Your Feet's Too Big? Romance Novels and the Larger-Than-Life Male Appendage

Lynn had forced herself to make a joke, but amazement ended up being precisely the right word to describe the sight of their pants hitting the floor. She found herself staring at two erect cocks. Two erect cocks that were long and thick and much, much bigger than any shed encountered before. Her first thought was anticipation—the guys obviously had a talent or two and since it was their equipment, she figured they knew how to handle it. Her second thought was, Suz is going to die of jealousy. —Vivian Arend and Elle Kennedy, All Fired Up


My spouse and I recently attended a concert by the Hot Sardines, the New York jazz ensemble "on a mission to make old sounds new again and prove that joyful music can bring people together in a disconnected world." One of their "old sounds made new again" was a cover of a song originally sung by Fats Waller, "Your Feet's Too Big." The original tune has Waller poking fun at (and expressing his jealously of?) a male friend whose "pedal extremities are colossal." Said friend waltzes onstage with two women on his arms, and later takes center stage to demonstrate how his "obnoxious" feet can dance up a storm.

Though the film clip of the performance (below) concludes with Waller as the one who ends up with a woman in his lap, the song hints at male anxieties about the common symbolic meaning of a large foot: an equally "colossal" male genital. "Your Feet's Too Big" humorously hints at the male fear that his "foot" may not measure up to those of other men, and thus he'll be at a disadvantage in the competition to attract women. (For a scholarly discussion of the symbolic meanings of the foot, check out K. J. Kerbe's " 'Your Feet's Too Big': An Inquiry into Psychological and Symbolic Meanings of the Foot," in the Summer 1985 edition of Psychoanalytic Review).

Many other singers have recorded versions of the song (including the Beatles!), but it wasn't until I attended the Hot Sardines concert that I heard a woman croon the tune. Elizabeth Bougerel's cool, deep, yet decidedly feminine vocals, as well as the changes she made to some of the lyrics, simultaneously bring male anxieties about penis size to the surface and call them into question.

Waller's verses jokingly insult the man with the big feet, but they also suggest the singer's uneasiness at the sight of a man with "feet" bigger than his own:

     Oh, your pedal extremities are colossal
     To me you look just like a fossil
     You got me walkin', talkin' and squawkin'
     'Cause your feet's too big, yeah


In contrast, Bougerel never feels the need to "walk, talk, or squwak"; instead, her lyrics consistently point to the absurdities of oversized male appendages:

     Now when you go and die, no-one's gonna sob
     The undertaker's gonna have quite a job
     You're gonna look funny, when they lay you in the casket
     Oh look at those feet, stickin' up out the basket

Both singers include the line "Hate you 'cause your feet's too big" in their chorsues, but Bougerel's version changes one of those "hate" lines with this: "Mad at you, 'cause your feet's too something." Too something—too inept? Too unwieldy? Too big to fit?

Even in places where the lyrics are the same, I couldn't help thinking about how the meaning might change, having a woman, rather than a man, singing them:

     Yes, your feet's too big
     Don't want you, 'cause your feet's too big
     Can't use you, 'cause your feet's too big
     I really hate you, 'cause your feet's too big

"Can't use you" has quite a different meaning if the singer in question is a heterosexual female, rather than a heterosexual male, doesn't it? Rather than worrying about another fellow's cock being bigger than his, a female singer singing the same lines suggests that a male member may be too big for a satisfying sexual encounter.

I have no idea of the gender or sexuality of either Waller or Bougerel (Waller was married twice), but the interpretive possibilities are even more disruptive if one imagines a queer singer taking on these lyrics, aren't they?

The Hot Sardines' version of the song ends not with Waller's signature phrase, "One never knows, do one?" but instead with the far more directly suggestive (and simultaneously hilariously undercutting)

     And you know what they say about big feet, don't you?
     Big shoes.

Why am I nattering away about Fats Waller and the Hot Sardines on a blog devoted to romance novels? Because when I heard the Hot Sardines sing their version of this song, I was immediately reminded of the way many romances hold up as ideal a larger-than-life male, including his larger-than-life male appendage. Though the quote with which this post opened, from the first book in Vivian Arend and Elle Kennedy's new Dreammakers series, features two rather than just one idealized male, change those two male bodies for one and the passage might have been pulled from almost any romance novel which leans towards the idealization of the heterosexual male: six-foot-plus muscular physique, aggressive but protective alpha personality, and, inevitably, an oversized penis.

Are large cocks always better? As a woman who is on the petite side, I have to say I've never been all that drawn to large men, and always cringe a bit when I come across such passages in my romances. I've long wondered if I was just an anomaly among the romance-reading public in that regard. But after listening to Elizabeth Bougerel's sly version of "Your Feet's Too Big," I'm thinking perhaps I might not be so alone...

Many Ways to be Gay: Amy Jo Cousins' HARD CANDY

The latest installment of Mary Robinette Kowel's "Debut Author Lessons" blog column had me thinking about a recent romance read that aptly illustrates several of the points she is making (albeit in narrative form). Kowel's post, "Sensitivity Readers and Why I Killed a Project," features a list of things she's learned while planning and drafting a story about a "marginalized community," a project that she later ended up killing after a beta reader drew her attention to problematic aspects of her representation of said community.

"Culture is not a monolith," and "Internalized oppression is very real," two of Kowel's take-away points, really resonated for me in the context of reading the latest installment in Amy Jo Cousins' "Bend or Break" series, Hard Candy. Unlike some of the male/male romances that are popular with female heterosexual readers, those that feature hot, sexy, masculine guys who just happen to be gay, Cousins' books have included a broad variety of gay masculinities. And as Hard Candy's storyline points out, some of those gay masculinities are more acceptable to society at large, and even to some within the larger gay community itself, than others.

Victor Lim, first introduced in Level Hands (book #5) as one of a handful of gay male rowers on the crew team at a small, elite Massachusetts college, is uptight, caustic, and studious to the max. He knows he's not naturally smart, and that in order to do well in school he has to work his ass off. The only times he lets loose are after he finishes a big paper, when he gets drunk and has roommates-with-benefits sex with his best friend, Austin. But now that Austin has gotten tired of waiting to become more than an afterthought to Vinnie and has found himself a real boyfriend, Vinnie is at a total loss.

Which is why he finds himself waking up with a major hangover in the bed of a total stranger. A stranger who is nothing like fellow-rower Austin. A stranger who rocks lip gloss ("Well, I'm not gonna knock on my neighbor's door looking like something the cat banged last night after ten too many beers" [Kindle Loc 43]), calls him sweet things and pets him as if they were sweethearts, and even helps him as he pukes his guts into a purple trash can. "No one could put up with Vinnie's pain-in-the-ass ways, not even his best friend," Vinnie thinks to himself as the stranger, whose name turns out to be Bryan, nurses him and tucks him back into bed.

