When we're talking about the Romance genre where romance is the central component where it is about a happily ever after or happily for now, it's important to also remember that like we're talking in a lot of ways about marginalized positions. So way back in the heyday when romance really began to be a big part of traditional publishing there was a slogan we'll call it a slogan that was often shared about romance and that is it is for women by women.
And women at that particular moment were viewed as like a very specific marginalized perspective. Because women to this day in a lot of spaces experience systemic oppression through work through social class, whatever. It centers this marginalized joy, it centers their happiness, it centers their experiences. And that's kind of where this for women by women began.
But we are in the process of going through a social justice revolution now. We've seen feminism change, we've seen the way that our rhetoric around race has changed. And romance continuing to center marginalized perspectives is also changing with that. And so it's not so much as a chicken before the egg like does art imitate life, life imitate art. It's more of a like romance is having a conversation with what's happening right now in our world.
This is the culture study podcast and I'm Anne Hill and Peterson and I am Nisha Sharma a young adult and contemporary romance writer. So for this episode we are talking about trends that we're seeing in romance novels within the reading and writing community. And one of those trends is just like more right there's more romance.
And there's a lot more willingness for people to talk more about it and talk more about reading romance. So even though romance as a genre is not new by any means it definitely seems to be having a moment of visibility moment. So Nisha, what do you see as the reason behind this current boom? That is a great question. And I think it's not like one specific thing. There is of course awareness through TikTok.
That has made a few titles very popular and then has kind of like expanded people's horizons when it comes to the romance genre. Because people just wanted more. I think the pandemic did quite a bit of work when it comes to people coming back to reading in a specific way. And I think in general like after the pandemic even though we're still feeling the effects of it.
Specifically in communities that have disabilities and are still isolating and quarantining. But people are looking for community again. And books are providing that for them. And kind of a long side that I think that different fascination with different types of reading. Like part of it was the pandemic because of the stress because of all sorts of anxiety and doom scrolling and all sorts of things. It made it difficult to read in a way that you might have read before.
Like I was included in this bucket of people who felt like I couldn't read for many months. And then I think for a lot of people romance provided a way back in. Yeah. It was like I'm reading again and it feels good and it feels transported of which feels good for us. For other reasons. But I do think that it was kind of a hook that was very effective for a lot of people. Absolutely. And I mean I don't exactly know how that feels just because I've been a romance reader.
Like a dedicated romance reader since like the summer after seventh grade. So when people were coming to me that like I had never like thought would be interested in romance like in my in like my real life. And they were like do you have more romance titles. I was I was genuinely surprised. But also really elated at the same time. Totally. It's such an interesting point in conversation right now.
And I think you know in another episode where we're focusing on romance and talking with someone who studies like the romance community. She was talking about how so much of it has to do with the expansion of self publishing and how that has broken down and expanded both audiences. And authors in all of these interesting ways. But okay we got to get to the listener questions because we got so many. So we're doing multiple episodes on romance.
Another one that we're really excited about is we're going to have a bookseller of a romance specific bookstore on to talk about like the business of selling romance. Which I'm so excited about. Which is amazing. I'm all excited about that. And I love to that there's like many options like we have we have like reached out to some people and we're like oh they say no we have so many other options. It's incredible and that I was not the case even you know 10 years ago.
But for now we're going to talk with you about some bigger philosophical big picture questions. We have some really fun questions about specific tropes that I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on. And also for paid subscribers we have a whole segment on recommendations all that sort of thing. So if you already know you need that in your life you can head to culturestudypod.substech.com to sign up. But let's start with a big picture question from Nina.
Why do so many people with otherwise feminist values still hold such negative assumptions about romance novels? There's this classic idea that they're nothing but sex. And therefore that makes them somehow not serious reading. But I'm more interested in how these novels are seen as representing readers expectations of their real love lives. Of course there's the internalized misogyny. But it feels like more than that.
I've never thought that someone that loves fantasy is interested in actually fighting dragons. Or someone that loves detective novels is ready to start hunting down serial killers. But with romance it's often assumed that adult women think a real life human man will be a prince charming. But I think we all know the world's not that perfect. And I have about as much a chance at meeting that dragon tomorrow as I do one of these book men.
