Romance Readers And The Sexually Assertive Heroine…
The other day, I was sent an ARC of a book coming out later this year, and the author asked me what I thought about a specific character in the story.
Apparently, this character had been getting a lot of hate from reviewers and such like.
Anyway, I read the book, and I must say, I totally loved the character. She was bold and brassy, she could be abrasive, and had a bit of a foul mouth, she was forthright, she loved sex and wasn’t afraid to say so, and she knew what she wanted and had no qualms about going after the object of her desires.
In short, my kind of heroine. The anti-Mary Sue.
However, I suspect that even whilst we’re collectively screaming blue-murder about vanilla Mary Sues polluting the Romance landscape, some of us secretly hate sexually assertive women.
I recall a few years ago, an author who always wrote fragile, timid heroines finally decided to bite the bullet and write about a kick-ass, strong woman. Jesus, talk about backlash. There was a huge outcry from her regular readers, who hated this character, and she spent about two weeks explaining the character’s motivations to her fans.
I don’t think it’s an accident that authors like Shannon Mckenna, and JR Ward, who historically write some of the biggest Mary Sue heroines this side of romance, sell so well. It would be interesting to measure the sales of Mckenna’s latest book, featuring a kick-ass heroine, against the sales figures of her previous books featuring her weak-assed, too-stupid-to-live female leads.
As an aside, everybody loved Samantha in Sex and The City, but would we have felt the same way, if we’d met her in real life?
I honestly don’t think we would have. The fantasy of Samantha is all well and good, but let’s face it, people who act like her in real life, are usually labelled whores, or bitches. And usually by other women.
Does anybody remember the girl who decided to audition in a bikini on American Idol? Do you recall the female judges’ reaction to her? They hated her on sight.
I bet if she’d been a guy who’d come in wearing just his speedos, he wouldn’t have gotten as much heat. The double standards make my teeth hurt.
I wonder when we’ll get to a point, where we don’t automatically/sub-consciously negatively label sexually assertive women?
I also wonder when we’ll see more of these sexually assertive heroines who go after their men, rather than waiting for the man to chase after them. Yeah, there’s a few out there, but definitely not enough to counter-balance the overwhelming majority of heroines who sit and wait for Prince Charming to arrive in his white Bentley.
I guess the real question is though, would these types of heroines, sell as well as the Mary Sue heroines do?
What say you?
Posted by Karen Scott · 
