Update: For another perspective on this, using one YA book as an example, see Bookshop’s post Bad Romance (or YA and rape culture).
I’ve been noticing something disturbing with quite a few of the beautiful paranormal romances currently shimmering on bookstore shelves, and I’m not talking about the paranormal aspects. In too many of them, the controlling and violent behavior of the “bad boy” becomes fodder for a romantic fantasy where the sweet, innocent girl tames the dark and sexy beast.
By itself, instalove is a harmless dream pinned on the idea that destiny will send a girl her one true love. It becomes a problem, however, when the object of her affection—and often obsession— is dangerous, possibly evil, and wants to kill his paramour. The fantasy then becomes one of distorted reality, where bad behavior and actions don’t matter because everything ends up all happy sunshine with rainbows and kittens and true love raining down like magic sprinkles. When this message is repeated across shelves and tables of books strung through stores across the globe, it skews teen readers’ understanding of what really happens when a guy is violent and possessive. It’s not all sunshines and rainbows, that’s for sure. And it’s definitely not something to swoon over.
There are several (potentially damaging) message lurking within the pages:
- I don’t mind that he was really mean to me at first, and mocked me in front of classmates at school, almost to the point of sexual assault. He was really into me but didn’t know how to express it, sort of like a boy pulling a girl’s pigtails. But he doesn’t do that anymore, so everything’s good now.
- He wants to spend all his time with me. That’s why he keeps me from my friends and family. And I totally forgive him for messing with my car when he doesn’t want me going out with friends.
- It’s okay if he follows me when I’m out with friends, and especially if other guys are there. If he’s jealous, it just means he loves me. And if he sends friends and relatives to shadow me, he’s making sure I stay safe.
- It’s kinda cute that he breaks into my room at night to watch me sleep. He can’t stand to be apart from me.
- Guys like to take the lead, so it’s fine that he sometimes ignores my wishes or interferes in my life without asking me. He’s just being a strong, supportive partner.
- It’s sexy when he gets angry and pushes me up against the wall or bed and tells me how much he could hurt me if he wanted to.
The worst part? All of this is presented in a positive light and everything working out perfectly in the end. Everyone is happy. It doesn’t matter that these characters’ actions would never logically lead to these conclusions; the messages all but shout, this is what true love is like!
In real life, girls who fall in love with bad boys who want to kill them generally end up dead, not in love. A boyfriend who does stalkery stuff is a stalker, and starting down the path to becoming physically and/or emotionally abusive. No matter how much we wish
1 + 1 = forever
there is nothing anyone can do to change reality. If a guy is violent, aggressive, and controlling with most people, but is loving, compassionate, romantic, and devoted to his girlfriend, it sends the incorrect and damaging message that
bad behavior + pretty words = true love
As Emily at Feministing points out, “Instead of thinking that [the bad boy’s] actions are evil and abusive—which they are—teenage girls are being conditioned to think that [his] abusive behaviour is the ultimate way a boyfriend should treat his girlfriend.”
As adults, these stories might not seem that bad, but most aren’t targeted at grown women. While plenty of adults do read them (take that, Joel Stein!), we aren’t the intended audience. So what we have is a situation where grown women with a (relatively) firm grasp on what constitutes love and marriage (i.e. trying to maintain a semblance of romance while juggling carpool, toxic diapers, in-laws, and squabbling kids), are writing fanciful stories about exciting and dangerous romances with rough and dangerous men for teens who aren’t quite as savvy when it comes to the opposite sex.
So here’s the question: Do teen readers understand that these tumultuous relationships are pure fantasy? Don’t answer immediately with a defensive, “Yes! They’re/we’re not stupid.” Consider it for a moment. Do they have enough experience watching or participating in healthy relationships to know what constitutes an abusive one? Perhaps a more pointed question: If they do recognize when someone else is in an abusive relationship, how likely are they to apply that same set of reasoning to their own relationship? Will they know what to do about it?
The last thing I want to do is imply teen girls are too dumb or flighty or immature to understand. It’s not that at all. I still remember how completely naïve and idealistic I was as a teen. I wanted a boyfriend so bad, I could easily have fallen into a murky situation that would have been difficult to navigate out of on my own. I’m forever grateful that I never did. When I look back on my perceptions of love even just five years ago, I laugh nervously and try to forget about the various bullets I dodged. But that’s the thing. Those combined experiences help me see through the illusions that populate stories on love and dating.
Teens’ real-world experience with dating is so limited that idealized notions of romance can drown out the harsh realities they’d rather not face. So the conclusions about true love they draw from the actions of these literary “bad boys” can easily confuse their developing understanding of sex and love.
The sad truth is that, if we aren’t careful, writers of young adult fiction can perpetuate unhealthy myths about romance and relationships for girls who don’t have the life experience necessary to sift reality from fiction. Is this really the message we want to send all the beautiful, smart, yet inexperienced teens who escape into our books?
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for those words of wisdom!
