80s Ladies Romance
From clinch covers to monster lovers, we love romance.
80s Ladies Romance
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The one where we decide over coffee that there aren't enough positive podcasts about old school romance. Monica and I introduce ourselves and have a conversational montage about sundry romance topics.
This one is supposed to sound like we recorded it on a boombox on cassette.
You know, I started off with some of those bodice rippers, but I probably started off with like the old school Regency Barbara Cartland ones, which are, you know, pretty tame. My mom loved to read romance novels. She was more a fan of like Danielle Steele, the more kind of contemporary ones. But I read, you know, the ones that would have had Fabio on the cover. And definitely probably starting in high school and in college, I had a roommate that we would just trade those kind of books. As I've come along and gotten older, my taste in romance has kind of evolved. So I haven't read as many of those older ones anymore. But I definitely read the Joanna Lindsay's and the Kathleen Woodewis and then even kind of the Judith Krantz and Jane Anne Krantz and all of those ones. It is more modern, but to me, it is a quintessential 80s romance novel. And that is Lace by Shirley Conran. And it was made into a miniseries. And I saw the miniseries before I read the book. But the book is definitely like an 80s. It's not straight up romance, but there's enough romance and steam that I feel like it's a must discuss at some point.
SPEAKER_01What was the basic synopsis? I know that's familiar. I don't remember the
SPEAKER_00synopsis. Three girls were off at a boarding school. It starts kind of in the middle. It flashes back. It starts in the middle with a young adult film actress showing up at a hotel to see these three grown women. And her famous line is, which one of you bitches is my mother? And it flashes back to when these girls were all in boarding school.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. Blast from the past. Yeah. I know I must have seen that, but oh, that'll be great. Phoebe Cates was in the
SPEAKER_00miniseries. She was the lead. I don't enjoy history. So that's part of why I stopped reading historical novels. That doesn't do it for me. I'm much more interested in contemporary stories. I'm not interested in history. And I think some of it, yes, is the things where we talk about with modern views that we'll get into about Consent and things like that. But part of it is, I think some of those books appeal to young girls because it's the swept away. It's the Disney princess. My prince comes and I'm going to be safe and I'm going to be cared for. And this is love. And as I became older and had relationships and matured and saw that, it seemed real. I wasn't waiting for my prince to come anymore. So I wasn't necessarily, you know, those books weren't as interesting to me once I had had an opportunity to see what real romance or real life was like. Not to say that they don't play a role in terms of escapism. If I was looking for escapism, that would be a great place to go, right? It doesn't have to be realistic to be enjoyable. See, and I see it as like a lack of agency, right? I don't want to wait around for someone to save me. I think that's why they have their role in like, if that's something that appeals to you either for your real life or for just a sense of escapism, they have their role there. Just like, you know, there are plenty of people who hate smutty books. They don't want to read the smut. That's not something that interests them. And so, you know, I think it's more just a matter of personal preference. I personally, Don't find the swept away thing interesting anymore, but it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. It just means it's not my thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we read kind of different books.
SPEAKER_00Right. But I mean, like, yeah, I mean, I think there are those people who will say, yeah, I love the Fifty Shades, but hate the swept away Bodice Rippers. I find those heroines annoying in both books. I'm like, you're a dummy, you know, like you're a fool. Grow up and take some responsibility for your actions. especially in the very traditional submissives. He's a billionaire boss. She's a 20-year-old down on her luck, things like that. No matter the setting, I'm uninterested in the stupid young girl. What I perceive, what to me seems like a stupid young girl. I'm not saying that she's stupid, but when I look at that, I go, you're a dummy and I'm not interested in what happens to your story because I think that your choices are poor and that's why you're in this position. But again, that's not saying that that's a- bad thing. That's just, you know, I read reviews all the time on Goodreads where people are like, I hated the main character. She was so annoying. She was the cause of all of her problems. And I thought, I loved that main character. She was spunky. She was understandable. I could see why she made those bad choices. It's just a matter of, you know, personal preference and perspective.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Do you think it is possible to have better conflict from the hero and heroine, the main characters? and still have it be a romance. I mean, does it have to be a thing of romance where they are so fucking stupid where the conflict is either just not there or it's just juvenile and avoidable and not make it like a chick lit drama. You know what I mean? Still fit the parameters of romance. I don't know where you say where it's not like where they make more, the kind of heroine that you like, you're saying that you've, what is it that you need it to be more equal that you need it to be like less of a power imbalance? Yes. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, you know, like I said, for example, the tropes that are very much like he's the 27 year old billionaire, which like, where are those guys? They don't, that doesn't exist, but okay. So we're in fantasy land where there are tons of eligible 27 year old unmarried, just waiting to be wonderful, you know, men out there. And none of them are contemporaries. None of them are their contemporaries, these smart businesswomen or the women who, God forbid, are even richer than them. They're never attracted to them. It's always the young girl who, despite having smart and coming out of a good school or having skills or things like that, is completely focused on her role as a romantic partner, right? So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like, Is it a romance without your either external trope, the long lost girlfriend, the misunderstood conflict where I hear a conversation and instead of being like a normal person and being like, hey, what were you talking about in that conversation? I instead sweep up and run away and go to my mother's house and those types of things outside of those. I mean, I don't know. What would you create as a realistic conflict? Like I fell in love with him. but we have religious differences and can we work through them? He wants kids and I don't, you know, those types of conflicts.