If anything it seems that straight women typically don't set very high expectations of the men they date. Yet I've seen a lot of straight men scared that they can't live up to those expectations when the expectation doesn't even exist. It's all a scape is them so why isn't it seen that way? This is such a naughty question, Nadia's in KNO TTY. She starts by talking about people who are otherwise feminists have these negative assumptions. Which is a question and then of itself.
But then she talks about how like this is just fantasy. If it's fantasy and not real life then like why are people scared of them? But I mean I think those two are very intertwined right? If people are scared of fantasy and people have cultural hierarchies to do with all of those genres that she listed right? Famicy, detective, romance, any sort of fantastical space. And I think even those superhero stuff has been legitimated in some ways through like mainstream culture.
Like the mainstreaming of nerd culture in part because it's masculineized. Where does this question take you? So okay so I feel like we have to take this in parts. Yes. The first question is like why do so many people with otherwise like feminist values hold these like assumptions about romance novels? And we should define feminism. Like feminism is like at the broadest of definitions.
Again remember I'm an average academic and if you can get a grad degree in this like this is just an invitation to explore more. Yeah no okay. So our broad understanding of feminism is not that women should like whatever they like. Like that's not feminism. No it's like feminism is like a socio-political like movement. It's an ideology and it's based on the premise of equality. And there are waves of feminism. There are different types of feminists and different types of feminism.
And not all feminism is created equal. Like that is very important to know. I think my Pat answer to kind of address this feminist having negative assumptions is that like it can boil down to education. Yes. Like this demographic of feminists who are anti-romance and I'm using quotes for that are probably not like romance readers who read widely within the romance genre. They may see like hit pieces that are out about the genre that capitalize off of stereotypes.
And they're building assumptions based on what society has made as well. Like assumptions that society has as well. But it's not coming from this place of knowledge. But it's important to like dive a little bit deeper because I don't want to be dismissive and say that they just don't know. Yeah no I think oftentimes it's this interesting place where people who have done some of the work in dismantling crappy hierarchies in their lives. Like we're always doing more work.
So like there's stuff that I have internalized from other adult women in my life saying things about romance novels. Yeah. When I was a kid. Right like where I saw them was Harleken romance at the grocery store. Or my mom being like don't read that Daniel's steal that's trash. Right so those things even if you have a feminist praxis like you can still collide with those internalized hierarchies. So yeah and so Maya Rodale I think is like a really good name to kind of mention right now.
And like she's an author, she's a social commentator and she talks a little bit about this. No actually she talks a lot about this in her book. I think it's called Dangerous Books for Girls. And she traces the rhetoric around romance in this book. And she basically theorizes or you know she talks about how like when women began to really read as a form of pleasure and it became more accessible like books became more accessible
to women. Books that were being published specifically to kind of attract women would center their happiness. And to be completely honest like men were scared. They were like they were concerned that women were reading. They were getting ideas. Right. And these ideas were challenging like power and authority over women. And these books like they talked about the right to be happy, the right to say no, the right to have opinions.
And readers can kind of like ask themselves like why is the right to control what happens to me? Like something that's fictional when like when an actuality I feel like it should happen to me. And in effort to like suppress these beliefs, men who control the narrative like they control like the newspapers, they control the review sites, they controlled everything, right? Like I'm saying sites like websites existed back then. But like they they controlled like the circulation.
And they positioned these books as silly, anti-religious, harmful, against like family values. And because of that, because of that language that originated in like a patriarchal structure, that is something that we inherited. And and I don't know if you remember the canon wars. Do you remember the canon wars? Yes. So like in the 80s this conversation came up again. And like specifically this was about academia, right?
So it was do we teach diverse stories in schools or do we continue to teach straight white men in schools? And this particular lecture is so it like imprinted on me. It was the Tony Morrison lecture. Yep. Yep. And Tony Morrison she wrote this keynote and and in the keynote she says canon building is empire building. Canon defense is empire defense.
