That's So Dated

Kayne · Joined: 31 Mar 2007 Posts: 783

Love this thread, Can you guess the author? Female lead (from older books) has Dorothy Hamill style wedge haircut, sometimes wears pant suits; male lead has a thick pelt of hair (on his head), ok if you haven't guessed it yet the female leads always have flared hips: Jayne Krentz

WandaSue · Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 277

pinkbubble · Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 16

Debbie Macomber re-relesed Country Brides a few months ago. I knew it was a re release. It was published back in 1990. I was able to forgive the clothes and some of the attitudes but I had a real hard time with the no cell phone.

Funny how in less than 10 years that darn phone has gotten to be a part of us.

She even mentions it in her letter to the reader and I still got all twitchy about it Smile

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veasleyd1 · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 2064

In the category of really dated attitudes, several people mentioned smoking.

However -- do any of the rest of you remember the English "hospital romances" of the late 40s through the early 60s in which the doctors and nurses just casually popped amphetamines to keep themselves going through long shifts and then opiates so they could sleep? The books didn't make a point of it at all, neither as desirable nor undesirable -- it was just part of the environment.

Anne Marble · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 593

Diana · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 1044 Location: Washington DC

Anne Marble · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 593

MarianneM · Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 374 Location: Houston, Texas

Now, ladies and other friends, what's so wrong with pelts? It sounds like a friendly word to me. Back in the days before young men carefully removed all their body hair so one could see the definition of their abdominal and pectoral muscles [and God knows what else -- I'm not going there] a young, healthy, testosterone loaded male had hair on his chest and arms and legs, and when it wasn't excessive, it was kind of cozy, if my memory serves me. The word pelt also indicates a thick healthy head of hair, one you can run your fingers through. Now all these things can be overdone [who wants a hairy Neanderthal in the bedroom, after all] and hair which covers a man's back and shoulders thickly is a definite turn-off for me.

Actually, the biggest turn-off for me is this ubiquitous facial hairyness -- the grungy two-day beard, the goatee which fails because of spottiness and lack of precise trimming, the "soul patch" and other hair adornments with which young men try to distract the observing eye from weak chins, sly eyes, narrow jaws and a generally weaselly look. In my youth, which was forever ago as I have said before, a well-shaven male face was a definite turn-on. And it didn't leave a woman who had sensitive skin with a severe case of beard scald after a make-out session.

But I'm old now -- and I don't make out as much as I used to. Darn it.

MarianneM

NoirFemme · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1398 Location: America

Yulie · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1045 Location: Elsewhere

Schola · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 1867

+IHS+

Kerstin · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 1124 Location: Germany

I don't mind references to weird hairstyles and even weirder fashion outfits if they are true to the time period. I don't like if the man has a mustache though-but then I didn't like that even when it was all the rage back in the eighties and I being young enough to go slavishly with fashion dictates.

Another thing are really outdated attitudes. But I remember that I found many older hero's attitudes even outdated back then when the book was written. I gave up reading romances after 1985 like Cora because the attitudes of the characters made me cringe in those many, many rape-fest books of the eighties and I couldn't relate to them at all. They seemed absolutely over the top and unauthentic even back then. I think all over the top romances which show extreme positions of the respective era which have been written ten or more years ago seem outdated to me whether they are historicals, mysteries or contemporaries. I imagine that I will very possibly find "Sex and the city" quite outdated too ten years into the future because the characters lax and matter-of-fact attitude toward sexual relationships seems very extreme to me. The women don't seem authentic to me, they are not "real" at all and don't resemble any person I personally know the slightest bit (and I really enjoyed the show and will see the movie too).

Kerstin

Cora · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 1088 Location: Bremen, Germany

Kerstin, I suspect that our mutual problems with 1970s/1980s style bodicerippers may have something to do with cultural differences between the US and Europe. There is the theory that the rape scenes in those books allowed female readers to fantasize about enjoying sex with a manly man without instigating the encounter, because that much sexual initiative would have been considered unladylike. Since Germany was less hung up about sex at the time than the US, perhaps German readers including teenagers like us didn't need that excuse.

As for Sex and the City, I don't think that the attitudes portrayed therein are realistic for anyplace except perhaps a certain wealthy upperclass in New York and perhaps not even there. Because the four Sex and the City women do not remind me of any women I've met in the US (or elsewhere for that matter).

NoirFemme · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1398 Location: America

xina · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 6627 Location: minneapolis

As for Sex and the City, I don't think that the attitudes portrayed therein are realistic for anyplace except perhaps a certain wealthy upperclass in New York and perhaps not even there. Because the four Sex and the City women do not remind me of any women I've met in the US (or elsewhere for that matter).[/quote]

That reminds me of an interview I saw with Cynthia Nixon recently. She said that women come up to her all the time on the street in NYC and tell her that she is the reason they moved there..apparently hoping for the same kind of life she has on show. She said they are probably disappointed that they can't run around in high heels all day, and party every night because nobody does that, and that is only pretend and fantasy.