I Love My Dead Gay Husband III: Still Dead. Still Gay. And Now with Bonus Manic Episodes

The Introduction:  Wow, Aren’t You Done with This Already?

The other day I was like, “Hey, you know what would be funny?  Another Dead Gay Husband post.”  But then I was all, “Mankiller, do you really have another five pages worth of ranting about romance novels in you?”  And then I said, “Duh!” and punched myself in the face.

And so, without further ado—“I Love My Dead Gay Husband III:  Still Dead.  Still Gay.  And Now with Bonus Manic Episodes.”

Her Mouth Was Too Full for True Beauty

Romance heroines are rarely “truly beautiful.”  In fact, when I was a teenager, I read so many Regencies  that contained the line “Her mouth was too full for true beauty” that it has been permanently seared into my brain.  There’s always something slight “wrong” with our heroine’s looks:  she’s too tall, too thin, too fat, she’s got the wrong coloring, a snub nose, something.  The one thing she always has, though, is “beautiful skin.”

I have always hated that particular phrase, and I admit it:  my aversion is personal.  I have had a walloping case of acne since I turned 16; it’s not as bad as it once was, but thanks to eight years of zits and a pale complexion, I’ve got bright red scars all over my face.  So every time I read that whole “beautiful skin” line, it’s like a punch to my hideous, mottled flesh.  And the last thing I need is a bruise, people.  I’ve got enough problems already.

In all seriousness, though, this “beautiful skin” meme annoys me not only because I personally do not have “good” skin, but because it’s just another way of reinforcing beauty standards— in the most backhanded, unkind way possible.  Authors are quick to point out that our Heroine isn’t “truly” beautiful, but she’s always got “good” skin and “good” teeth (and usually “good” hair).  Which basically means that those things are the baseline for being physically acceptable.  And if you don’t at least have those things, then you’ve got nothing.  And then you’re fucking ugly.

Actually, guys, I’m not ugly—disgusting, hideous, “imperfect” flesh or no.  So fuck you, too, and shove your backhanded “compliments” up your ass.

The Dead Bipolar Mother

 So it’s pretty much required that the Hero have had a traumatic childhood.  Something has to be responsible for his cold, dead heart, and modern readers are not very tolerant of character flaws that are the result of a traumatic event that took place after the age of fifteen.  I believe the general reaction to such character flaws and such events can be summarized as “Man up, pussy.”  Which is misogynistic in the extreme, but there you have it.

Anyway, the Hero needs him his sad, sad childhood, and there are typically two ingredients to said childhood:  the Cold and Heartless Father, and an emotionally/physically absent mother.  Sometimes, mama done run off with a shipping heir, sometimes she’s just so vapid that she’s completely checked out of her kids’ lives, but increasingly?  She’s written in such a way that it’s very obvious that she suffered from bipolar disorder.  Emphasis on “suffered,” because if she was bipolar, then she is always dead by the time the book begins.  Anyway, if mom was bipolar, then either the Hero or the narrator will explain that “Mama, when she was well, was glittering and sparkling and great fun.  But when she was not well, she would take to her bed for days or cry uncontrollably and attack the family portraits with her embroidery shears.”

Okay, not that last part, unfortunately (that would be too interesting), but the rest is more or less a direct quote from every.  Single.  Book that employs this trope.

So the mother is usually bipolar, which the Hero, being the Hero, is at first bitter about, but—through the love of a good woman!—he eventually comes to accept her “failings” as an illness.  Because, you know, the nineteenth century was so well-known for its liberal attitudes towards mental difference.  And because it is COMPLETELY PLAUSIBLE that our Hero would be able to recognize a complex mental health problem as a disease during an era in which people still believed that addiction was an issue of moral laxity and that a visit to Bedlam made for a hilarious afternoon excursion. 

Yeah, that’s totally not at all bogus.

All that aside, I am SO SICK OF THE DEAD BIPOLAR MOTHER.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against her personally, but authors keep “slyly” hinting about her moodswings and her manic episodes like it’s all such a MYSTERY!  Newsflash, romance writers:  this is not a creative new twist.  A good third of you have already featured this particular affliction in your books.  STOP IT.  IT IS NO LONGER NEW AND HIP AND INTERESTING.  Can we please move on to kleptomania or Tourette’s or something?  Just for a little variety?  Please.  I am, as Boyz II Men once sang, down on bended knee, here.  I will even settle for pyromania.  I am not picky.  PLEASE.  ANYTHING ELSE.

