No, I’m not talking about:
…also not:
I’m talking about:
Those novels aimed at the 20- to 40-something females that aren’t quite romance novels, (though finding the ‘right guy’ is generally a central plot theme) and star a confused single woman in the 25 to 35 age range trying to figure out how roar.
I have no problem with the genre in principal. I am in the target demographic–I’m a little bit girlie and enjoy the prospect reading the happily-ever story of some directionless girl pulling out her machette to conquering the urban jungle, and nabbing the right guy in the process. I like the idea of an undervalued Bridget Jones clone realizing her own worth and getting the world to give her the respect and paycheck she has coming to her.
I regret to say, however, I am regularly disappointed.
I guess that the theme that really annoys me is the general stupidity of characters I’m reading. It seems that the issues that are effecting them are the same ones I recall from the young adult version of the same genre. Is it naive of me to hope that these women will have grown up a little by the time they have reached their 30′s?
Don’t get me wrong — as a girl who sincerely wishes she HADN’T been too clever to fall out of her pram, I am a great supporter of the inner child and youth at heart. I have no problem with people who want to dress like princesses on a whim. I love idealists and romantics and characters who will fight dragons (literal or figurative) to make the world right. I believe in ice cream for breakfast and breakfast for dinner.
I also believe that if anything good DOES come of getting older, it is general common sense and lessening of neurosis. Understanding inter-personal relationships and personal responsibilities.
All too often, however, I pick up a girlie-novel, hoping for a tough, smart heroine and find instead…well…is ‘stupid cow’ too harsh a judgment?
They don’t understand themselves. They don’t understand the people they interact with. They make horrible decisions. They lie about things that would likely cause no problems if they simply came clean and would eliminate the enevidable embarrassing revelation of their deceit at a later point. Worst of all, they get a makeover and catch a hottie’s eye, and next thing you know, an apparently intelligent, upstanding protagonist is alienating close friends and coming within a hairs’ breadth of sacrificing her career because she’s too busy trying to capture and hold the attention of her boss/client/neighbor/delivery boy…oh wait…that last one is pretty strictly confined to porn… Anyway, my point is that these women should have learned better YEARS ago. They have careers they love that are suddenly going in the right direction, great best friends whom they should spend time with, and like 15-year-olds skipping homework to stalk their crush at the arcade, they jeopardize everything that is ACTUALLY important to them for some passing fancy (who, lets be honest, is likely to turn out to be the wrong guy somewhere around the last chapter anyway).
I am a romantic. I love happily-ever-after, star-crossed love and impossible odds.
I also love smart, independent heroines who don’t compromise their own dreams and desires the second a pretty piece of man-flesh gives them the once-over.
I don’t mean that I want feminist ball-busters who insist that whoever she has her eye on comes around to her way of thinking and be her whipped little house-boy until he looses his looks. I admire a woman who’s willing to cross a flooding arroyo in the middle of the worst storm in a century to save the man she loves, or to promise to stay with a villainous pirate as his love slave if he will set her honey free — and if he turns out to be one and the same as her captive sweetie, all the better.
But I’m tired of these insipid twits that start out with so much promise, then loose their brains as soon as they get highlights! Come on, novelists! You can do better than that! Give me an intelligent, resourceful heroine who gets where she wants to be through USING her mind, not loosing it!
