Rules for Romance Novel Heroines

[oyceter]

As usual, I mock because I love. Well, actually, I only partially mock because I love. The other part mocks because I want to love, but I am angry and constantly irked about gender role stereotypes in romance novels and even more irritated that many romances that step out of said stereotypes end up being lambasted as "unromantic."

General:

• You are beautiful beyond reckoning, even if you think you are ugly. If you are short, you are "petite and perfectly formed."


• You are slender or voluptuous, but never fat


• You must never be taller than the hero


• You must be younger than the hero


• You must be spirited, but never so spirited so that you can actually rescue yourself


• You must be PC, no matter what kind of background you come from
  
  • If you are not PC, fear not, you will be by the end of the book
  
  


• You will be loved by all people designated as "Good" in the book
  
  • If you start out disliked by "good" people in the book, it is because of past actions that you either regret whole-heartedly or did because of extenuating circumstances. Said "good" people will realize this and forgive you later on.
  
  
  • If they don't like you by the end of the book, they are Evil
  
  Please note that the hero may remain mysterious and dangerous, but you may not under any circumstance.


• You may be as fashionably and tomboyish-ly "unfeminine" as you want, as long as you always want to have sex with the hero (but no one else) and as long as you want children


• You must always succumb to your emotions, even if you are usually a hard-headed professional
  
  • As such, you will always be less professional than the hero, no matter what your respective backgrounds are
  
  


• You must always fall in love first


• You must forgive the hero anything, especially if he has a traumatized past


• If you are so unlucky as to have a traumatized past, it will only make you so much saintlier and more daintily troubled
  
  • As such, you are allowed to be a bit of a spitfire, as long as you are not genuinely nasty and as long as you have a heart of gold under the easily scratched exterior
  
  
  • You must never think that said trauma allows you to have random sex, even though it pardons the hero's exploits
  
  


• You must be instantly sexually attracted to the hero, even if you despise him and everything he stands for. This instant sexual attraction is the best way to tell that he is the love of your life.


• You must deny said instant sexual attraction. Acceptable reasons are (feel free to mix and match):
  
  • You are shy and virginal
  
  
  • You are afraid of sex
  
  
  • You mistrust your "baser instincts"
  
  
  • You were raped
  
  
  • Your heart was broken by a former lover, so you are now afraid of sex instead of love
  
  
  • You are afraid of intimacy
  
  
  • You are morally opposed to sleeping with the hero
  
  
  • You think you are in love with someone else
  
  
  • You don't want children
  
  
  • You think you hate men
  
  
  • All of the above
  
  Please note that while most of these reasons will make a romance hero more prone to having sex with anything that moves, as a romance heroine, you must never want to have sex with anyone who is not the hero.
  


• You must be more sexually inexperienced than the hero
  
  • If you are not, you still must never take the lead in sex
  
  


• Despite your relative sexual inexperience, you must always orgasm whenever the hero touches you


• You must always discover your sexuality for the first time under the hero's manly control. Furthermore, you must be pushed to the point of near-rape by the hero to be a sexual creature because you must never admit to your own desires


• You must always relinquish control when aroused, because said arousal befuddles your brain so much that you lose anything resembling rational thought


• You must always have the best sex of your life with the hero, regardless of the circumstances

If you star in a historical:

• You must be a virgin
  
  • If you are not a virgin, you must be a widow. As a widow, your dead husband never loved you. If he did, it was a lukewarm type of love. Regardless, sex with the dead husband was never as good as sex with the hero.
  
  


• You must be anachronistically enlightened for your time, enough to help out poor servants, but never enough to question the fundamental structure of your society


• You must be a non-peasant


• You must dress in fantastically beautiful clothes that have many layers but are somehow easily undone by the hero when necessary


• You must know nothing about how your body works, particularly when it comes to sex


• You will somehow be exempt from things like bad personal hygiene, fleas and ticks, and oily, greasy hair


• You must always want hordes of children, despite the dangers of childbirth

If you star in a contemporary:

• You must be employed in a glamorous profession, or else a charmingly bohemian one
  
  
  
  • If not, you are genteel-y poor
  
  
  • Regardless, you will always somehow manage to live a lifestyle outside your means
  
  


• If you attempt a new profession, you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams, despite all odds being against you


• You will not have to worry about paltry things such as bills, insurance or unemployment


• You must have the secret ability to perfectly balance a love life, children, and a career


• If you have children, they will never interrupt mid-coitus


• If you have children, they will be obnoxiously cute and never a disappointment

If you star in a trilogy:

• You must have two other friends or sisters, of approximately the same age, so that they can be matched up with the loves of their lives


• The three of you must have different hair colors. A good fallback is one blonde, one brunette/black-haired person (is there a term for that?), and one redhead. This is the case even if the three of you are sisters and your parents both have black hair.
  
  • A further note is that it is extremely unlikely that both your parents have black hair, as you and your hero may never have the same hair color (this is a general rule).
  