Historical Accuracy of the Historical Kind

I admit it:  I love the nineteenth century.  I am the resident of a former British territory, and the United Kingdom has long since colonized my brain.  Therefore, I am in love with Britannia at the apex of her power—which is why I know a lot about nineteenth century history.  And that, in turn, is why I have a good general idea of when Great Britain outlawed slavery, when the suffragette movement really took off, when labor reform movements came into play, and why the Hero, a member of the House of Lords in 1815, could not possibly have made any of the sweeping social changes the author is trying to credit him with.  Because they all took place fifteen to seventy years later.

Look, I have no problem with speculative historical fiction; actually, I think the idea of steampunk is pretty neat, even though I’m not really involved in the genre/social scene.  But historical romances are not speculative historical fiction:  they don’t diverge from the actual historical timeline except in ways that make our Hero look like a nice, progressive politician.  In fact, authors always show him working desperately to improve the lives of workers or whatever, but it never comes to anything significant in the novel.  And the author is always very careful to attach an afterward about how things really were.  Because this not about how things might have been:  this is about making the hero sympathetic to socially progressive modern readers.

Guys, I’m not saying that romance novels have to come up with an alternate timeline or anything, but if you want to play by history’s rulebook, then play by the damn rules.  Don’t put social movements thirty years earlier than they actually occurred unless you’re willing to follow through with the natural consequences of such a shift.  Don’t, yet again, simply use the plight of oppressed groups to make your wealthy white hero look noble.  It’s not cool.  And it’s fucking irritating, because I know it didn’t really happen that way.  So unless you want me to show up at your house and read you a lecture on nineteenth century Western history, sack up, already.

Her Thighs, They Are Creamy

Although I’ve railed against the ways in which modern historical authors (now that’s an oxymoron for ya) uphold beauty standards, I have to admit that many of them seem very invested in convincing women of all different shapes and sizes that they, too, can be beautiful.  They’re just doing it completely wrong.  I’ve gone into detail elsewhere about their various fuckups in this department, but here’s one that I’ve hitherto missed:  despite the open-mindedness of authors about height, width, length, whatever, that open-mindedness does not extend to skin tone.  All the ladiez in the romances will get compared to dairy products at some point.  Honestly, you could probably play a drinking game with it.  Take a shot every time someone mentions “creamy thighs” or “milk-white skin.”  And by a shot, I clearly mean a glass of milk.  Obviously, this game will be sponsored by the dairy industry, and the lactose intolerant will play at their own—and everyone else’s—peril.

Anyway, not only is this racist—fetishizing whiteness much, authors?—it’s also hilarious.  I’m sorry, but I have NO desire for my boyfriend to look lustfully into my cold, dead Aryan eyes and say, “Darling, I love the way your creamy thighs glow milkily in the moonlight.”  If I were ever on the receiving end of such a comment, my first reaction would be to laugh until I fell off the bed.  Then I would punch him in the nose and make him buy me some self-tanning lotion.  At no point would this “compliment” get the Boyfriend laid.  In fact, all bidness would thereafter be conducted in the dark while fully clothed, because I’d be too terrified that the sight of my bare flesh would move him to compare me to a wheel of cheddar to ever take off my clothes in front of him again.

Not that I’ve ever been naked in the presence of a man before, mom, if you’re reading.  I’m simply speaking hypothetically.

The Cold and Heartless Father

Ahem, where was I?  Oh, that’s right.  So anyway, the Hero has to have this Sad and Tragic childhood in order to become the hardass we all know and…love.  Or whatever.  We’ve already talked about his Dead Bipolar Mother, but of equal or greater importance to his fucked-up-ness is his Cold and Heartless Father.

The Cold and Heartless Father may have many motivations for being so damn cold and heartless.  Maybe he’s mad because he knows the Hero isn’t biologically his son.  Maybe he’s upset that his son takes after his Heathen Guido mother.  Maybe he’s pissed that he had an heir and a spare and the heir got himself killed in the Peninsular War and now he’s got to make do with the backup kid.  Maybe he’s just trying to beat the sissy out of him.  I don’t know, guys; the Cold and Heartless Father can be remarkably taciturn about his motivations.  Sometimes we get a long speech about how the Hero’s mother was a whore/he was just trying to make him into a MAN!  But usually, when the Hero’s all, “Daddy, why don’t you love me?” the Cold and Heartless Father just says, “Because you’re a little bitch for even asking me that!  Jesus, why did your brother have to die?”