And she's she's basically talking about how like people who control the narrative have you know the right to basically talk about like who gets to have these lived experiences. That's kind of what had happened originally when like you know this conversation around romance began and how it is still existing today. But now it's not just like white women which is originally what it was about specifically because those are the ones who had access to a lot of these romance novels.
But it is about marginalized groups through an intersectional lens. Like we're seeing like black and brown stories. We're seeing queer stories. We're seeing disabled stories. And who gets to experience joy? Who gets to experience radical joy?
The only thing I would add to that excellent answer is that I think oftentimes people who dismiss any piece of culture as like and this gets to the second part of her question where she's saying like why can't people understand that like this is not a literal that people don't literally think that a duke is coming are maybe not thinking about all of the different ways that they negotiate pleasure and knowledge and their experience of watching a movie experiencing the world.
Like the reading process is always a negotiation. It's always complex. And there's you know I first encountered really fascinating discussion of this when it came to gossip magazines and like studying women who read fan magazines and gossip texts.
And like there's an assumption that all of them were like oh yes of course that is happening to Elizabeth Taylor instead of reading oh this is so funny how they're coming up with this story to try to convince me that this is happening with Elizabeth Taylor. As I think we're probably going to talk about in every single episode of this podcast Janice Radway is very famous canonical work canonical.
But important work on reading the romance and studying romance writers really found how many women read these romances oppositional right? Yeah, they were like no those people don't end up happily ever after or took different pleasures than what one might assume in them. So I think that that is is also part of what's going on here. No I definitely agree. I mean to complicate this a little bit more while the Ken and Wars were happening while like like second wave feminism was in its heyday.
Yep. Um we were also looking at like a shift in romance publishing. It is a fact like there's statistics out there everything. Um Lee and Lo books does like a diversity baseline survey of like publishing as a whole. And um it's a fact that like overwhelming majority of the people who work in publishing are cisgendered white men. A lot of men in it.
Yes. So when like romance was like really beginning to pick up in commercial traditional published spaces um like in the 70s in the 80s like when the Ken and Wars really began we were also seeing that like men expected romance novelist to adhere to like family values in a lot of stories.
It was like censorship of the code like of movies that like you have to like tack on a happy ending or that like they're having sex with an marriage right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and like also like women could not pursue pleasure outside of a union of some kind unless it was taken from them in some way and then make them like experience this desire.
I have to say like the acrobatts that romance writers did back then in order to like really center the story of like a protagonist who identifies as a woman like their perspective was incredible because like okay like if these are publishing's rules here here is how we're gonna push the boundaries.
But like on its surface like if you're not looking at it and like thinking about these stories analytically and like how this is playing in a larger conversation with like societies like shifts and publishing then like you're gonna see it for its face value and you're going to believe that it kind of feeds into this anti-thominist rhetoric. Right right like it's a negotiation of that existing system that's really an accomplishment in hindsight.
Yeah um okay next question which is along these lines too so we can continue this. It's about the interplay of fiction and reality let's hear from Katie. I'm somewhat new into romance both modern and hitting the originals of the Jane Austin Regency era. One thing I noticed when I read modern romances is that the benefit of benefit versus harm to my life is a bit of a concern. I read them so quickly and want to find out what
happens so much that I stay up way past my bedtime. I also start to wonder if my own relationship is good enough. Am I alone? How do we think about romance novels and how the intense escapism interacts and impacts our real lives?
Oh there's so much to talk about here because I think that like women feel bad about anything that takes them away from productivity culture or like parenting culture you know like and I don't know anything about Katie's life and I don't know if that's exactly what we're getting at here but I think this is a very common feeling. Have you heard this expressed?