I commented to you about this briefly on Twitter, after reading the *other* blog post, but wanted to add a bit more after I read your blog post. Turns out I mirrored your thoughts almost word for word, so I don’t need to add more. Too bad though, because I want to throw in my thoughts. ;-)
As women, the allure of the bad boy, the guy who needs to be “fixed,” can be just that – alluring. It calls to our inner-fixers and we want to save him from himself. It’s almost a carnal call to our maternal side. But the allure is safe – for ADULT WOMEN. (Or, for most of us, I should say.)
Now, for our young daughters, glorifying the bad boy can be detrimental and can cause them to choose paths that lead to devastating results. There is nothing alluring about bad boys. They are bad. I wouldn’t want my daughter with anyone who was dark and brooding, and that tends to be the least of our fictional bad boys’ issues.
Edward Cullen was a stalker and a pedophile, and we sucked him up. But we were the moms reading Twilight, not the tweens or teens. What they were getting out of it is what you wrote above – it’s ok that he’s a super creeper because he loves Bella sooooooooo much. Love is a many splendored thing, and this is just one side of it, right? Right?
WRONG.
Patch from Hush Hush was an abusive jerk and we all swooned for him. But again, as adults, he called to our inner-fixers and we wanted to fix that broken boy. Mend his aching heart. Blah blah blah. What our daughters were getting out of it was that it’s totally ok if guys are total jerks, even understandable, but as long as they’re hot and brooding, you should ignore all of the other stuff. Focus on the positive, and the negative will fade away.
NO IT WON’T. EVER.
As an adult woman who can look back on my life with so much more wisdom, I can say that it was my attraction to the ‘bad boy’ that had me in an abusive relationship at sixteen. He was beautiful and broken and I wanted so badly to fix him. What I didn’t understand was that I couldn’t. There was no fixing that guy. He was a gorgeous sociopath with no concept of empathy or love, and I seriously wonder how many women he’s gone on to abuse. The allure of the bad boy didn’t stop with him though, which is what I mean when I say that glorifying the bad boy can lead to devastating paths. Sure, some of us may walk away from that first mistake and never look back. Some of us may never even make that first mistake. But some of us may take a few tries to get it through our thick skulls that you can’t fix the broken boys. You will never be awesome enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etc. because THAT’S NOT WHAT IT IS ABOUT. YOU ARE NOT THE CAUSE, NOR THE CURE. Teaching our girls that the heroine must be awesome enough to fix the boy is lying to them and setting them up for failure, self-loathing, years of confusion, and worst of all – possible years of abuse.
And in response to your question of do YA readers understand, yes, I’m sure they think they do. But as an adult who was once a YA reader, I can say with absolute surety that NO, I HAD NO CLUE.
I find this all very interesting. I get the ‘wanting to fix him’ thing, it is part of women’s nurturing nature. But I find it strange just how ‘bad’ some of the bad boys out there are. Like you said, these aren’t quiet, anti-authority bad boys, these are scary bad boys. And, personally, I think it’s weird in adult fiction, too. I am perplexed by the adult book that was inspired by this YA book, too. I know it’s supposed to be a fantasy, but why? Why would we fantasize about a man who wants to control our whole lives to the point of telling us what and when we can eat, what to wear, when to exercise, etc. How is that sexy? I really don’t get it.
Even more frightening, I recently read that a YA character who tried to rape his sister was featured in some sort of ‘crush’ contest. The blog where I read about it was written by a teen who did find it disturbing and wanted to speak out about it. I’m glad she did.
Whoa. While I’m not out to bash books, I’m interested to know the title. If you’d rather not share publicly, shoot me an email: michelle @ michellewittebooks.com I like to be aware if there is content in books I haven’t read but might mention to readers as something that sounds intriguing.
I sent you an email. I haven’t read the books either, but I will say that from the teens’ discussion it kind of sounded like it was not necessarily the author’s intent for that guy to be crushworthy.
Here’s a great post on the books I’m pretty sure Rachel is referring to. I’m a huge fan of these books, but NOT this character. http://zoeysuncreativelytitledblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/lets-have-talk.html
And all I’m hearing is that you hated the Twilight saga.
You should google the “Hot/Crazy scale” AKA “The Vicky Mendoza Diagonal” for a better understanding of this phenomenon.
“a person is allowed to be crazy, as long as they are equally hot. Ideally, you want your date to be above the diagonal line, indicating that they are hotter than they are crazy. ”
What this means is that a stalker is a stalker only if he’s ugly. If he’s hot? Hello, Prince Charming…
Uh, I’m not sure where you get that from, as I never say whether I like Twilight or any other paranormal romance, for that matter. And those bullet points are in reference to several different PNR books, not just Twilight.
Sadly, you’re missing the point here. The point is that teenage girls don’t have the experience necessary to understand that crazy stalkers as ideal boyfriends is a fantasy. Granted, it happens in romance novels all the time, but those are for adult women. And I’m not sure that anyone (young or old) should take dating advice from Barney on How I Met Your Mother.
And finally, I really hope you’re just trolling to get a response, because that’s a disturbing philosophy for anyone to have, whether in fictional or real life.