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Feb. 22nd, 2002 12:39 pm
My exalted opinion on condoms in romance novels...
I can understand your feelings, and it can get tiresome when it seems like the author just mentions them as an obligatory footnote instead of making them part of the action. It's true that condoms don't really come immediately to mind when I think romance. I think they do have a place in romance novels though. For one thing, I would like to think that part of their presence is not just P.C.ness but a little move past the hypocrisy of pretending that 'nice' people would never plan or expect to have sex. That 'nice' people (especially women) only have sex when they are completely and unexpectedly overtaken by a passion so great and overwhelming that they couldn't possibly think about something so mundane. Also, a demonstration of caring and responsibility is hardly out of place in heroine or hero. I think the place for romanticizing is perhaps not in leaving out the mention of condoms, but perhaps in making them more hitch free then they might be in real life. On the other hand, I don't mind at all when authors make an end run around this by ignoring condoms, but expressing that this is an anomaly for all concerned (perhaps landing me right back in the hypocrisy bin), at least partly because I like books where the heroine gets pregnant.
I can understand your feelings, and it can get tiresome when it seems like the author just mentions them as an obligatory footnote instead of making them part of the action. It's true that condoms don't really come immediately to mind when I think romance. I think they do have a place in romance novels though. For one thing, I would like to think that part of their presence is not just P.C.ness but a little move past the hypocrisy of pretending that 'nice' people would never plan or expect to have sex. That 'nice' people (especially women) only have sex when they are completely and unexpectedly overtaken by a passion so great and overwhelming that they couldn't possibly think about something so mundane. Also, a demonstration of caring and responsibility is hardly out of place in heroine or hero. I think the place for romanticizing is perhaps not in leaving out the mention of condoms, but perhaps in making them more hitch free then they might be in real life. On the other hand, I don't mind at all when authors make an end run around this by ignoring condoms, but expressing that this is an anomaly for all concerned (perhaps landing me right back in the hypocrisy bin), at least partly because I like books where the heroine gets pregnant.