Unlike the Dead Bipolar Mother, the Cold and Heartless Father occasionally survives to wreak havoc during the main plot.  And even if he doesn’t, he always serves as a handy motivation for the Hero to make a lot of money/swashbuckle around in the hopes that daddy will be proud of him/be a total ass to the Heroine because he has never been Loved and Doesn’t Know How to Love in Return.  If the Cold and Heartless Father is alive, it’s because he’s plotting to have his son killed (because he’s got a replacement son he feels is more suited to be Lord What-the-fuck).  Or he’s there to give the heroine endless shit for not being good enough to marry into his family.  This serves as a bonding experience for the Hero and Heroine—look, Daddy hates us both!—and gives the heroine something to do:  Make Peace in the Family.  Eventually, though, she’ll give it up as a lost cause. 

That’s because the Cold and Heartless Father is an indefatigable douche.  The end.

Making Peace in the Family

Oh, you know women and their maternal instinct and their desire for everyone to get along and be happy!  Actually, come to think of it, I don’t know too many women like that.  Because I’m descended from two very war-like peoples, and all my female friends are kinda mean. 

Seriously, I only hang out with them because I’m afraid not to.  Trufax.

So, yanno, romance novelists often cling to an outmoded gender ideal wherein Men are Men and Women Just Want Everyone to Get Along.  The Heroine is always doing things like trying to get the Hero to pay attention to his by-blows or his kids from his first marriage or the little orphan cousins he’s been saddled with by an inopportune will.  And when she’s not doing that, she’s trying to get him to make peace with his Cold and Heartless Father or trying to help him accept the ghost of his Dead Bipolar Mother.  She is generally very invested in Harshing the Mellow, is what I’m saying, and it’s really kind of irritating.  Can’t a man have some peace?  Can’t a guy just lock his kids up on his country estate and leave them to be raised by inattentive servants?  Is that really so wrong?  Dude, the Hero just wanted to get laid, and now he’s got a woman all up in his business, and not in a sexual manner.  It’s enough to make a guy want to go run off and be a pirate.  Again.

But in the Heroine’s defense, she’s not the only one who wants to be one big happy family.  The Hero also wants to clear up some issues in her past, but his methods are a wee bit different.  Instead of making peace with the distant relatives who forced her to be an unpaid drudge, he threatens them with social ruin and cuts them out of his life completely!  And if the Heroine was abused as a child, he’ll go out and kill her attackers!  Because Men are Men of Action, while Women just have their ineffective Talky-talk!

I get where romance novelists are trying to go with this:  they want to show that two damaged people can heal each other through love.  But not only do they rely on gender stereotypes to accomplish this, the goal itself is bullshit.  I’m sorry, but to quote Alice Sebold, “you save yourself or you remain unsaved.”  The Boyfriend, lovely man that he is, did not heal the wounds from my past crappy experiences with men; I had already healed them myself.  Looking to a romantic partner to save you from the pain of your past isn’t romantic—it’s dooming yourself to failure.  And it really bothers me that romance novels perpetuate this idea, because they are where so many girls get their first ideas about love.  And those ideas can prevent them from helping themselves, because they’re too busy expecting someone else (male) to ride up and save them.

Also, this shit leads to some really sickeningly sappy scenes.  So stop it, romance novelists.   Stop it right now.

The Scent of a Man

Romances serve a very important function as undercover lady porn, so romance novelists really want to paint you a picture.  They want you to know exactly how everything looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels because you’re too embarrassed to just rent a DVD, already.  This is really sweet of them, but in their efforts to be sensual, they often just wind up sounding stupid.  Par example:

He smelled of soap, she thought.  Soap and sweat and sunlight and something innately his own, something that could only be Male.

Let’s be real, here, ladies—a more honest description would go something like this:

He smelled of soap—the Herbal Essence shampoo he’d ‘borrowed’ from her after his own bottle of Axe ran out three weeks before—and B.O., and something innately his own, something that could only be Male, something…vaguely like corn chips.

Romance novelists, it is a scientific fact that sweaty dudes smell like Fritos.  So leave out that particular bit of description, okay?  It makes me long for bean dip, and that is an entirely different sort of craving from the one you are trying to cultivate.

The Conclusion:  So Are We Done Now?

For the moment, kids.  For the moment.  Until then, stay safe, stay sane, try not to pretend to be a highwayman to repair your family fortunes, and thank God that the twentieth century gave us lithium.  Oh, and Julia?  Suck it.