Yeah I agree and I think that like I know this this sounds like also another you know very general answer but like I think what patriarchy is telling you to do is to blame the content and not to like reflect so instead of thinking like you know romance novels are bad for me so I
need to cut out romance novels instead thinking like what about it is a reflection of my life like why am I so engaged with this content and like maybe that is like calling into questions some of the things that I'm currently doing or some of the things that are in my relationship that I
really just want to talk about like that I really want to examine like it's not like oh you need to get rid of your boyfriend because I read about a duke it's like okay what about this relationship with this duke that resonated with me like is it communication is it trust is it the feeling of physical and emotional intimacy like those elements are what really makes a relationship in a romance
and that is what I would urge Katie to look at. Yeah and I think too like part of what makes romance enthralling is that feeling of delayed pleasure right of wanting something and not yet getting it and if you're already in a relationship it's hard to recover that feeling I call it like that
teenage feeling that's how I think about it and that extends into all parts of our lives that are not like associated with being a teenager but maybe you want to get it there you know what I mean like you if you if you can't get it in your real life that doesn't mean that that relationship
is broken it means that you're seeking out another source that is really a lovely place to be so long as you're like I think as long as you're like understanding what it is and what it does for you yeah I hundred percent agree um melody do you have anything to add here do you have this
problem I just like Beisha was sort of saying I don't think it's a bad thing if something is making you question your relationship I think we should always be questioning our relationships and whether or not we're happy in them so yeah if you're reading something and you're like this is making me
feel wistful or there's a longing here that's not being satisfied maybe just poke at that a little bit just poke it and I also see nothing wrong with staying up late to read books so I have not the person to comment on that who needs work culture like I'll just be tired to a nap I mean like this
is also like as a sidebar like a conversation about healthy boundaries right true true right like anything that you get really into in the beginning you have to figure out how to make it part of your life in a sustainable way yeah okay next question I am so curious to hear the answer to this from
an insider this question comes from today and Melody's gonna read it can we talk about the cartoon cover controversy of romance novels how they now look like young adult which is constantly fooling me into almost reading a YA book when I actually want a romance novel okay so your books
have both cartoon covers and traditional photo covers what can you tell us about the decision process behind each of them so I mean I feel like you may get a lot of like context with this when you talk to your bookseller point of contact because a lot of cover decisions really are
rely on like the sales channels yes so for example like for a long time we talk about how like you cannot have a naked chest on a book cover if you want to sell in Walmart like it can't show like a male nipple because Walmart is like family friendly so they won't allow like male nipples right and
isn't it fit like famously weren't Fabio's nipples like censored for the covers they would have in like grocery stores I feel like I've heard that maybe it's legend I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't question it like so we're looking at again like a system that is where most of the decision-making
power is by straight white men they are making assumptions about what sells what is considered family friendly yep and we are also kind of seeing how a lot of the times they believe that if they can make a romance novel cover less spicy it'll attract a more conservative readership and conservative
which is really problematic to me can often mean younger demographic and so it's like we are we are considering like younger and younger audiences who have more disposable income because of course their parents want them to read and like these covers can potentially attract a younger audience now
I want to kind of like preface this by saying like this is a very dangerous road to go down because we're experiencing like massive book banning that's happening right now and massive censorship that's happening right now so this is not like a like a censorship call this is like a capitalism
taking advantage of a particular system in order to sell more books like that is where I think we need to like focus our attention not like this is not a call to like limit access to books to kids because I don't believe in that I have three graduate degrees and I started reading romance novels
in the seventh grade so like if I do not have access to those books like I would not be where I am today like well and the way that I think about it is like kids are going to find these texts like they're going to read and access depictions of sexual activity in some capacity in some way
unless they are completely cloistered from the rest of the world and so I would rather have that perspective coming in the form of these novels then where most of it that is publicly available right like I I much rather would have thought that's so my first like understanding of sex what
sex look like was like the sex scene in top gun okay like it would have been better I think or like it's top gun and then like you know incest and flowers for Algeron oh my gosh you know and like there can be a like a lot of freaky sex in the lowest Duncan books right or like