You'd think Vinnie wouldn't be able to exit such an embarrassing scene fast enough. But even when he's back in his own room, Vinnie can't help remembering Bryan's silk robe and shiny lip gloss. And really, really wanting to see Bryan again. Even though nothing about gay, black, southern femme dancer Bryan is "part of Vinnie's organized plan of attack on his student life. He stuck out in every venue like a sore thumb" (336).

Bryan, too, has his doubts about hooking up again with Vinnie: "Lots of guys only want to be with someone who can pass for straight, especially once they sober up, and, honey, that is never going to be me. I've made my peace with that" (257). And his previous experience with gay jocks suggests that Vinnie probably hasn't.

But Vinnie manages to persuade Bryan to give him a chance. And soon, before they even realize it, the two are spending serious time together. Boyfriend-like time together.

Embed from Getty Images

Even though Bryan is who Vinnie's body wants, his mind can't help worrying, especially when one of his crew teammates starts sprouting homophobic bullshit when Bryan and some of his dance squad friends come to cheer the crew team at their first race of the season. Though he tries to hide his reaction, Vinnie can't help but cringe:

It shouldn't bother him. It didn't bother him. He did not believe there was only one way to be gay. Or two ways. Or whatever. And nothing about the way he dressed or the choices he made was better or more valid than Bryan's way of living. It wasn't.
     But, God, no matter how many times he repeated that in his head, he still braced himself every time he looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was staring at him.
      It kind of sucked to realize he gave that much of a shit about what other people thought of him. (886)

Vinnie is gay, but his "gayness" is less obvious than Bryan's, less disruptive to conventional masculine norms. Vinnie's class position, as well as his cis-gendered looks and activities, grant him enough privilege that he has not been subject to the same degree of "crap" (i.e., homophobic taunting and physical abuse) that the far more feminine Bryan has. And straight-arrow Vinnie cannot help but feel amazed that "Bryan didn't feel the need to tone himself down in the face of it" (594).

Not surprisingly, internalized homophobia is not conducive to a happy romantic relationship. Vinnie's comes back to bite him during a fraught incident with Bryan, an incident that has Bryan feeling that Vinnie is just like all the other gay jock boys he's been with: ashamed.

But as Vinnie's roommates have all discovered (in previous books in the series), relationships have their ups and downs, their sweet moments and their failures, their fuck-ups and their make-ups. Now Vinnie has to decide if being a boyfriend—being Bryan's boyfriend—is what he really wants. And if he's willing to work on both on his relationship skills and on rooting out his own internalized homophobia to make it happen.


Photo credits:
Femme to Femme: Lambda Literary
Korean rowing team: Getty Images

Amy Jo Cousins

Hard Candy

Bend or Break #7

Samhain, 2015

Depicting Bisexuality in the Past: Grace Burrowes' TREMAINE'S TRUE LOVE

Though I'm a fan of all romance genres, historical romance is the one my alter ego, Bliss Bennet, writes and the one my reader-self gravitates towards the strongest. So I'm always curious to read the nominees for the historical romance category of the RWA's RITA awards. Grace Burrowes has received several RITA nominations over the years, unsurprisingly given her books' many strengths: beautiful writing, slow-building romances, the affection and comfort of large families, the respect and care her characters demonstrate toward one another even in the face of disagreement and difficulty.

Tremaine's True Love contains all of the above. But what really interested me in reading it was not the book's main romance, between Bernita (Nita) Haddonfield, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Bellefonte, andTremaine St. Michael, a half-French half-Scots comte/merchant/art collector who travels to Bellefont's home to bargain for some rare merino sheep Bellefonte owns. It was one of the book's subplots, the one featuring Nita's youngest brother, George, and how Burrowes depicted that character's "unconventional" sexuality.

I seem to recall hints in earlier Burrowes books, books about the elder Haddonfield brothers (in Nicholas: Lord of Secrets? or Beckman: Lord of Sins?), that George might be attracted to men. This book confirms those hints, and follows out their implications. We receive direct confirmation of his preferences from George himself, in a scene told from his point of view. He has just given the young son of his neighbor, widow Elsie Nash, a ride home on his horse to save him a cold walk. After Elsie attempts to engage him in polite conversation about his recent travels, George responds:

"I travel on the Continent because my family finds my taste in kissing partners inconvenient." Dangerous, Nicholas [his eldest brother, the current earl] had said, for certain sexual behaviors, regardless of how casually undertaken or commonplace, were yet considered hanging offenses. (72)

Said neighbor, though, is not put off by what she accidentally saw:

"George Haddonfield, if I were dismayed by every person I found kissing an inconvenient party in the garden, I should never have lasted a single Season as the colonel's wife. You were kind to my son, and that is all that matters to me." (72)

Nicholas, the current earl and George's older brother, knows about his dalliances with men (as the caution that George remembers above demonstrates), but doesn't outright condemn or shun George because of them. Others in George's family know about his attractions, too, and do not cast George aside: "George was the brother closest to Nita in age, and his unconventional attractions had never been a secret to her, nor had they been anything but natural to him" (240). In fact, the only person who knows about George's liking for men and expresses disgust for it is the villain of the book.

Well, perhaps that is not quite true. For George himself is not all that happy with his own "unconventional attractions." When he finds himself drawn to his sister Nita's suitor, Tremaine, he thinks thus: "[Tremaine St. Michael] was attractive, wealthy, and interested in Nita. So George must pant after him in silent frustration? Must comport himself with all the emotional delicacy of a tomcat? Such stirrings flattered nobody. They were for strutting, impulsive boys who had one foot planted in rebellion and the other in boredom" (177). George thus equates his same-sex sexual attractions to immaturity, to animality, to the uncontrolled.

From an 1835 broadsheet reporting the execution of
two men for homosexual acts: as George's elder
brother asserts, George's attractions are dangerous

Earlier in that same scene, George reveals that he's had sex with women, as well as men: "Though George had recently discovered he liked looking at Elsie Nash too—a puzzle, albeit a pretty one. He'd enjoyed the company of women in the past, the same as any other fellow at university—some women, anyway. And a few men." (173). His attraction to women, though, is not as strong—nor as dangerous—as it is towards men: "George liked women, and even desired them on occasion, the way a fellow might desire a hot cup of tea or chocolate with a dash of cinnamon on a cold morning. Not the way he longed for the fiery pleasure of a good brandy—stupidly, passionately, without any dignity or care for his own well-being" (175). If one were to categorize George in current-day terminology, one might say he's bisexual but with a strong leaning toward the masculine end of the gender spectrum.