SPEAKER_01I guess not. I mean, I don't mean maybe that not the conflict has to fit, but it can be over the top. It can be fantasy, but it has to make sense. You know, it can be, it has to be, I mean, adults make stupid decisions, but they do them for reasons. You know, they don't do it because they're, you know, 12 years old mentally or emotionally and they might be jealous or angry and, you know, but it, You can see why, as an adult, they would make that mistake, even if it was a terrible thing
SPEAKER_00to do. I mean, but show me a romance movie. Show me a big box office movie, not some little indie film, but show me a box office movie where the main thing is a romance between two 50-year-olds who are... having an adult type of relationship. They're not there as parents. They're not, you know, this is not the parent trap where you're putting them back together. This is not, oh, we're just platonic and we're going to kiss. It's a Hallmark movie. I mean, I don't see those. I think it's more than just books.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But an adult type relationship sounds boring. And I want these 50 year olds to be having a romance novel relationship.
SPEAKER_00Right. But I mean, I'm saying, do you see those? I was going to say, I think that's a much bigger thing when we're talking about romance and we're talking about sex. I mean, does Victoria's Secret have 50 year old models? No, they don't. Do you see 50 year old women or men doing anything in culture or media that presents them as romantic, attractive, that sexual, those types of things? No.
SPEAKER_01That's why I was surprised when that show Lucifer, I mean, it's over now, but I remember I was being surprised that almost the whole cast of actresses were at least in their forties, you know? And so I thought that was pretty cool that it wasn't a theme. It wasn't like these old ladies, you know, it was, they were having normal sexual, you know, storylines and it was just what it was. So I applaud that decision producers of Lucifer, but of a huge trope. Now a popular trope is the age gap. And I, First of all, it's hilarious with what some people think an age gap is. It's like less than 10 years. And they're like, ew. I mean, I think it. But then there's a ton of books where the man is 40 to even 50, somewhere in that range. And the girl is 18, 19, 20. Yes. There's a ton of those. And there are only a few. I've seen a few in reverse, but they're gross. And it kind of bothers me about myself that I find it... On the one hand, they're gross because the stories that I read were bad. But there's also an element of, ew, because she's the older one and he's like 18. And I'm like, okay, that's too young. I would disagree with that.
SPEAKER_00In real life, sure. But what about the 40-year-old woman who just wants the 18-year-old boy toy, who can go and go and go and go? He doesn't need to be there for her. He doesn't need to have a real job. He's there to be pretty and be good in bed. I think that fantasy can be out there. I mean, I think the thing is, like, if we're going to get mad at people yucking on those old bodice rippers because they're like, who would want that? I don't feel like I can judge the person whose kink is, I'm 40 and he's 18. You know, like, it's not my thing. No,
SPEAKER_01I'm not judging. I'm
SPEAKER_00not judging. That is part of it. I'm trying to picture a 50-year-old heroine who we could explain why she is single at 50 without it being a
SPEAKER_01negative. It's not that I need everybody to be my age in a book, but they kind of are intentionally derogatory to older people, older age groups in these books.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think another thing that holds back from having the thing that makes them more likely to have age gap with an older man or even just an older man, you know, male main character rather than an older female main character is a lot of romances, a ton of romances end up with marriage and a baby, right? Children. What do you have in 50 year old women? Probably not childbearing. So if that is part of your thing, that we are setting them up for a happily ever after and she has a baby in the plan or it's a surprise baby or it's a hidden baby or any of those things, your older female character cannot run down that path. And I feel like that is so much of what is expected at the end. Even me, when I'm reading things, I was just reading one and I really, really liked it. And it was a book that It's called Mother Faker. And the lady is like early 40s and divorced. And he's actually early 40s. He's her boss. She's like a single mom. And he ends up with her and, you know, basically, like raise helps to raise her because he doesn't adopt them because Divorced dad is in the picture. So, but anyway, I kept thinking, oh, and now she's going to be pregnant and they're going to have babies together. And like, no, they didn't. They were happy with, you know, went off with the family that she already had. But I mean, it was kind of like, to me, it's like, it's so expected in those romance novels, whether it be old school ones or new ones. Now, I think that if we accept that people that writers can write about plenty of things that they had to use their imagination for that are not at all like real life, then we can't necessarily excuse away their unwillingness to imagine an older female sexual being. Like if you can imagine a dragon shifter, which very clearly doesn't exist in real life, you could imagine a super hot 54 year old woman. But I do think, you know, right. But you also have to, I think you have to find your market, right? Shit talking, old romantic movies that have very similar kind of what we might call outdated movies. views on romance or