  


• The three of you must be substantially different, personality-, interest- and temperment-wise, despite being amazingly close. Acceptable groups of traits consist of:
  
  • Hot-headedness
  
  
  • Sexiness
  
  
  • Rebelliousness
  
  
  
  • Intelligence(-ness)
  
  
  • Prudishness
  
  
  • Practical-ness
  
  
  
  • Gentleness
  
  
  • Maternal-ness
  
  
  • Dreaminess
  
  
  These three categories of traits somehow all manage to get along spiffily. You must never have mix traits in these categories

Luckily, most romance novels that are recced to me directly go against these rules. I almost want to be a writer just so I can write romance novels that go completely against the grain.

Rules for romance novel heroes to come!

ETA: added cuts because I realized this was horrendously long.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My favorites are the historical-romance heroines who are described as not matching the preferred standards of beauty at the time, but who would be drop-dead stunners in our time.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I adore you.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Bwah!

I used to try very hard to write things that go against the grain of, well, something. Then I found out that everything warps as I write it anyway, so I might as well leave be.

Could be fun to try, though!

*shifty eyes*

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Black-haired heroes and heroines in trilogies always have raven hair. Never ever black.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Despite your relative sexual inexperience, you must always orgasm whenever the hero touches you.

I misread this as, "you must always orgasm wherever the hero touches you." Which makes steering someone by the elbow a good deal more interesting than it's ever been in my life.

[minim_calibre]

So very funny, and so very true!

Can't wait to see the rules for the dudes.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

::dies beautifully::

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Hee. Under trilogy (or series), I would add that all heroines must make cameos in later books, and they must be pregnant or accompanied by offspring in those cameos.

I'm looking forward to the rules for heroes.

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

A-men. Snort. :p

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Wah!

I am, obviously, not capable of coherent comments this morning....

Seriously, that was inspired

[fresne.livejournal.com]

"If you are not a virgin, you must be a widow. As a widow, your dead husband never loved you. If he did, it was a lukewarm type of love. Regardless, sex with the dead husband was never as good as sex with the hero."

Which makes me think of this really terrible, but really funny historical series, where the main chick in book 1 had a quiet love with her shy husband. The sex is okay. He dies. But then she meets the man, who is going to bring her back to love. The sex is incredible.

Next book. He dies. She meets the man who is going to bring her back to love. The sex is fantastic, better than any she's ever known.

Next book. They have a bunch of incredible sex. He dies. A character, who has already fallen in love with her, nurses her back from her grief. The sex is the most mindblowing that she has ever known.

Thankfully there is no next book, because seriously, the next guy was going to kill her with pleasure. Plus, ummm...that's alot of husbands.


Aside from that, you also make me think of this Harlequin, where I kept turning to Karen and saying, "She's taller than him. Huh." Goes off to read more. "She's older than him. Huh." Goes off to read more. "Dude, he's a virgin and she's had several relationships." Decides not to leave book on plane.

[oyceter]

That too! And of course the hero is so open-minded that even though the heroine is *gasp* a blonde, pale beauty when raven-haired people with olive skin is the norm, he thinks she gorgeous. This must also come with the obligatory "Oh no! Why am I blonde and skinny and pale instead of dark-skinned?! Woe is me!" angst from the heroine examining herself in the mirro ;).

[oyceter]

^_^

I was scared I was getting too bitter or off the mark =(. I suppose that will happen when one ends up chucking books at the wall though.

Plus, the hair color thing is so true!!

[oyceter]

Oh man, some day I shall make up some giant epic in my head that either completely lampoons all these or else breaks every single rule. Thrice.

[oyceter]

I stand corrected! ;)

Although, of course, the hero can have hair as black as sin! The hero's physical attributes can pretty much all be described as ___ as sin though. Heroes must sin a whole lot. One would think they wouldn't have time to body build while doing all that sinning, but I guess they fit it in.

[oyceter]

*snerk*

I've always wanted an elbow orgasm myself, really....

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Under trilogy (or series), I would add that all heroines must make cameos in later books, and they must be pregnant or accompanied by offspring in those cameos.

TOTALLY!!!

Re: Seriously, that was inspired

[oracne.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO!!!

So, what was the title of that Harlequin?

[oyceter]

Glad you enjoyed!

[oyceter]

Oh definitely. Also, if it's a trilogy, by the very end, the first heroine will have a cute baby, the second one will have just discovered she's pregnant and the third one will be planning her marriage. It's like magic!

Re: Seriously, that was inspired

[oyceter]

Hee, that's great! And I want to know the title of the Harlequin too now ^_^.

[oyceter]

Hee, no worries. Hopefully that was an amused "wah" instead of a "wah" of despair.

Hrm. Ok, I reread that sentence and it comes out completely strange. Oh well.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom, and I've just had much fun spotting how many of those traits *don't* apply to the romance-reading heroine of my current writings (she prefers foreign-language romance novels because it makes her look studious when she encounters fellow academics on the train).

Now what I need is a similar list for heroines in crime fiction and/or contemporary fantasy so I can *really* see how far I'm deviating from the norm.

Shall also keep an eye out for your heroes list, so I can do similar with that.

Thanks for posting.

Gina

[oyceter]

Yay for your romance-reading heroine!

Glad you enjoyed ^_^.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Amused "wah." Mine are usually amused.

Though I kind of like "wah of despair."