Once George thought he would try to marry a woman who "wouldn't have minded a marriage where both partners were free to roam, provided appearances were maintained," hinting that his roaming would be in the direction of male, rather than female, partners. But, for some unspecified reason, "The notion struck George as vaguely distasteful now, sad even" (174). George realizes he is lonely, and finds himself envious of Tremaine and his sister. He, like almost all of Grace Burrowes' characters, longs for affection, comfort, and connection. For heterosexual characters, such desires are met, of course, through monogamous marriage.

And thus when George offers comfort to his neighbor Elsie Nash, and she kisses him in return, readers should not be surprised to read,"George's mind manufactured a single thought—kissing Elsie felt good too!—before he began kissing her back" and that her "mouth had the power to wake a man up, to reveal to him choices he could make, paths he could choose" (320, 346-47). The path George chooses is to propose to Elsie, telling her that "My regard for a passing handsome or even pretty face is eclipsed by the loyalty [your positive] characteristics inspire" (347-48). In the internal monologue that follows his declaration, though, George tries to convince himself that his assertion will, in fact, prove true:

He hoped. George's hope was based on several solid realities. First, his involvement with men had never gone beyond the casual or the physical. Men were a lot of bother, in George's experience, full of strut and blather, every bit as capable of drama as the blushing debutantes filling any ballroom.
     Second, his regard for Elsie included a fat dose of physical attraction, but finer emotions as well. He respected her, he enjoyed her company, he liked her. He liked her a lot, always had.
     Third, there was the boy. Digby needed a father, somebody to stand between him and [his uncle]. George could hardly be that father if he spent his evenings larking about London, bored, randy, and causing his family worry. (348).

George and Elsie go on to marry, and, in the book's final chapter, we hear that not only Nita & Tremaine, but also George and Elsie, are expectant parents.

I can't help but feel pulled in two directions by this end to George's story. On the one hand, I'm thinking that it's likely pretty historically accurate for a gentleman of this period to find his own attraction to the same sex upsetting and disturbing, as George does. And that if he had any attraction to women at all, that such a man might prefer to marry a woman to avoid both his own fears and to give his birth family peace of mind than to engage in sexual acts with other men.

But on the other, I can't help but cringe when I read Tremaine St. Michael's response to George's declaration that he is to marry Elsie and that he would "like to survive until my wedding night" (the two are about to participate in a duel): "Never did like public school, myself," says his soon-to-be brother-in-law (368). Public school here presumably being the site where George first developed and explored his sexual attraction to men. In that one short sentence, Tremaine simultaneously indicates that he is aware of George's sexual attraction to men and asserts that such attraction is nothing more than a bad habit George picked up because he was sent away to school, away from his (heteronormative) family. That George takes no umbrage at Tremaine's assertion suggests that he, too, believes that his same-sex attraction belongs to his youth, which, by marrying, he is putting aside to become a mature male adult.

Not a message I'm happy to embrace.


Would love to hear the take of other readers of Tremaine's True Love on George's character arc...


Photo credits:
Pratt & Smith trial broadsheet: EQ View

Grace Burrowes

Tremaine's True Love

Sourcebooks 2015

Bad Good Guys and Good Bad Guys: A Primer, via Jill Sorenson's AGAINST THE WALL

In m/f romance novels, it's usually pretty easy to tell the difference between bad guys who only look like good guys on the outside and good guys who are hiding their vulnerabilities under bad boy masks. Especially if your romance is told in alternating points of view.

In real life, though, women are rarely granted direct access to a potential romantic partner's inner thoughts and feelings, particularly at the beginning of a relationship. So it can often be difficult to make accurate judgments about said potential partner's motivations, intentions, and/or character.

In her latest romance, Jill Sorenson gives less experienced readers a primer on how to tell the bad good boy from the good bad boy, even if you don't know what either is thinking. I've compiled a collection of quotes from the book, each of which refers to either the book's romantic lead, Mexican-American ex-con Eric, or to the book's villain, overprivileged white college boy Chip. Can you tell the bad good boy from the good bad boy in the quotes below? (answers appear at the bottom of the post)

QUOTES

1. There's something wrong with me, some hitch in my wiring. I can go straight and stay clean, but I can't be soft. I can't be normal. I can't stop getting turned on by risk and danger. I like being bad, especially in bed.


2. It's not that I don't enjoy oral sex as part of foreplay or even as the main event. It's just that X doesn't seem interested in anything else. And he takes without giving.


3. Back in the day I used to make fun of guys who got hung up on their girlfriends. I thought they were suckers, handing over their balls. Now I realize that I was the stupid one. There's nothing unmanly about wanting to keep your woman happy. It's a strength, not a weakness.


4. I wasn't raised to be weak. Taking chances is a part of my nature. But I'm trying to find the balance between standing strong and being too aggressive. I have to stay in control. It's like art. You self-edit.


5. I have to pick my battles with X. He can be hot-tempered, depending on his mood and the amount of alcohol he's consumed. I tell myself it's not his fault. He's a dedicated athlete, big man on campus, born to a wealthy family. Guys like him expect their girlfriends to fall in line.


6. Instead of using Meghan, I used Noemi. I've never been a nice guy. I don't know if I can be.

7. He grabbed her ass like he owned it. I might do the same thing if she was my girl, but not to be insulting. Not in front of her friends. Not to put her in her place or show her who's boss. I can't stand the sight of him disrespecting her.


8. Our relationship hit the skids as soon as I moved in with him. Then he stopped pursuing me and started trying to control me. It's almost as if he considers me his property now that I live in his apartment.


9. If I continue to stay silent and let him push me around, our relationship is going to implode. Maybe that's what I want.

ANSWERS

1. Eric (the good bad boy).  Far from setting off alarm bells, the phrase "bad in bed" suggests adventure and excitement. If the risks involved are consensual, then you're in good bad boy territory.

2. Chip (the bad good boy).  Whether they're wearing a leader jacket or a letterman's sweater, guys who only pay attention to their own sexual pleasure, not to the pleasure of their partners, are bad.

3. Eric. Good bad boys, especially those raised in traditionally patriarchal cultures, often use male-inflating metaphors ("balls" as a symbol of strength). But they can also learn to recognize the gendered  blind spots that their culture teaches—if they are allowed to maintain a positive sense of masculinity while they do so.

4. Eric. Good bad boys also learn to recognize the limits and dangers inherent in a traditional vision of aggressive masculinity. Being strong is good; being violent is bad. Dance on the line, but have the control to know where that line is.

5. Chip. Beware the bad good boy who's been corrupted by his own privilege. Being an athlete, or a big man on campus, doesn't give you the right to tell your girlfriend what to do or how to act. Don't be tempted to excuse away bad behavior just because a bad good guy has privilege.

6. Eric. Trick quote! Yes, Eric fucked up by fucking another girl. But a good bad boy is self-aware enough to recognize his own asshattery, and wonder if it is possible for him to change his ways. The bad good boy would never question his own past actions.

