On women and romance novels

Myth #1: Romance novels are just porn for chicks

Oh, where to start on this one…

Porn is about sex. As in screwing. No subtlety. Sex. Boinking, as my friend Chantel would put it. Sex, sex, and also sex.

In your average porn flick, there might be some hilariously inept attempt at a plot, but let’s face it – even a 90-minute porn movie with a plot will contain 85 minutes of sex scenes, 3 minutes of plot, and 2 minutes of FBI warnings and title screens. I am not a porn expert, but you don’t have to see too much of it to figure out the general gist of it, so to speak.

(And that porn pizza man had better never show up at my house, for the record…)

Many romance novels contain sex, yes. This is true. And as someone who has already admitted to not skipping the sex scenes, I am not going to pretend they don’t or that they aren’t an important part of the stories that contain them. Why should I?

Here’s the thing, though – romance novels are about love and conflict and courting. They’re about personalities and people getting through the layers and layers of each other’s characters in spite of the world. And yes, they’re about sexual tension and frustration and how sex and love relate to one another – and, often, about when they don’t.

Sex is a part of many romance novels. And in those novels, it’s an act with context and consequences, something which follows from what came before. Which is precisely what porn is not (and is not intended to be – everything has its place, no?).

If your average romance novel were made into a 90-minute porn flick, it might have 15 minutes of sex with a lot of foreplay (hey, this is written for women, and you guys don’t exactly, as a group, have the best record on that one), 70 minutes of plot, and five minutes of commercials for Kleenex and chocolate.

It would not be a top seller at your average roadside porn shop.

If you want to classify that as porn, go ahead, but your average reader isn’t reading it for the same reasons *ahem* most people watch porn. Or at least not just those reasons, because really, that’d be a waste of $7.99+.

Just speakin’ the truth, my friends.

On to Myth #2: Women only read romance novels because they’re desperate…