oh yeah I remember those I remember lowest Duncan books that that's like a throwback but like I wrote my first like I feel like you know regardless of what can be considered like a really thoughtful way to introduce younger audiences to sex like they're this is like again
complicated because not all romances are created equal not all romances like do the same thing and not all romances may be appropriate right like you're talking about like frontal lobe is underdeveloped right so like that is also a piece of it but again like I I want to like focus
on the capitalism piece of it and how like they do not care they do not care they're expecting parents to be involved in like the screening process and like they want to attract as many individuals as possible so that's part of it but I will kind of add like this this additional
element to it because I personally have cartoon covers cartoon covers have given me the ability to access a wider skin tone yeah and wider representation ability yeah for my books there are not enough stock photos and images that exist out there and there's not enough budget in a lot of
marketing departments to do an original photo shoot for all of these books to have people on the cover so like not only is and by the way like one I will also add that like my publisher has made it very clear and has shared it like widely in town halls um I'm with like Harper Collins I've
been with Penguin Random House I've been with Skyscape like all of these publishers they kind of speak to the same thing that cartoon covers sell more and like for me I have access to South Asian artists who can authentically depict individuals who look like South Asian characters that are in
my book and they understand when I say things like jump god they understand things when I say like lenga like they know they picture it right away and I feel like I'm working within my community to be able to get an authentic depiction on the cover of my book I also feel like the thing about
cartoon covers is they make the world more imaginable does that make sense like more it's more amenable to other people's imagination because when you're imagining what's happening in the book in the plot you're not imagining a cartoon like that's not how it's playing out right you're
imagining a real person but that person gets to take on the characteristics that you ascribe to them in your mind instead of I always like reading a book before the movie comes out because I don't want to be thinking about like oh Bella and Twilight looks like Kristen Stewart like I want to think
of that image myself I want to have ownership over and control based on what the author says right but it's just more fun yeah I also want to say that most in my experience most authors have some input on cover they do but not a lot yeah like we are not the final say when I have
conversations with other marginalized authors they generally have really supportive publishers who are like let me let me work with you because you are the expert here and I think that's where cartoon covers can really be helpful and like almost an experience that is like a safe experience
to have in a publishing industry that is like fraught with different like microaggressions I love that framing of it and it's so much I think more useful to think about than just sometimes I think there there's this tendency to think like oh they're so hyper feminized or then they look like
there for younger people but having these perspectives I think is going to be really useful okay so oh one thing from Melody I feel like this is like a Melody secret question that she put in here that she wants to ask are there any secret tips for discerning the spice level when looking
at a cover I don't think so like I think you look at the meta tags and if you look at the like I personally always like to hear directly from the author like how they describe their story because the author themselves will often tell you like spice level so if I read a book or if I
read about a book like I will immediately go to their social media and I'll be like what are they saying about their own book because that will really generally tell me what I'm looking for Melody do you have any hints do you have a way that you interpret it no that's why I was
genuinely asking because what if there was like oh if there's like ears on the dog then it's like I mean like again this is like just because it's supportive of like my experiences as a marginalized author does not mean like all cartoon covers are created equal and like they're
great like there are some cartoon covers that are very misleading and again you know it's it's also like capitalizing off of like the ability to kind of like cast a wider net to people by almost misrepresenting in a way but yeah but this is a very nuanced question and it's oftentimes like very
specific to publishing house to author so so there are good things and bad things about cartoon covers and the bad thing is this inability to distinguish between the two but the good thing is like yes there are more stock images that exist now but like South Asians are not monolithic right so like
yeah okay five more South Asians out there but like are there more Punjabi South Asians like right what is going right right or like really filtered through like the shitty stock image whiteness lens which is oftentimes like oh yeah exotic right like in various ways like if no
it was it like sometimes I just want people to browse what is available on get a on various stock image sites to understand just how pervasive these tropes remain all right wait can I just type in one more thing I think what you said about casting a wider net to readers is absolutely
spot on because that is what happened to me and I think there's still a lot of stigma around reading the more traditional like photo covers where somebody is like wearing a dress and clutching somebody else and my first romance novel ever was the proposal by Jasmine Gildery because