7. Chip. A bad good boy often uses physical affection to convey other messages: I own you. I control you. I'm in charge. When he's conveying such a message during a "Slut Walk" protest march, caution flags should start waving. A girlfriend's body is not a tool, but the bad good boy certainly is.

8. Chip. A bad good boy doesn't expect you to do his laundry, his dishes, or his homework, especially without any thanks or compensation. And yes, while the shine can wear off the romance when you start living together, familiarity is one thing; being regarded as property completely another.

9. Chip. Even after you realize that your good guy is really a bad guy in good guy disguise, it can be tempting to not take a stand, to not get yourself out of the relationship. To wait for the bad guy to do something so bad that no one would blame you for hightailing it out of there and dumping someone who gives a convincing show of being a good guy.  Don't.


What other romance novels give younger (teen and new adult) readers models for how to tell the difference between good guys who appear to be baddies, and bad guys who look squeaky clean?


Photo credits:
Bad/Good Road signs: Global Alignment Coaching
Amber Rose Slut Walk: Vibe
Good Guy/Bad Guy Chess pieces: Cylifelens

Are Beefcake Covers Sexist?

Over on the IndieRomanceInk Listserv this past week, one poster wrote of a male friend who accused the romance genre of sexism for objectifying men. In particular, this friend had a problem with the recent trend in romance novel covers, covers that feature headless male torsos, typically wearing little to no clothing. Such images, this friend felt, reduce the male body to a sexual object, and thus are sexist.

The original poster felt ambivalent over her friend's claim, and asked her fellow writers for their thoughts in response. A fascinating discussion has resulted, with some authors arguing in support of the male friend's position, others taking issue with it. And still others complicating the question in various intriguing, often feminist, ways.

So I thought I'd ask you, readers, what you think of the beefcake cover? Is is a celebration of the male body? Or an objectification of it? And if it is an objectification, is that a problem? Why or why not?

African-American Historical Romance and the Imperative to Protect

"It's mighty hard when you can't protect your woman."





One of the major themes running through all the different genres of romance fiction is that of protection. In particular, the naturalness, nay, even the inevitableness, of heterosexual males' need to protect the women they come to love romantically. Just this month, I've come across the theme in one form or another while reading science fiction/fantasy romance (in the first story in Robin D. Owens' Hearts and Swords collection), comic literary romance (Grahame Simsion's The Rosie Effect), category romance (Maisey Yates' Married for Amaris's Heir), and urban fantasy romance (Kit Rocha's Beyond Innocence). If I'd read more historical romance this month, no doubt I would have found the theme there, as well. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to add to this list from your own recent romance novel reading.

Whether the story offers the promise that a hero physically or psychologically protects the woman he loves, or, more often these days, demonstrates to the hero that his need to protect his woman is getting in the way of said woman's self-actualization and must be restrained, if not given over entirely, in romance, the hero's desire to to protect his mate is rarely called into question. More importantly, neither is his ability to do so.

Perhaps that's why the line above, used as this post's epigraph, made such a striking impression on me. It's from Piper Huguley's African-American inspirational historical romance A Virtuous Ruby, the first volume in her "Migrations of the Heart" series. I'm not usually drawn to Christian romance, given its tendency to embrace traditional patriarchal (i.e., anti-feminist) values, but there is so little historical romance with African American characters currently being published that I decided to give Hugeley's series a try. And I'm glad I did, not only because Hugeley's story features characters and histories rarely seen in popular romance, but also because it got me thinking about whether there is an inherent opposition between genre romance's protection imperative and the realities of African-American history. Or at least the pieces of African-American history that are most often taught in white classrooms.

Set in a small Georgia town in 1915, A Virtuous Ruby tells of the romance between two light-skinned African-Americans, one a doctor trained in the north, the other the oldest daughter of a local farmer and a laundress, a young woman whose outspokenness on behalf of factory workers' rights and against lynching met with white retaliation in the form of rape, impregnation, and the scandal of bearing a bastard child. Right from the very start of the novel, then, we are given a female protagonist who has not been protected—not by her father, not by her family or community, and especially not by her white male best friend, who, in a vicious inversion of the typical romance trope, is the one who is chosen to commit the violent attack upon Ruby Bledsoe's person.

Does the arrival of doctor Adam Morson in town signal a change for Ruby? Does Ruby just need the love of a good man, a man committed to her protection, to guarantee she will be free from future harm?

Amos 'n Andy's Sapphire
Stevens, whose character first linked
the name "Sapphire" with the African
American woman as domineering shrew

If the characters in this novel were white, the answer would more likely than not be "yes." But though Ruby and Adam are as light-skinned as any of the officially white citizens of the small Georgia town in which they live, they are not white; they are black. If an African-American young woman in 1912 does not conform to the one "positive" stereotype held by the majority of white Americans—that of the nurturing "Mammy"—then she must fall into one of the two negative stereotypes—the sexually promiscuous Jezebel, or the angry, in-your-face Sapphire. Or, even more upsettingly, embody a terrifying combination of them both (See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, and Carolyn M. West, "Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and Their Homegirls" for more on these stereotypes).

A racist license plate deploys the Jezebel stereotype
to denigrate black Democrats

The white anxiety that the stereotypes of Jezebel and Sapphire simultaneously create and evoke leads not to a desire to protect another, but to lash out in fear, to protect one's white self against a black threat. Such racist anxieties, combined with the historical reality that enslaved black women were often overworked, beaten, and raped, make it more than a little difficult to deploy the romance theme of male protectiveness in historical romance featuring characters of African descent.

The word "protect," or one of its other forms ("protection," "protected," "protectiveness") appears 43 times in the NetGalley version of Huguley's book. Black characters protect themselves from the elements ("The wide brim would protect her too pale skin from the June heat" [43]); they express a desire to protect family members ("you know we want to protect our little man," says Ruby's younger sister, referring to Ruby's baby [664]); they bemoan the ineffectiveness of others' protective efforts ( "the solid nature of the wood that John Bledsoe used to protect his family struck him. What a good man he was, and still, despite his protections of building this big porch for his daughters, they were still terribly vulnerable" [1030]; they grieve their own inabilities to protect ("It was four or five of them. They all beat me down and had their way with me. I tried to fight them off, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.... "And they knock me out so I couldn't protect her." [1624]). Whites use the word as a form of threat: "I'll do what I have to do to make sure he's protected" [1882].

As this is a Christian romance, ultimately the characters must give themselves over to God's protection: "God will protect me. He will keep me," Ruby tells herself when she fears her former friend is about to attack her again [33-8]. Yet even God can't keep Ruby safe in her small Georgia town. Nor, significantly in romance terms, can Adam. Though Ruby pictures running "straight into the protective arms of Adam" as she flees from her potential attacker, ultimately Ruby and Adam must promise to move out of their town completely, and migrate to the north, in order to ensure their own safety.

