The full title I wanted for this rant was too long to fit into a box so I’ve made it the first paragraph instead:
Romance novels train women to tolerate rudeness and abuse from Brooding Bad Guys, then date them, and then try to “fix” them and make them happy, all while sacrificing their own happiness.
I recently sat down to read a romance novel on a deliciously lazy rainy Sunday. It was not a lazy experience, alas. Immediately, my weirdo brain started working hard.
On page 12, our heroine, Nikki, runs to catch an elevator. There is one person in the elevator. You guessed it, a man.
“a big, imposing man with faintly waving thick dark hair and eyes that were equally dark and hostile. He hit the button with a huge fist and stood waiting impatiently for her to get in.”
The man proceeds to be rude to Nikki, so right away we know this is the guy she is going to end up having a romance with.
Why do we know this? Because SO MANY romances in books and movies start out with the guy being rude to the woman. And here is my rant….(people sensitive to profanity and uppercase letters need to turn away now).
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
This is STUPID!!
WHYYYYYY does our culture LIKE this kind of thing?
I hate this kind of thing. When a romance novel starts out like this, I don’t even bother reading another word.
If a man is RUDE to you, this means he has a crappy character.
THINK ABOUT IT! A person who is rude, arrogant, or critical to strangers is NOT the kind of person ANY of us need in our lives. And we SURE AS HELL do not need to get into a relationship with them.
More importantly, and the reason I am compelled to rant about this, WHAT DOES THIS TEACH OUR DAUGHTERS?
Well it certainly does NOT teach a girl to have high standards about how she is treated.
It does not teach her to look for a partner who is classy and kind. And this is a very sad opportunity cost.
She won’t even be looking for an evolved, pleasant, psychologically healthy, uplifting human being. Oh no. Because in our culture, romance is all about taming the brooding, impatient, bad guy, tolerating the bad guy, putting up with the bad guy’s shitty, emotionally retarded behaviour… and not even noticing that her first interaction with him involves him feeling annoyed and impatient with her (for asking him to hold the elevator as she runs to it), and his fucking arrogant feeling that he has the right to criticize her (for carrying a hotel towel to the pool, which is against the rules).
Where do we draw the line?
Is there something in the fine print, for young girls, about the line where the guy’s shitty behaviour crosses over into being ABUSIVE?
Will she notice when he crosses that line?
How will she see it clearly, when she has been accepting his hostile treatment and FALLING IN LOVE WITH HIM ANYWAY, right from the first time they met?
So I took a small excerpt from the book — yes, dear reader, for your sake I forced myself to read a bit further — and created two new versions, which I’ve shared below the book’s version.
BAD:
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK, verbatim.
Location: hotel elevator in the Bahamas.
“You do know that guests are specifically asked not to remove the bath towels from the rooms?”
It took several seconds for her to realize that the deep, northern-accented English was coming from the man beside her.
She turned and looked at him fully. He was as big as her glimpse of him had intimated, but older than she’d first thought. He had to be in his late thirties, but there was a rigidity about his posture, and those intimidating deep-set eyes, that made him seem even older than that. His face looked as if it rarely smiled, broad and square jawed and expressionless.
“No… nobody said anything yesterday,” she stammered. She hated that hesitation in her own voice. She was a reporter; nothing ever rattled her. Well, hardly anything…
“There are signs in the rooms,” he replied curtly. “You do read?” he added harshly, as if he doubted it.
Her pale emerald eyes caught like small, bright fires under her thick dark eyelashes, as thick and dark as her hair. “I not only read,” she said in her best Southern drawl, “I can write my whole name!”
She hadn’t thought his dark eyes could possibly get any colder, but they immediately took on glacial characteristics.
“Your Southern accent needs work,” he said just as the doors opened. “Mute the rs a little more.”
She gaped at his broad back as he walked away. It was one of the few times in her life she’d been stuck for a comeback.
**
BETTER:
NEW VERSION #1
ARROGANT JERK, glaring judgmentally: “You do know that guests are specifically asked not to remove the bath towels from the rooms?”
NIKKI, turns to JERK and says coolly: “The fact that I am holding this towel suggests otherwise.” She turns away.
ARROGANT JERK, speaking curtly: “There are signs in the rooms. You do read?”
NIKKI, calmly, unfazed by this surly stranger with an obvious personality problem:
“I cannot imagine how you acquired the belief that anything I do is any business of yours. I need you to stop speaking now.”
