Dragon Journal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragonjournal) wrote2010-10-06 09:31 am
dragonjournal) wrote2010-10-06 09:31 am
Disturbing trend
I've noticed a very disturbing trend among a certain genre.
I'm a reader of romance. I love trashy romance novels. I love curling up with them and just letting them take me out of my shitty life for a while.
However, there's one thing I find disturbing about a newer trend that I've noticed: The heroine keeps getting younger.
Now, if it's historical romance, I'm alright with a sixteen-eighteen year old female protagonist. That's the way it was. Women married young, often to older men, for a variety of reasons.
However, if you're writing contemporary romance, and your heroine is sixteen to eighteen, you're really going to have to sell me on the fact that she's mature enough to even be thinking like this.
I've been a sixteen year old bride. I was divorced for the first time at age 20. I know what those marriages are like, because I've been in one!
I find it disturbing that more people aren't sitting up and taking notice of this. Yes, I know, Twilight. But here's the thing: Meyer was also writing about how her church preaches that it "should" be. It was, in my opinion, a religious agenda that she used Bella to portray.
Which, really, is fine. If that's what people want to write/read, then go ahead and do that.
But dear sweet baby Jeebus bouncing on a pogo stick, please recognize it for what it is!
The majority of sixteen to eighteen year olds are not mature enough to have a lifetime commitment to anyone. Hell, a lot of thirty year olds aren't mature enough for marriage. (I know. Again, I was married to one!)
I don't know if it's merely becoming far more mainstream now than it was, or if it is an actual trend in the selling of romance novels, but I cannot fathom who thought that a good idea.
I'll admit, it not only disturbs me because I was a sixteen year old bride, but also because my eldest daughter is sixteen and if anyone tried to marry her off, I'd take her and hide her and shake some sense into her.
Random rant of the day. Now, I go back to bed.
I'm a reader of romance. I love trashy romance novels. I love curling up with them and just letting them take me out of my shitty life for a while.
However, there's one thing I find disturbing about a newer trend that I've noticed: The heroine keeps getting younger.
Now, if it's historical romance, I'm alright with a sixteen-eighteen year old female protagonist. That's the way it was. Women married young, often to older men, for a variety of reasons.
However, if you're writing contemporary romance, and your heroine is sixteen to eighteen, you're really going to have to sell me on the fact that she's mature enough to even be thinking like this.
I've been a sixteen year old bride. I was divorced for the first time at age 20. I know what those marriages are like, because I've been in one!
I find it disturbing that more people aren't sitting up and taking notice of this. Yes, I know, Twilight. But here's the thing: Meyer was also writing about how her church preaches that it "should" be. It was, in my opinion, a religious agenda that she used Bella to portray.
Which, really, is fine. If that's what people want to write/read, then go ahead and do that.
But dear sweet baby Jeebus bouncing on a pogo stick, please recognize it for what it is!
The majority of sixteen to eighteen year olds are not mature enough to have a lifetime commitment to anyone. Hell, a lot of thirty year olds aren't mature enough for marriage. (I know. Again, I was married to one!)
I don't know if it's merely becoming far more mainstream now than it was, or if it is an actual trend in the selling of romance novels, but I cannot fathom who thought that a good idea.
I'll admit, it not only disturbs me because I was a sixteen year old bride, but also because my eldest daughter is sixteen and if anyone tried to marry her off, I'd take her and hide her and shake some sense into her.
Random rant of the day. Now, I go back to bed.