Towards the end of the book, Adam can not only not protect Ruby, he cannot protect himself: he is shanghaied onto a chain gang by a malevolent (white) sheriff. While working on the gang, he hears the words used as the epigraph above, spoken by a fellow prisoner:

     "It's might hard when you can't protect your woman," James said.
     Many of the men around the table nodded, agreeing. "Don't nobody blame you." (3047)

I wonder, though, if that "nobody" includes the average romance novel reader? Do expectations raised by romance as a genre, expectations that male heroes must and will always protect their women, make it difficult for some romance readers to embrace stories where such protection proves problematic? Might the woeful lack of African-American historical fiction be due in some small part to this opposition between, on one side, romance's protective imperative, and on the other, the painful historical realities of the African American experience, and the stereotypes whites have developed to protect themselves against acknowledging it?


Photo credits:
Sapphire Stevens and LBJ license plate: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
Psalm 91:4: Spiritual Inspiration Tumblr

Falling for a Younger Man: Rebecca Brooks' ABOVE ALL

It was stupid, of course, to go skinny-dipping at dawn in the Adirondacks when spring had barely come to the mountains. It was only the Friday morning kicking off Memorial Day weekend, the first day that Paper Lake Campground re-opened after the quiet winter months. But it thrilled her, as it would every morning until the fall. She stretched out the short swimming season as long as she possibly could. (Kindle Loc 40)


It was hard not to be charmed by the coincidence as I sat down to read Rebecca Brooks' contemporary romance, Above All, on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, the same day that the book itself opens. If I were of a superstitious turn, I might even have taken it as a sign that this book was destined to be the subject of a post-Memorial Day RNFF post. But it wasn't charm of superstition, but rather the thoughts and feelings inspired by Brooks' romance itself, that led me to want to write about its older woman protagonist, and the younger man with whom she finds herself unexpectedly falling in love.

Heroine Casey (Cassandra) Webb has spent the last year managing a campground in the Adirondacks, taking solace in nature in the wake of a breakup with her boyfriend of seven years. Though Casey's family keeps wondering "when was se going to get it together and leave 'that dump,' as her mother so graciously referred to Bonnet," the Adirondack town in which Casey had found herself after fleeing New York City, her Ph.D. program in Art History, and her less-than-supportive partner, to Casey Bonnet and the campground feel like home.

Opportunities for meeting men, though are pretty thin on the ground in small-town Bonnet. Thirty-four year-old Casey isn't looking for romance, but even she can't help checking out the cute buns on the attractive twenty-something guy who signs into the campground with his seven friends for a college reunion get-together. The language Brooks uses to describe the object of Casey's wandering eyes, chef-in-training Ben Mailer, is surprisingly different from the strong, in-charge alpha male so common in romance:

He was boyish, with straight dark hair long enough to stray into his eyes and a dimpled grin that carved two apostrophes into his cheeks and another int eh center of his chin when he smiled. He was tall and even under his black North Face fleece she could tell how lean and muscular he was. He had soft brown eyes and thin lips with a look like a puppy dog that had cultivated its sweet expression just to make you want to hug it. (Loc 174)

Intriguingly, Casey's attraction to twenty-six year-old Ben is not in spite of his boyishness, but because of it. And when it turns out that Ben is just as attracted to Casey (we're not told why, as the book is told largely from Casey's point of view, with only occasional forays into the povs of other, usually secondary, characters), the two must decide whether they will fan the sparks of their attraction, or stamp them out before they have a chance to flame.

Few readers have a problem with older man/younger woman storylines, but flip the sexes of the protagonists, and all sorts of squicky fears can arise, most focused around the potential for the hero's emasculation, and the heroine's guilt for bringing it about. An author can ignore such fears, or can attempt to mitigate them by constructing a hero with over-the-top masculinity.

Or, like Brooks, she can face them head-on.

Ben is far from the stereotypical über-confident, protective romance hero. He's not only younger than Casey, but he's far less self-assured. His idea of rebellion was to attend Vassar (significantly, a former all-women's college), rather than Yale ("where there are enough Mailer plaques to retile a mansion" [725]). He's studying Italian cooking at the Culinary Institute of America, rather than the baking that he truly loves, mainly to please his father. Casey is not only older than Ben, but she's close to his size, physically, strong enough to pin him down if she wishes. And Ben is far less experienced sexually than Casey is.

One of the best scenes in the book is of Casey and Ben's first lovemaking. Ben proves quite adept at oral sex, but not quite so skilled when it comes to intercourse:

He was pulsing rhythmically away, but that was precisely the problem. Whereas before she had felt passion, now his actions felt mechanical. Rote. The expected motions before a well-known finale everyone in the audience was waiting for so they could go home. Was this how they were going it these days? (1602)

Casey considers just lying back, letting him "drill for oil until he was done," but instead, she reasons "She'd had eight more years in the sack than he had.... Was all her experience for nothing? She would show him. She would guide him. She would—she was sure of it—utterly blow his mind" (1611). And in yet another welcome turnabout from traditional romance gender roles, so she proceeds to do.

Casey recognizes that Ben is both strong, physically and emotionally, but also that he's vulnerable, too, "holding back, afraid to voice his desires aloud. Wondering what if he failed, what if he was laughed at, what if he lost something important along the way" (1648). That Casey's description of Ben turns out to be just applicable to her, too, at least in regards to her professional life, suggests that loving another, whether younger or older, means not only encouraging them to reach for their dreams, but to grant them them time they need to grow ready to embrace them.


Photo credits:
Adirondack lake: Bear Lodge
Almond croissant: Gerard's European Bakery

Rebecca Brooks

Above All

Ellora's Cave, 2014

Duke's UNSUITABLE #5: Jessica Scott on the Alpha Masculinities

Sorry for not posting on Tuesday; I've been traveling the northeast this week, touring potential colleges for my young one. Not so much fun when both the teen and the dad are struggling with head colds...

I did slip in a quick guest post over at the KickAss Chicks blog, though, which you can find here:

And today, in my stead, I offer a guest post from Jessica Lee, a student in Duke instructors and romance authors Laura Florand and Katherine Ashe’s “The Romance Novel” (HST 248S.01) class. Jessica tells us all about contemporary military romance author Jessica Scott's talk about Alpha Masculinities, the Duke: Unsuitable presentation #5, which took place on March 16th.

Romance novels have been around since the 18^th century, but Duke University’s “The Romance Novel” course is currently only in its first semester of existence. Taught by two published romance novelists, the course allows us students to participate in a series of talks by prominent women in the romance industry. Our most recent guest was Jessica Scott, career army officer, mother, and Duke ROTC instructor, as well as the author of many contemporary military romance novels, including her latest, All For You. The topic of the day? Alpha masculinities, with an emphasis on the longstanding military hero archetype and on the “Rise of the Alpha-hole.”