it kind of cartoon cover with a baseball on the front and then when I got to the sexes I was like oh my gosh like you can do this and like oh so and then melody was like you guys it's like rom coms but in books like did you know that romance novels can be funny yeah but then like do you see how
we're deconstructing patriarchy here like this yeah I said wait but so now like I needed I needed that like safe entry with the cartoon cover will nobody could know the contents of what I was reading whereas like now I'll read whatever and like Sarah McLean is one of my favorite authors that she
has those more traditional like mass market paperback covers and if I post them on Instagram people are like oh my god like what are you reading and you're like but I yeah good shit because now I am like educated enough by the cartoon covers to appreciate the stories inside the more traditional
covers yeah okay next question is from someone who is new to the genre and has a lot of questions for you let's hear from Kate I have always been a voracious reader but until recently I was a real snob about the romance genre I read my first romance last year and now I'm all in but I have
so many questions what's with all the sick bed tropes why is it inevitable that in a male female romance the male main character will go down on the female main character relatively a romance novel is effectively porn for women like actually hot porn with narrative and emotions and how if
they're not being more TV adaptations of romance series surely there's a huge inbuilt audience is it because it's difficult to film the sex so many questions I just love this image in my head of Kate like with a pen and paper beside her as she's reading she's like no why are there so many
sick bed tropes I just let all of these questions I mean that's just the former PhD in me and what I would do no I and I totally I can visualize that too and I think that like because she's just looking for answers as a new reader I I'm happy to answer all these questions like this is like
good for you for reading I hope you continue to read romances yeah if we consume out and talk about tropes a little bit like what so let's start with just the sick bed what is what's going on there so a trope is like it's hard to describe it's a marketing tool that's what a trope is a
trope is a marketing tool and it is a common moment that exists across different books within the genre and it is a way to kind of identify not only like plot but theme within a book and so a sick bed trope is when you have one of the protagonists who is ill and the other protagonist is
taking care of them and oftentimes it's like reluctant to first select them see you know protect us one in this vulnerable position but it is actually if it's done well it is really powerful so like with specifically sick bed trope you know if we're thinking about it carefully we're looking at a
situation where you have someone who is physically at the weakest that they are right they're ill they're defenseless they're technically helpless and to be helpless and then also to experience like trust and care from someone is a really powerful intimate and social dynamic and I think it's
important because romance isn't just about physical experiences which I think like people kind of boil it down to just that it's also about emotional intimacy and what when it's done really well a sick bed scene is a perfect example of like really pure emotional intimacy and it's not about like
oh my man doesn't do this anything for me so I'm fantasizing about a man who does like that you know which I feel like some people may assume that that's what it is like if you're thinking in very like patriarchal terms but like this is about understanding trust as a key component to
relationships and how what when you do for others like it is it is like an important transition in a relationship and in the story okay what how do we talk about oral sex for women and how it occurs that is also something I'm happy to let address and I think like you know um because this
question I feel like was asked in good faith like yes it's important to talk about these things and like to kind of destigmatize conversations around sex and there are a ton of romances out there by the way that are called closed door romances and don't have explicit sex on the page so if reading
about oral is something that like is not for you like there's no harm in like saying this is not for me I'd rather prefer closed door sex like that's fine if you're like relationship with intimacy in the media you consume is about like more about like personal fantasy than to read like the fantasy
on the page that is totally fine um but like thinking about oral sex it is a giving act right so having sex with a person who who has a vagina and it is de-centering the fallace in sexual intimacy and this is also about trust and putting an individual's pleasure first
yeah and it's a sign that the character who is giving oral sex wants the person with a vagina to have happiness and a sexual experience that is about them that is purely about their pleasure and this is like another example of how romance centers the marginalized in a way that is generally
you know we we do not see in like a lot of other forms of fiction that often includes like the patriarchy as like a central figure yeah and I think a lot of readers are socialized to either be um ashamed of being on the receiving end of that sort of pleasure yeah or that someone who gives
that sort of pleasure if they're a male like that it's emasculating in some way and at least in the the depictions that I've read it is depicted as like the most masculine thing that you can do yeah absolutely like is to like to really to have the confidence and skill to do that um and I think
that that is part of the the trope rate is like offering a different experience or a different understanding than what people may have heard or understood in their their own lives yeah absolutely uh what about this question about porn this I this is always fascinating to me like how people
