Welcome to February, fellow readers!
It’s the Xennial Reader here to talk to you about all the mushy stuff we’re about to get inundated with this month.
It’s February. The month of love, romance, pinks and reds, candy and flowers… and a bunch of other bullshit meant to drain our pockets. All me to reintroduce myself. The “anti-capitalist Xennial Reader” at your service!
Some people dread the month of February, mainly because media and commerce influence us to feel like we MUST have a mate during this month. Someone to love, someone to cuddle with, someone to be with on the 14th day of the month. Why? Because according to Forbes, last year we spent $21.8 BILLION (yes, a billion with a “B”) on romantic shit. Shit that just died, got eaten, or thrown out the next day. Wow.
And don’t get it twisted. I’m not one of those people who hates Valentine’s Day. I LOVE to see people expressing their love for one another. In fact, I PREFER it. This world needs as much love as it can get. The problem is that I don’t think we really know what love is.
Is it an action? Or is it an emotion? Or is it both – something we both do and feel?
I’m going to take the existential path here and posit that love is a divine power – an energy source of sorts – that our spirit bodies are blessed to interact with as we go through life in these flesh blobs we call bodies. Love is energy. It’s a force of nature that can be manipulated for good or evil, as proven by our current state of affairs.
People use love to manipulate others, unfortunately. We’ll say, “Well, that’s not love”. But what the person being manipulated felt was love, and now they’re hurting. And it sucks that the other half who did the manipulating chose to use such power to hurt instead of healing or helping.
But we don’t just use love for bad. We know that. People also use love as motivation to do better and to evolve into a better version of themselves. Self-love is usually what helps there, but I digress.
The point is that humans have no idea of the real power of love. After all of the hundreds of thousands of years we’ve been in existence on this rotating rock hurtling through space, we’re still totally confused about love and are just flying by the seat of our pants. And make no mistake – this capitalistic society that puts a price on love doesn’t help us on our journey to figure it out. Just what is love? (And just like that, I now have Haddaways’ “What Is Love?” song echoing in my head.)
That’s kind of why I detest Valentine’s Day. Not the idea of spending the day showering the one you love with symbols of your affection – that’s dope and should be done every day in my opinion. It’s the commercialization of an emotion that is given freely by our Creator. It’s corporations capitalizing off something pure and powerful only after using the media to beat us down and make us feel inadequate that I can’t stand. We’re led to feel that if we don’t spend an exorbitant amount of money on gifts for our loved ones, then we don’t care for them as much as the person who spent thousands of dollars.
Before I go off on a tangent, I’ll just say that’s not true and move on.
Since we focus on the themes found in books and our focus is on romance novels this month, it’s only natural that we take a look at the themes and tropes found in romance novels that have rooted themselves into our subconscious, which I believe helped to program and drive the belief systems we currently fight against today.
Because we know that love doesn’t cost anything. We know it can’t be quantified with gifts. Yet, one of the most popular themes we STILL love to see in romance novels is the rich man who falls in love and showers the not-so-rich woman with everything she could ever want, despite how humble she is or how much she refuses his extravagant gifts.
What effect did it have on me? I’ll be blunt: it made me want a rich man. However, in real life, I found myself not really attracted to that type of man. Not that they were bad people or anything, it just felt like they were detached from the problems of the people I help and deal with. They were so unlike the men I’d read about in the novels, who always helped the poor and were mindful of those who had less. Now, I’ll admit that I have not met every wealthy man in the world, and I am 100% positive that a good portion of those men are generous and aware of the problems of the less fortunate, especially if they rose to prominence from those environments.
What I’m saying is the world we live in – and the expectations that come with it – vastly differ from what we have read in our favorite romances, which is why there is such a disconnect that exists in so many relationships nowadays.
And let’s face it: some of these tropes and themes found in romance novels – like the idea that only the special woman has the power to tame a playboy, or how we fail to see that the dark, brooding man who says mean things to the female protagonist is ABUSIVE – are toxic as fuck, and they implant dangerous ideas and expectations into women of all ages and for multiple generations.
So, it’s time to do a deep dive into this shit and see what we pull out. Hope you’ve got your disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer, ‘cuz next week we’re discussing Harlequin novels and yucky themes deceptively woven into the stories like domestic abuse, kidnapping and Stockholm syndrome, as well as sexual assault.
Here are some of the problematic assed titles we’ll be breaking down throughout the next week. If you’d like a copy so you can join in the discussion, feel free to use any of the clickable book titles.
- A Summer Storm – Robyn Donald
- Garden of Eden – Sandra Marton
- A Casual Affair – Susanne McCarthy
- Shattered Trust – Jacqueline Baird
- It All Depends On Love – Roberta Leigh
- Devil In Paradise – Joana Mansell
- Dark Music – Charlotte Lamb
- The Sheikh’s Revenge – Emma Darcy
Okay, in my Brock Samson voice: “Let’s do this thing!”