Scott questioned why the alpha-hole—the alpha hero who is also an asshole—is suddenly a “thing” in romance. After all, the alpha-hole is not attractive, not someone with whom the reader wants to go on a journey, not a hero in any shape or form, and in real life is probably not going to make a romantic connection. Are romance authors simply reflecting cultural values through their characters?

Well, according to Scott, she’s surrounded all day at work by alpha men who are good men, in control of their lives, and not misogynistic. That doesn’t sound like she’s working with a bunch of alpha-holes. So if romance authors are writing alpha-holes as a reflection of society, then it’s not the men in Scott’s workplace—the military—they’re writing about.

Scott discussed how in romance, “alpha” is shorthand for “protector” in a lot of ways, in particular the protector of the heroine in romance. Who are these alpha protectors, usually? Cops. Soldiers. Firefighters. Navy SEALs. These guys are manly men. But part of the problem with masculinity is that when the average man looks at this sort of archetype, he usually isn’t a cop, soldier, firefighter, or Navy SEAL, and therein lies the subtle message that because he isn’t a badass like these folks, he isn’t manly enough. I suppose it wouldn’t be hard for a guy trying to be alpha badass to try too hard and end up crossing the line into alpha asshole. So maybe that’s the society romance authors are depicting through their alpha-hole heroes?

“Military,” like “alpha,” is also shorthand for “protector,” but also for “badass” and “selfless.” It’s this heroic combination of traits that makes the military man popular as a romantic hero: he will sacrifice himself for the heroine, for his comrades, for his country. We as readers are drawn by the military man’s powerful narrative of not being broken by his experiences, but instead overcoming his ordeals and coming out on the other side. All in all, “alpha” and “military” are an author’s shorthand for creating characters, his or her way of communicating to readers that the hero is a badass, selfless protector who is willing to sacrifice his life for something he values above himself.

However, Scott cautioned readers to not do as American society at large is prone to do, which is place soldiers on a pedestal and hold them to an ideal. This prevents readers from engaging with the humanity of the individual, and pretty much the most important thing for an author to accomplish in a novel is to make the characters feel real to the reader.

For Scott, it is very important in a romance novel for the hero and heroine to look each other in the eye, not for one to look down at the other. In All For You, the hero Reza and the heroine Emily don’t try to bring the other down but try, and succeed, to make each other better. Reza helps Emily build her sense of self-confidence and empowerment, and Emily broadens Reza’s moral circle. They give to and take from each other equally, so they are both equals in their relationship.

We see alpha heroes a lot in romance—in practically every romance novel, one could say. And alpha heroes tend to share a lot of the same characteristics: dominance, control of their situations, confidence, and of course protectiveness. Part of the reason that we don’t have a lot of male role models in romance besides the alpha hero is that we don’t have a lot of different types of male role models, period. Scott discussed how in antiquity, people used to derive different male archetypes from the gods of the Greek pantheon: Ares the warrior (Scott’s own Reza), Apollo the thinker, Zeus the leader, and so on. Today, we’ve narrowed that rich diversity of male archetypes into simply the alpha hero.

But not all alpha heroes are the same, and not all alpha heroes have the same type of relationship with their respective heroines. It’s how the author writes the male lead, the female lead, and their relationship that determines if their story is that of an alpha-hole and a submissive damsel, or if their story is that of an actual hero who is secure enough in his masculinity that he is undaunted by, and cherishes and respects, a strong and admirable heroine.



Jessica Lee is a sophomore and a Classical Studies major at Duke University. Besides writing mythology-inspired fantasy manuscripts, she also enjoys baking, playing capoeira, acting out Shakespeare, watching BBC TV shows, and devouring books for breakfast.

Cocky Self-Confidence

His hand twitched against his side. Emma licked her lips. "Touch yourself," she repeated, more a whisper than an order, but he finally obeyed. His fingers, dark against his belly, slide down and curved around the dusky skin of his shaft. — Victoria Dahl, A Rake's Guide to Pleasure




Many romance novels come and go without leaving a memorable trace in my mind. But I can still remember the shock with which I read the scene in Victoria Dahl's steamy Victorian historical romance, A Rake's Guide to Pleasure, from which the above quote is taken. Emma Jensen has wormed her way into ton society, masquerading as the Dowager Lady Denmore, in order to wager and win enough at the card tables to secure herself a competence large enough to retire from society on. But her attraction to the rakish Duke of Somerhart has proven a distraction from her gambling. At a high-stakes house party, she finds herself spending less time gambling and more time negotiating a sexual power game with Hart. After realizing how much Emma is aroused by being told what to do, sexually, Hart challenges her to try out the opposite role: "You take control, Emma.... Take control of me. Come to me" (100).

Emma, despite her better judgment, takes up Hart's challenge. But the scene doesn't quite play out the way Hart expected. Emma doesn't tell him to do anything sexual to her; instead, she commands him to perform for her. "Touch yourself," she orders him, but refuses to step any closer to the bed in which he lies. She wants to watch him, to actually witness the act with which he taunted during their first sexual encounter: "I thought about this last night. Dreamed of your taste, of you pressing yourself to my mouth. I pleasured myself to this fantasy" (83). His fantasy turned her into an object of desire; hers, not just in mind but in the flesh, turns the tables, turning Hart into the object of Emma's.

Dahl makes it clear that Hart objects to being so-objectified. When Emma first issues her command, he outright refuses. Only after he makes a move to leave his bed, and she threatens to leave his room altogether, does Hart "finally obey." And when he reaches his climax, he's not just sexually satisfied; he's shatteringly angry, snarling, "Get the hell out of my room. Now" (111).

The next morning, Hart finds himself embarrassed by having ceded control, worried that Emma will tattle to others about "his little show" (112). Hart "wanted to take back the night, or at least turn it into something else. Something he controlled, despite his challenge to Emma. Somehow this seemed so much worse than being caught ravishing a woman in the card room" (113). A man sexually self-pleasuring himself in the privacy of his own rooms is fine. A man caught tupping a woman in public is not so bad, either. But a man touching himself in front of a woman, performing not just for his own pleasure but for hers, is something for which Hart fears he'll be "snickered at" and "turned into a freak" for, if word gets around (113).