ARROGANT JERK, angry & feeling confused about what just happened, mutters sullenly: “Stupid bitch.”
(NIKKI ignores him, but subtly slides her hand into her purse and closes it around the bottle of pepper spray. She remains aware, monitoring the level of threat from this angry man.
When the elevator stops and the doors open to a safely public and busy lobby, Nikki walks away feeling happy, looking forward to walking on the beach. One part of her — the part that runs on autopilot every minute of her life because she is a woman — remains aware of her surroundings and checks to make sure the angry man is not following her. The rest of her has already forgotten the unimportant stranger and is focused on joy.)
**
BEST:
NEW VERSION #2
NIKKI running toward elevator: “Oh wait, please!”
FUN & CLASSY MAN in elevator smiles at her and presses the “Open” button: “Take your time. I’ll hold it.”
NIKKI, entering elevator, smiling at MAN: “Thank you!”
FUN & CLASSY MAN, smiling at NIKKI: “You’re welcome. Which floor?”
NIKKI: “The lobby, please. Thanks.”
(The man presses the Lobby button. He and Nikki glance at each other and smile, as the elevator descends.)
FUN & CLASSY MAN, in slightly amused voice: “I should probably warn you, before you go through the lobby, the hotel has a silly rule that you can’t take their towels to the beach. Wouldn’t want you to be accosted by security and put in time-out. Or whatever they do to towel rebels around here.”
NIKKI, laughing: “Thanks for the warning. Maybe I should hide in the elevator and try to make it back to my room without being caught with the contraband. Unless you can promise to bring me a cake with a file inside.”
FUN & CLASSY MAN: “I have a better idea. I can carry the towel through the lobby for you. I don’t mind if I get on their bad side. I can take it.” (He smiles at her.) “It’s for a good cause.”
NIKKI, teasingly: “My hero.”
FUN & CLASSY MAN, laughing: “Your accomplice, you mean.”
NIKKI, laughing: “In a Robin Hood kind of way, though.”
FUN & CLASSY MAN: “I like that. So it’s a plan?”
NIKKI: “It’s a plan. And thank you. I’ve been looking forward to walking on that beach all day.”
FUN & CLASSY MAN: “You’re welcome. My pleasure.”
Picture these two, polite, friendly, civilized people walking through the hotel lobby together. Maybe a grinchy woman behind the desk glares at the MAN when she sees him holding a hotel towel. Maybe he gives her a huge, unrepentant smile and keeps walking. Outside the hotel, out of sight of the staff, he hands the towel to Nikki. They have a laugh about the desk grinch, and after wishing each other a pleasant evening, go their separate ways. Each of them feels happy and slightly energized by the silly fun they had, turning a little hotel rule into an over-the-top melodrama, bonding in their shared mischief.
This is how life can be, if people are NICE to each other. Why would we choose to spend time with mannerless mean pissy people like ARROGANT JERK when we could be with people who are classy, helpful, upbeat, and fun?
Why would a woman want to waste a single second of her life “taming the brooding beast” or winning the heart of the toxic, un-classy, unhelpful, self-absorbed, just-plain-mean Bad Boy, and then try for YEARS to heal all the damage to his soul that only SHE can understand and forgive (or so she believes), hoping that he will EVENTUALLY reach the point where he will treat her the way FUN & CLASSY MAN treats Nikki right from THE VERY FIRST MOMENT.
Notice that ARROGANT JERK wanted to make Nikki feel bad about herself.
Notice that FUN & CLASSY MAN wanted Nikki to have exactly what she wanted, a fun walk/swim at the beach. See the difference? We should ALL be with people who want for us to have happiness and the good things we want for ourselves.
The hell with fixing damaged jerks (which never works anyway)! Our culture needs to encourage every woman to find a man who is already wonderful and psychologically healthy and from the first moment has the desire (and psychological ABILITY) to give her the kindness, respect, and happiness she deserves.
So girls, repeat after me:
“If a guy isn’t classy and nice to me the first time we meet, he can go fuck himself.”
Note to all the FUN & CLASSY men out there: Thank you for being a Gift to this world! I am sorry our culture does not teach women to appreciate you more.
To men who are thinking that women can be toxic too, you are so right. Send us a funny rant about toxic women or cultural stuff that programs men to blindly pursue and love them, and we might post it in the Wilde Tribe.
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