think about it and they're like oh this is just the female version of porn oh my gosh yes problems with this I so this is like baked into like these assumptions about romance right so yeah it's it's reductive it's reductive to think of an entire genre that centers like marginalized
experiences to porn um it also it also relies on the assumption that porn is bad yes it requires people to defend romance against porn um and it needs to be defended against right which I think is also like really problematic like the idea of also like things like a porn addiction
doesn't exist like it's actually does not exist it's not in like the DSM 5 it's it does not think I I think it's important to remember that this belief system is coming from like a really Eurocentric religious ideology that sex is bad sex is private like individuals who identify as women
enjoying sex when women should really be reduced to a vessel for reproduction it's all connected thinking like all of this is connected in conversation um porn is is about sex and pleasure um and therefore we should say no to it because it's not about like being a reproductive vessel like so
that is kind of like part of the conversation that is these assumptions that are kind of being made silently um on a whole other level it is really dismissive of how romance can also be a space for marginalized communities to really share these nuanced depictions of joy and happiness right so
it's like to say like romance is just about a physical intimacy it completely dismisses marginalized experiences of joy that is an offense to me personally as a South Asian woman who is who's trying so hard to like get experiences out there of like South Asians having joy and happiness in the world
and so much of the romance that I personally consume there's these conversations about representation about colonialism about grief generational trauma um a lot of these romances also celebrate black and brown bodies wrestling with shame wrestling with identity wrestling with diaspora it's
about how black and brown bodies in the past have been commodified and used as trauma porn um and it's breaking the trauma cycle like these are this is what romans can do and all of this is like shoved away if you just reduce it to porn right it also questions like the way that queer communities
look at intimacy in a lot of ways like it is completely dismissive of like ace individuals um and then if we look at the broader scope of what romans can do as a community like we see that romance has you know romance has given me a community um it has given me so many people that can
I connect connect with it is like a language it's a method of communication that I can like share something that is so deeply personal for me and I can share that deeply personal passion with someone else so like it's a method of building community too so no it is not just
porn for women and also so many romance novels or that are grouped under the larger umbrella of romance romance fantasy all these things are also representations of community right like one of the one a very popular trope is found family in some capacity and that yeah that's the one
last the one thing that you didn't mention that I think is so huge for a lot of people is the the experience of reading right maybe you read because you love reading yeah you know like and you love that absorption that we were talking about earlier and that is a feeling maybe one of
the only times when you feel like you have some distance from your obligations from your identity from the experience of the real world so all of those things are wrapped up in it as well melody what do you think did we just recover all of the components of that oh we didn't cut we didn't
talk about why they're not adapted to series I mean we can we can just say patriarchy just give shonda rhymes whatever she wants and yeah I mean I will say like talking about how shonda has really done like a lot of work with virgin and I really respect it but like I think it's also really important that like we are still coding white narratives with black and brown bodies we are not like celebrating black and brown stories in that space so I think it's really important to think
of how like TV adaptations of romance series like are built on assumptions by executives who potentially do not see the value of a lot of these stories and how like centering joy and happiness and celebrating like sex is really important and I don't think it's just about the sex because like
if anyone has seen Game of Thrones like I don't think that's an issue yeah no I don't think it's just about the sex in any capacity and I'm fascinated that the like the adaptation of a agitar was recently dropped and there's like such a massive appetite for that but I think it's also just
would be very difficult to adapt but most romances don't need wings yeah I mean I like I I honestly don't have much to say about it like I think it's really fascinating with like someone has the ability to tell a story that resonates with so many people like I I think like as a
as a subject to study I think it's really incredible I know personally like as a person who has been connecting with like film people back and forth like some of the feedback I get are things like but how is this going to connect to a wider audience how is this going to like oh oh I already
have my brown story like that is still something that I literally like an executive looked me in the eyes like directly in the in my two eyes looked at me and said we actually already have a story that is by someone who's up later so and that that happens to the state that I think that happened
at the end of 2022 early 2023 and so you know that like I think it's really just about dismantling some of these systems that exist to suppress some of these narratives yeah we have one more trope question actually we have a lot more but we have one more specific trope question and this