I can't remember reading another such scene, one in which a man touches his own penis, in a historical romance, or in any romance, published around the same time (Rake first came out in 2009). But now, only six years later, such scenes seem to be popping up with far more regularity. Perhaps it is only because I've been reading more erotic romance of late, but in my reading of late, I've been noticing more and more romance sex scenes in which men take their own cocks in hand. Not just to guide them into various female (or male) orifices, but as one of the many possible sexual touches that play a part in longer sexual encounters. And unlike Duke Somerhart, the men in such scenes rarely think of touching themselves in front of a woman as something shameful, something freakish. Instead, they do it with self-confidence. Such acts are presented as part and parcel of a man's acceptance of his own sexuality, his own body. And an acceptance of, even a delight in, a sexual partner's being turned on by such a "show."

Am I just imagining things, or have you noticed such a trend, too? If so, what do you make of it?

Bisexuality and Masculinity: Amber Lin and Shari Slade's ONE KISS WITH A ROCK STAR

A few days ago, I was trying to think of expletives that ring the same gendered vituperation toward men as "bitch" traditionally does towards women. "Ass," "asshole," and the like can be applied equally to women as to men. "Bastard," "son-of-a-bitch," and "motherfucker" are slurs as much against a man's mother as against himself. "Queer," "fairy," "faggot"* and their brethren all are slights suggesting a man is being too woman-like, rather than too something overly male. The only swear word I could come up with that referenced both male bodies and male actions was "cocksucker," a word that focuses less on identity and more on a specific bodily act.

The term kept coming to mind as I read the second book in Amber Lin and Shari Slade's Half-Life contemporary erotic romance series, One Kiss with a Rock Star. In book #1, Three Nights with a Rock Star, Krist Mellas, the bassist of the band Half-Life, had been caught on video participating in a three-way with his fellow band member Lock and Lock's girlfriend Hailey. Kiss opens with Krist attempting to purchase a classic bass in a dive guitar shop in Chicago, only to be turned down after the owners discover the incriminating video online while doing a fan-boy Internet search on Krist. Krist realizes he's broken the "golden rule" of male rock stardom:

   He could have blown up at a fan.

     He could have forgotten the fucking song onstage.

     He could have fucked an underage girl, even. Oops. Didn't know. It happened all the fucking time, and there was barely a blip.... Record sales actually went up. But God forbid he be bisexual with consenting adults—yeah, that was too fucking far (page 5).

"Bowie told the world he was bi and they didn't let him
be anything else for decades," Krist's agent warns him (27).

It's not just the fact of the three-way that has the guitar shop owners, and almost everyone else Krist meets in the following days, looking him askance. It's Krist's position in the threesome: "Rockers didn't suck other rocker's dicks" (5). But Krist had. And for calling rock's über-masculinity into question, Krist will have to pay. 

The band's agent informs Krist that he has an image problem. A problem that she's going to fix by setting up on some fake dates with pop-star princess Madeline Fox. Krist understands the hypocrisy of the whole thing—"Image problem. It was such bullshit. His image wasn't the problem. His sexuality was" (26)—and has no qualms about refusing to agree to date Miss Teenbopper Next Door, a girl who's been "packaged, pampered, pandering to the lowest common denominator" (25).

Nineteen-year-old Maddy, former KidMania television star now turned pop singer, is even less eager to partake in yet another image manipulation scheme than is Krist. Maddy knows all about the importance of image; though she's been drinking and having sex with boys and girls since her early teens, contractually she is required to maintain her girl-next-door identity (she's "got that good girl faith in a tight little skirt," just like fellow pop star Taylor Swift). Held together by guile and a smile, underneath Maddy seethes, tired not only of getting the evil eye from rocker boys like Krist—"one part disdain and two parts lust" (12)—but of pretending to be innocent when she's just as experienced, just as drawn sexually to both men and to women, as is Krist. Even though she's nursed a bit of a fan-girl crush on the Half-Life bassist since she was twelve, Maddy's not stupid enough to agree to her agent's plan.

Not until said agent suggests her refusal will condemn Krist's, and his band's, career to the toilet (and tells the same story about Maddy's career being endangered to Krist) do the two finally decide to take their fake-romance show on the road. In public, the two project a slick image of young love, but in private (young lovers will naturally share the same hotel room, won't they?), they yell, fight, fuck, and snarl. And discover that their privates selves are far different from their public personas, and far more compatible than either could ever have dreamed.

I'm not usually a big fan of rock star romance; too often its underlying message seems to be that you need to be validated by being loved by someone famous in order to feel good about yourself. But in One Kiss from a Rock Star, Lin and Slade create two fascinatingly complex characters, two people who project traditionally gendered images in order to maintain their place in the public spotlight, but who underneath the glitter and the tattoos gender-bend like pros (bad-boy Krist turns out to be the sensitive, submissive one, good-girl Maddy the one who gets off on bossing others, including Krist, around). Pulling back the masks of traditional gender, Lin and Slade ask readers not only to see beyond Krist and Maddy's mass-marketed images, but to consider the gendered constraints placed upon their own efforts at self-fashioning.

*Interestingly enough, the Oxford English Dictionary reveals that the use of "faggot" as a derogatory term originated as a term of abuse or contempt applied to a woman.

Photo credits:

David Bowie: Rolling Stone

Taylor Swift: Daily Star

Amber Lin and Shari Slade

One Kiss with a Rock Star

Half-Life #2

published by the authors

2014

Female-Bashing as Male Bonding

 
 
    "Hey, be nice. Understand?" Tom didn't need to move a muscle to make it clear to Cash how serious he was.
     Buried beneath the look they shared was a history of letting bros know when the chick you were banging became something more and no further wisecracks were allowed.



There I was, happily turning the pages of Amy Jo Cousins's excellent New Adult gay romance Bend or Break (about which more next week) when the above-quoted passage stopped me in my tracks. I grew up the eldest of two sisters, and while I had a few male cousins, they were all far younger than me. I did have a few individual boys with whom I was friends in high school, but as a shy, decidedly non-athletic girl, I didn't tend to hang out much with boys en masse. So I've always been strangely fascinated by stray hints in the books I read of what adolescent boys are actually like when they get together without girls in the mix.

But the above passage didn't just catch my interest; it both intrigued and appalled me. Days after reading the book, my brain still kept circling around this one passage, poking at it like a tongue at a loose tooth. Perhaps if I write about it, I can get it out of my head...

[FYI, it's significant to know that while Tom at the time of the novel is a guy who is reeling after being knocked down from his pedestal of male and class privilege, he used to be a member of the wealthy, entitled, unthinking jock crowd: the "bros" to whom he refers are his fellow male athletes.]

The first thing I notice here is the line that Tom and his fellow male jock friends draw between "the chick you were banging" and the girl who becomes "something more." For Tom and his friends, having sex is something you do on a regular basis for pleasure, to relieve your sexual and/or other tensions through a physical-only connection. The male is placed in the position of actor here, the girl in the position of object being acted upon: "the chick you were banging." That chicks are there to be objects for boys' lust is taken for granted by Tom and his male friends. Tom's easy assumptions made me wonder, though—do the "chicks they are banging" know that to the boys with whom they are having sex, they are physical objects and no more?

