This is an opinion article that I wrote for a journalism class.
Romance novels and the downfall of modern love
Nothing brings women together like mutual feelings of hate and disgust toward a man. I imagine this has always been true, but it has certainly been my observation (and personal experience) in college, with all its heightened and complicated social politics. I see men fail spectacularly again and again when it comes to relationships and communication. And while we can collectively rant all day (justifiably) about how men in the modern dating world are lacking in their behavior, I would argue that women are performing just as poorly. And I think that some of our most critical weaknesses stem from the expanding demographics of readers of the romance novel.
According to Ariele Fredman, the publicist for bestselling modern romance author Colleen Hoover, when the romance genre first came to popularity, it was geared toward middle-aged women. However, in recent years, that age range has expanded to include the younger generations, namely Gen Z.
“Their youth has been marked by global and social upset and unrest in many ways, so looking for a happy ever after or an emotional outlet in a book seems like a healthy way of coping,” Fredman said.
But these books have had negative effects on the way that they approach relationships in real life. Gen Z is plagued by problematic relationships, the most talked about one being situationships – an ambiguous, drawn out, undefined state of more than friends but not quite dating. So what is it that drives these young adults to stay in these situationships?
Perhaps the fictionalized idea of a slow burn romance is to blame. We tell ourselves it’s a slow burn trope, so we hold out for the payoff – a payoff that, if we’re being honest with ourselves, is never going to come. These “romances” are not slow burn; they’re just slow to crash and burn.
We have romanticized relationships in all the wrong ways. We convince ourselves that everything is part of a larger novelesque story, because surely this heartache is indicative of some larger romance arc, right? Wrong. This is real life. But romance’s growing popularity with Gen Z has skewed our sense of reality. And the worst culprit contributing to these illusions is BookTok.
According to an Arizona State University article by Megan Neely, “BookTok, a popular hashtag [on TikTok], is a host to book reviews for popular titles and upcoming releases and includes over 37.3 million videos. Bookstores have dedicated ‘As Seen on BookTok’ sections, displaying books made popular by the platform. Additionally, science fiction and romance genres have seen a resurgence in popularity.”
While it may seem like encouraging reading is a good thing, many of the highly-promoted books on BookTok are problematic. One of the main dangers of BookTok is that it tends to glorify toxic relationships. Whether that’s a violent and abusive partner passed off as attractively brooding, an emotionally exhausting romance that’s classified as a slow burn or the praised enemies to lovers trope that makes us root for a villain, these books do not promote healthy relationships.
Problematic tropes aside, these books also tend to contain more explicit content. This is a concern as younger readers are now picking up these books. Because while the target audience has grown to include Gen Z, girls younger than this are picking up and reading these books. And most of these books are graphic to the point that I would argue an 18-year-old shouldn’t be reading, let alone a high schooler or, in some cases, middle schooler.
It used to be that you could generally tell how far these books would go in terms of sexual content by the cover. Graphic romance books featured suggestive pictures; if you steered clear of those books, you would generally be fine. But now, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into. Some of the most popular and most graphic books feature innocent covers.
The modern romance genre has become nothing more than pulp fiction attempting to pass off as emotional narrative – a quick, easy read designed to indulge or pull you out of a reading slump. We need to have standards and ideals again.
According to the Association for Psychological Science, idealizing your partner in a relationship actually leads to happier marriages. But that is idealizing something you have, not something you don’t. The biggest distinction here is not taking a fictional preset and attempting to insert it onto reality, but rather taking something real and elevating and celebrating it. Yes, all sorts of fiction can be fun to read. But we need to keep in mind that it’s just that: fiction. And this temptation to muddle the lines between fiction and reality is particularly potent within the romance genre.
But as long as they’re still promotable and profitable, romance novels will continue to be written. And as long as they continue to be written, women will read them. I don’t pretend that we can change the course of this mass obsession, or even that we should. Women are still going to pick up these books, and there’s not necessarily shame in that.
College student MollyJane Ader conceded in an article for The Asbury Collegian titled “Modern romance novels are a bad look for literature,” “I will be the first to admit that I love a quick little romance novel every now and then; they’re good for a day at the beach or, for me, an in-between-other-books kind of read.”
But at the end of the day, we need to the close the book and put it back on the shelf, turning our eyes back to the reality that is right in front of us – a reality where we don’t pine after Prince Charming carbon copies or brooding vampire captors, but flesh and blood men, focusing on lifting them up rather than replacing them with fictional ideals that will never (and should never) exist.