relationships or male field dynamics. I mean, forget about any sort of non-hetero relationship in a 1940s romance movie that didn't exist. But I don't hear people, I hear people who are more able to recognize that they were a thing of their time. You know, like I listen to a lot of old time radio and I listen to a podcast that discusses old time radio and they'll talk about, I mean, some of them have stuff that's just really bad. You know, they have a character that is supposed to be Asian being played by a white person with a completely stereotypical Asian accent or, or Hispanic character who has such a, just really harmful stereotypes. And I, they can talk about the fact that this chunk of this is really not good. Now that we know better, we go, ooh, that's really cringe. That part is very cringe, but we can see these other portions and recognize the strengths of this. I'm not saying that we just write off everything as of its time, you know, because I sometimes think that's a cop out, you know, when people are like, well, you know, that was grandma's generation when they said that. I was like, grandma has an iPhone. Grandma figured out Facebook. So grandma can figure out that we don't call black people that particular word that grandma just used anymore. So I think that your point is well taken that There is nuance and you can find a lot of strengths in older things while still acknowledging, eh, this is problematic. And then it just depends on how far the individual reader gets. I mean, we talked a little bit about Shaina, right? I had trouble getting past some of those things that are less acceptable today. I had trouble with that with the dependent woman. I thought that she was a brat. I did not understand why a guy would be interested in her other than for her body. So that was not particularly interesting. So I was like, she's a pain in the butt. She doesn't really talk intelligently about anything. She's like a petulant child. Okay, I guess all he wants and all he ever talks about is how gorgeous she is, right? Well, that's kind of shallow. And I couldn't get past that. And I understand that you say that as it goes on, they do develop a true relationship that's built on more than just lust. But I... just got so annoyed with her. And then for me, because we view consent differently, not you and I, but today's world views consent differently, I had trouble. I think if there had been enough other things I liked about the book, I could have overlooked that. I could have been like, eh, that's not great, but I just, I couldn't move past that.
SPEAKER_01First of all, I don't think you can police people's sexual fantasies. I mean, you can speculate and analyze, but I don't think it is fair or even healthy to start criticizing people for a rape fantasy or a non-con or a dove con or any of that stuff because who's the boss of that? For other people, that's just not good. But there are, nevertheless, there are cases where it's clearly new, and I don't think this is one of
SPEAKER_00them. I understand what you're saying about a deal. It is very difficult for me to examine it and take away the modern lens. Because if someone said to my daughter, I'm going to take you out to dinner. I'm going to buy you an expensive dinner. So I guess the question is, at what point is it okay to say no and remove consent? And at what point would you say, well, I've said no. this is too big of a deal and you can't go back on it. I mean, which leads me to the bigger part of the consent or lack of consent. Wasn't the deal breaker for me, but because I didn't have anything else in there. I mean, you just sat there and described all the ways that she's a shitty character. She's a shitty person. She's there to use him to get away from her father. And she is dishonest with him and makes bargains. She has no intention of following through on. So even if I could overlook the consent, why would I want to keep reading about this? Like you're a gross person. That is more of a, I guess what I'm saying is we have different, like people in general have different things that they can overlook. Right. And if you have enough things that you like, I mean, we have that friend, right? That friend who you're like, oh, they have that flaw that is so I generally really don't like, but they have all these other good things that I like. So I'm willing to put up with that. I think the reason it exists in a fantasy is that even if it doesn't seem like there's choice, there is choice. I don't think anybody fantasizes about being in a situation where they truly have no choice, right? If you... like the idea of ravishment, there's a point in you that thinks that, yes, but if this was really, really bad, if I was really being hurt or really being scared or really this, I have the choice to stop this. I don't think that any, and I think that that's what makes it a fantasy, right? Because you've always got a safe word. You just close the book. That's your safe word. I mean, that is the other thing. If we're talking about Shana, I did not get far enough into the, book to truly see if Rurik was a good person. I mean, I got far enough to see that, like, he was great on the plantation, right? He had all these great innovative ideas and he seemed to be a really good worker. But, well, and I think that so many of the older ones that I read, even when they are steamy, they are written from the male pleasure perspective, right? And so that's a difference that I see in more contemporary ones. You see ones where there's more going on and we acknowledge that maybe we're going to consider the woman's pleasure and maybe tonight the man goes home a little bit unsatisfied, but the lady does not. And I don't feel like I saw those in the historical ones.