The second thing that I'm noticing is the way that a male friend's banging-mate is one of the many, many subjects which can serve as the grounds for teasing and insult. Such teasing and insulting serves not to drive a wedge between male friends, but instead to cement those friendships more tightly together. Having read Eve Kosovsky Sedgewick's Between Men (1985), I was quite familiar with the concept of sexual triangulation, that in love triangles with two men both fighting for the love of the same women, male rivalry often serves to cement bonds between the two men as much as, or often more than, it does to forge bonds between one (male) lover and the (female) beloved. In other words, as one of my grad school professors explained it, "You know, when two guys are fighting over a girl, and it seems like it's more about their relationship to each other than it is about the girl?"

The girl may be object in Sedgewick's sexual triangulation model, but at least she's a purportedly valued one. Tom's comment, however, shows that sexual triangulation can work just as well when the female point of the triangle is denigrated rather than valued. Dissing another guy's "chick" can serve the same purpose as setting yourself up as a rival for his chick's attentions.

The passage makes me wonder: how difficult is it for young men who grow up being taught to regard girls as objects, as "chicks," as something to "bang," to make the transition to thinking about one particular woman as "something more"? Does changing their thinking about one woman allow them to change their thinking about all women? Or do all girls and women besides those given "something more" status remain objects?


Can you think of any love triangles in romance novels where the tension between the two rivals seems far more important than that between either of the rivals and the object of their mutual affection? Or is this something that would be anathema to the romance form?



Illustration credits:
Lopsided love triangle: Swoon Reads

The Traumas and Temptations of a Military Life: Jessica Scott's ALL FOR YOU

Romance novels are rife with military heroes, particularly those belonging to elite special operations forces. As military romance writer Kaylea Cross notes about the appeal of the subgenre, "writing about men and women who stand up for what they believe in, serve their country with honor and who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect the lives of their teammates and loved ones—come on, what's not to love about that?" Fighting men are sexy, military romances assert; fighting men who rise to the top of the military are sexy super-sized.

Most military romances I've encountered are of two types. The first type typically features an elite military group protecting the country (or the world) from a major threat while one of their members simultaneously protects a threatened loved one. The second focuses less on the heroics, and more about their aftermath; in these books, military men (or, less often, women) who have been injured or traumatized in some way by their war experiences learn to adjust to civilian life while they also fall in love. It's far more rare, I think, to tell a story like the one career army officer and romance writer Jessica Scott creates in her latest romance: a story that depicts active-duty soldiers dealing with trauma while still a part of the military.

In her "Dear Reader" note at the end of All For You, Scott is careful to explain that "this book is not meant as an indictment of our men and women in uniform or the military that we serve or the thousands of leaders who do the right thing every day and try to take care of their soldiers" (Kindle Loc 3777). A necessary caveat, given the often dysfunctional organization in which Scott places her two troubled protagonists, Sergeant Reza Icaconelli and Captain Emily Lindberg. Bad enough that half Iranian, half Italian Reza "look[s] like every stereotype of jihadi"; bad enough that Reza's commander cares more about stats and paperwork than about his soldiers. What's worse are army shrinks who've never been in combat put in charge of making decisions about which soldiers qualify for psychological help, and which are simply drug addicts or malingerers. Especially when the docs cite privacy regulations as an excuse for not telling Reza what's really up with his men. It's enough to drive a man to drink—especially one who's spent most of his adult life half-toasted, except when he's actively deployed. Keeping his promise to himself not to drink anymore seems a hell of a lot harder than storming a house filled with Iraqi insurgents...

Reza's especially irked by one particular soldier, Wisniak, a new recruit who keeps running off to the Rest and Resiliency Center even though he's never seen a single day of combat. To Reza's way of thinking, the Center is supposed to be "a place that helped combat veterans heal from the mental wounds of war," not "the new generation's stress card, a place to go when their sergeant was making them work too hard" (113). A place for men like Neal Sloban, who lost his bright laughing eyes and steady trigger finger after his third deployment, all "buried from too many head injuries and no time off from the war,"  (404). That the psych docs shelter Wisniak but seem ready to kick Sloban out of the army infuriates Reza; without his usual pressure-release-value (alcohol), Reza's far too ready to let his temper fly.

And let it fly he does, straight at Captain Emily Lindberg. Emily's life has been as different from Reza's as is fine wine from cheap beer. Growing up as the daughter of privileged white doctors, Emily hardly imagined making a career for herself in the army. Until she toured a VA hospital, that is, and saw the sadness and red tape standing in the way of military men and women desperately in need of mental health care. And after an engagement gone bad, that's just where Emily finds herself, rebelling against her privileged background and the wishes of her parents to serve her country and its fighting women and men. Making a difference is what Emily wants to do, but dealing with the army bureaucracy, and, even worse, with the "rampant hostility and incessant chest beating" of many of the arrogant army commanders makes her faith in the system weaker by the day. Just how much of a difference can she make when all she seems to be doing is putting out one fire after another?

From their first meeting, Reza and Emily regard each other as the enemy. Captain Lindberg is keeping Reza from helping his men; Sergeant Iaconelli is just another example of the arrogant asshat military man, unconcerned about his men. But as they are forced into each other's company, each gradually begins to realize that there's more to the other than first appearances suggested. And when the trauma of war makes an unexpected visit stateside, Reza and Emily find themselves taking much-needed comfort in one another.

Active-duty suicide rates at Fort Hood are the highest in the army, Emily notes early in the novel. Though Scott never articulates this directly, her depiction of life at Texas's Fort Hood (where she herself twice served as a company commander) makes it clear that the military's construction of ideal masculinity—stoic, aggressive, and above all willing to repress all emotional hurt—lies at the heart of many a soldier's unwillingness to admit weakness, or to ask for help when emotional trauma threatens to overwhelm him. Soldiers will find a way to deal with their emotional distress, Scott's story asserts, but the majority of their coping mechanisms—alcohol, sex, drugs, self-injury—will only lead to greater harm.

At one point in the novel, Reza describes combat as "the most potent of drugs," "a heady marriage of fear and adrenaline and death" which "rewired the brain like nothing else. And his blood was now hardwired to need the fix" (616). Part of why romance readers enjoy military romance is to vicariously experience this heady drug without ever risking becoming addicted.  Scott's romance is a heartfelt call for romance readers who idealize the military's members to recognize that the fix exacts a high cost from many real-life military men and women. Allowing such warriors a time-out, a space in which they can admit their weaknesses and ask for help, doesn't seem too much to ask in return.

Photo credits: Resilience and Restoration Center, Fort Hood

Jessica Scott, All for You

Forever, 2014