one comes from Percy I'm a transmasculine library worker and trying not to be as chronically online as I once was but book talk continues to find me at work and I am curious about the whirlwind marketability of heterosexual forbidden romance the trope makes me roll my eyes but it's evidently
booming so what makes the idea of a physical therapist and a ballerina being unable to couple so titillating I mean so first can you define what this is what what forbidden romance is forbidden romance is often either physical social class-based power dynamics it is about power it is about like
you are not to be with this one person because the society or you know sometimes sometimes biology like whatever it may be does not permit it and forbidden romance is really interesting and this is something that I'm very fascinated about personally in my own research forbidden romance allows
individuals to explore or to engage with content that talks about intimacy and kink in a safe way so that to me is why I think forbidden romance is really a like important subgenre because it's an exploration of desire as well we as a society are really built under like this Eurocentric
religious ideology and desires often consider forbidden which is really hilarious to me because my mentor is a early modernist and like an early modern society like even an early modern literature women are hypersexual like they are hypersexual they're really excited about sex all the time and
like this is a new thing right and so the other piece of it is like you know in addition to this exploration of desire is that oftentimes like marginalized communities are really familiar with sexual violence like this is an unfortunate truth that exists for a lot of us and
forbidden romance allows us to like kind of skirt the edges of experience with power dynamics and play in a safe space that doesn't feel like a personal attack right and I want to be clear that this is something that is not like not necessarily done super well in a lot of ways because
like yeah sometimes you will get like a physical therapist in a ballerina which honestly I'm not exactly sure what a forbidden element is there but like 50 shades of gray is a really good example like there are a lot of problematic elements to this forbidden romance that kind of exists but first
of all like it doesn't necessarily have to be forbidden that's one yeah it's assuming that kink is like forbidden which is which is like the biggest problem with the story but the ones that do it really well give readers this opportunity to like have these fantastical moments of situations
that allow them to experience or feel desire in a safe space can you give an example of one that you think does this well for real by Alexis Hall is not a bad one it's well I say it's not a bad one it's like it's a good one it's it's actually a great one it is an mm romance and it includes
a sex club and it includes like kink but it is a 20 year age gap so there's like power dynamics that exist in the space as well so I think that's like a really good example so for real by Alexis Hall yeah okay that's no that that makes total sense to me and I think like that idea of having
it be a place where you can allow your brain to go there and kind of explore how you react to different things right but like be able to do it in a in a private scenario it's also really powerful okay it's time for our deep dive on romance tropes plus tons of recommendations and addressing the
age old question of whether a happy ending is necessary this part of the conversation is just for paid subscribers so if this sounds like it is your jam head over to culturestudypod.substack.com and sign up uh this has been such a delight like I can't tell you this is like this has been such a
highlight of my day of my week I'm so glad I like I love talking about this stuff yeah I just want to also give you space to talk about your books that are coming out there's one that I am so looking forward to that's about letters can you talk about them yeah no I'm really happy to share
so I have two traditionally published books that are coming out this year the first one is called the letters we keep and it is about it's a new adult romance so it takes place in college yes and it's about two teenagers from very different person like life backgrounds who find love letters
from a person who went missing 50 years ago in a locked section of their school library and they are trying to figure out who they are it's a very short read and it is like what I call a palette cleanser romance so it is like it delivers exactly what the premise of the plot is right it talks
about class and immigration and it also complicates this idea of two south Asians from different perspectives falling in love in college um and then my traditionally published romance that comes out this year is the third book in my Shakespeare adaptation series so it's an adaptation of 12th night that is marriage and musty two people who are friends or friends once because the book starts about a year after like the second book in the series and uh who get drunk on a beach and accidentally
get married and uh the shenanigans that follow awesome can I wait if people want to preorder or like find direct links or just like follow you where can they find you on the internet so I am most active on Instagram and on TikTok at nisha writes w r i t e s and you can always find
information about me in my books on my website um w w w dot nisha dash sharma dot com amazing thank you again this has just been wonderful thanks for having me i'm so glad to be here yay and listeners were working on more episodes about the romance boom we're going to talk to the owners of a
romance bookstore and an author of queer romance novels so please send in your questions for both of those thanks for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts we have so many great episodes in the works and i promise you do not want to miss
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