, stopping even our towel-clad friend on the way
to the shower to exclaim excitedly, “Guess what,
guess what! Did you know Jane reads <i>romance
novels</i>?!”
I challenged Katie to read one herself, promising
that if she read one, she would like it. We sat down
together again in front of my drawer, and I tried to
find one that she would like. We settled on Lisa
Kleypas’Dreaming
of You, with the classic hero Derek
Craven. She took it, and read it over the next few
days. The next time I saw her, she told me she was
surprised, that it was actually pretty good. The day
after that, when we met up for dinner, she was slightly
bleary-eyed. “I
stayed up until 2 am reading it,” she said. “I
couldn’t put it down!” When she finally
finished, she gave it back to me, with gratitude and
a positive review.
She brings it up still, sometimes, referencing Derek
Craven in a conversation or talking about my romance
novels. She tends to refer to me as her “Catholic
crazy romance-reading friend.” When we got tattoos
together in April, she decided to mention both aspects
of my life to my tattoo artist. The conversation degenerated
from there, somehow coming around to discussions of
bestiality and animal porn. Obviously, the man with
the ink did not get it.
In the middle of my spring semester, while sitting
in an airport returning from a spring break service
trip to Belize, I found a few other people, who I had
known casually, who read romance novels. One girl was
reading Lauren Willig’s The
Secret History of the Pink Carnation.
When I asked her about it, two other friends of mine
asked, “You read
romance novels?! Us too!” I was ecstatic. For
the rest of the semester, we would swap books and discuss
our “literature,” earning perplexed looks
from people in eavesdropping range. I was, however,
used to a higher level of sensuality in my romances
than they were; when I lent them The
Serpent Prince by Elizabeth
Hoyt, they
returned it to be, both proclaiming separately, “Janie,
I blushed! I think I prefer the euphemisms!”
Most of my friends, though, think of it more as a
strange quirk in my personality, and dismiss it at
that. One of my friends laughs whenever I bring it
up, saying that she has to borrow one - “I
want to read your trashiest book,” she jokes
often, but has never made any effort to follow up.
Some of my classmates, however, are less forgiving
of the genre. In one particular literature class, one
girl proclaimed definitively, “Any book that
has mass appeal loses credibility.” (We were
discussing Cormac McCarthy, by the way). This attitude
is a pet peeve of mine, and one that certainly isn’t
rare among fellow students. I go to the most politically
active school in the country, according to Princeton
Review. People are far more likely to be discussing
Marx and reading Ayn Rand than Julia
Quinn or J. R.
Ward. However, in my own little way, I have been trying
to defend my preferred genre, by way of homework.
In my first semester, I wrote a research paper discussing
the appeal of romance novels, and the importance of
the industry in book publishing as a whole. My professor
was supportive and intrigued, though my peer-editing
group was a bit baffled, and kept wanting me to relate
romance novels to soap operas, as they said that they
are both popular among middle-aged women. They also
seemed confused about the books, in general. “Are
you talking about those books in drug stores with half-naked
Indians and pirates on the covers?” one guy asked. “Isn’t
there a lot of sex in them?”
In my second semester, I wrote a memoir about my discovery
and acceptance of romance novels. During workshop,
my classmates praised my bravery in admitting such
a thing to the class. It was as if I had written a
memoir about my struggles with drug addiction or nymphomania,
rather than that I liked to read romance novels. Part
of my memoir involved describing the cover of my first
romance novel, a lurid Connie Mason book. One of my
classmates commented, “I actually went online
to look this cover up after I read it. I was like, ‘Waterfalls?
Horses?’ But, yep, there were waterfalls and
horses.”
And, this semester, I somehow managed to convince
my group for a marketing project to do our presentation
and paper on the marketing tools romance novel publishers
implement in order to reach customers and sell them
the latest books, in comparison to other publishing
genres. One girl seems actively interested, and the
rest are just grateful we have something unique to
work on. But whatever - I’m excited.
My slow overturning of the stereotypes among college
students continues as I begin my fall semester of my
second year; my roommate has begun borrowing books
from my collection. She recently finished Lisa
Kleypas’ Sugar
Daddy and proclaimed excitedly, “I
love romance novels!” She’s moved on to
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series,
and told me she very much wants her own VILF (Vampire
I’d Like to… well, you know). And I can
think of countless other books, only a fraction of
which I have with me, that I think she would love,
and can’t wait to have her read.
Even though it’s on a very small level, I’m
hoping my openness might give others the confidence
to actually read what they want. Like my two friends,
who strictly referred to the genre as the euphemistic “literature” in
public, or another one of my acquaintances whom I saw
reading a Julie Garwood book and quickly shut down
when I tried to talk about it, I think most romance
readers are afraid to admit it publicly… and
the rest of the population thus harbors the misconceptions
that have plagued the genre for decades. And so the
cycle continues. Will my open admittance of my love
of the genre change the stereotype? No, of course not.
But hopefully, when my friends and classmates later
think about romance novels, if they ever do, instead
of conjuring up the frumpy middle-aged cat lady they
seem to think constitute the readership, they’ll
have my example to consider.