SPEAKER_01But I'll tell you what, I am very surprised still. I've read a lot of the contemporary books and Some of them I hate a lot, some of them I love, but I still cannot believe how for all the talk about equality and progress and blah, blah, blah, that how these heroes or male characters now treat the women that are in the books because it's very, very misogynist, patriarchal. It's even many times worse than it was in the vintage historicals. I mean, they're horrible. and the women don't at least in the vintage books they fought back initially they might have caved in but they were like you at first and they were like i'm gonna fight this and you overpowered her but now they're just they just take it and i just like what are you doing you're talking about this
SPEAKER_00and i find in the contemporaries that that is equally annoying like i said did i read All the Fifty Shades and the ones that were in that, the Crossfire and all those, I did because the steam is good. But the fact that the guys, yeah, they were jerks. I mean, I did not find that appealing. When I was young... I believed, I watched a ton of soap operas. My mother loved soap operas. I watched the daytime ones. I watched the nighttime ones. And I very much feel like those gave the message that with the love of a good woman, this man can be changed, right? And that's not real life. That's why women get themselves into stupid, toxic relationships. So I don't like it in those contemporary ones where I was like, he's an asshole. I know that he's rich and super hot, but surely you can find somebody. Maybe they don't have a billion dollars. Maybe they're pulling in like $100,000 and they're hot, but they're also going to be nice to you. So I find that annoying, even in the contemporary. books, the poor treatment, the asshole jerk imbalance of power. Maybe that's their kink. Maybe they like that. Maybe they like being demeaned.
SPEAKER_01Actually, there's interesting parallels between that. And we want to talk about the tropes that people denigrate in old school, but eat up in the newer genres. But I don't think that's good for women. I don't think it's good for older women. I mean, you can't do that without hurting women and hurting romance. You have to at least, you don't have to like what other people like, but you have to be able to criticize without writing off a whole generation of
SPEAKER_00women. I think it's also assuming that, I mean, you and I have had this whole discussion, right? I am much more a reader of, though you and I are peers, right? We're about the same age. I am more a fan of the contemporary and you were more a fan of the ones that were written back then. To assume that only someone of your age enjoys those, that there's not some 18 or 12-year-old out there who's today's 12-year-old who's reading those books and loving them, I mean, I think it's kind of silly. So yeah, I mean, I think that we need to acknowledge that there's going to be people of all ages to whom those books
SPEAKER_01are
SPEAKER_00written. What about the argument that the artistic freedom was never there? It's just been shifted, right? Because before the days of like self-publishing, who were the arbiters about whether anything was going to get out there? Publishing houses, right? If they decided they didn't like your view, nobody was reading your book. Now, with self-publishing... I don't think that there's any more freedom. I don't think there was more freedom before. I guess what I'm saying is now it's just a different person telling you, I don't like your views. I don't want these views out there. It's Joe commenter, not Random House. But I still think that was there. I think there were people who decided that view is not something that we think should be put out there. And therefore, we're not publishing your book.
SPEAKER_01I'm going to say the market is there for a lot of this romance stuff. There are just people saying it shouldn't be out there and available, but there is a market. They're just, you know, it's not that nobody wants to read these things. Right. So how are people saying you can't
SPEAKER_00read these things? You should not, you should not. So as an author, if you're writing something that someone tells you, you shouldn't write, but you believe there's a market out there, how do you reach that market? How do you, get those other people who are going to say to the same reviewer i don't agree with you you don't get to tell me what i like like how do you find those people because if they're there they're there right so
SPEAKER_01you put it out there and they sell or they don't sell but then you get somebody makes a video that goes viral that criticizes it and then everybody's hating on you and then you know you have to take your books down or be you know what you know constantly hounded on social media for, or somebody wants you to take your books down or Amazon wants to take it down because now everybody in the universe is saying you're a whatever. Oh, so. All right. So I guess I'm never going to get you to read a, um, my favorite shifter, my polyamorous paranormal dragon shifter. Like
SPEAKER_00I'm hoping we're like, I'm not much of a fan of fantasy, but I will give that one a try.
SPEAKER_01I didn't think I would be. I'll tell you what. When I started reading romance again, I was like, I am going to stick with my historicals because all of this, forget today, the modern stuff, kids today, you know, all that. But then, then I found dragon shifters and my perspective changed a little bit, especially the ones where, and then I'm like, oh, it's only going to be two people. I can't imagine who we want to read about, you know, like more than two people gross. And then, and then I found Amy Penza's like dragon shifter, her universe is these dragons and, There's two guys, two dragon shifters that are lovers for centuries until they find, they mate in threes, but they're not complete until they find their third, who is a woman. Okay. And then they have this whole, and I'm like, who would have ever thought? You might think that doesn't have a sign of healing, but it actually can be. I will give that a try.
UNKNOWNOkay.