I am lucky enough to have some seriously crush-worthy healthcare providers. My former primary care physician had blue eyes that could make you wish that colds and bronchitis were sexy afflictions (that’s all he ever saw me with, anyway) and a full head of gorgeous grey hair. He is Irish and damn sexy – and on top of that, he is a fantastic doctor.
Then there’s my dentist, who is one of those men who looks unbelievably hot with a fully bald head. Certainly his competence (and liberal applications of novocaine when my dental work this week hurt while in progress) is part of the sexy factor, but even without the confidence, he’s fine to look at.
Since I had nothing to do but think, I got to pondering about romance occupations. There are plenty of romance heroes who are doctors, business tycoons – and sheikhs, if you read any of those books. Heroines I’ve read range from business execs to secretaries, artists to musicians. Part of the fascination of some contemporary romance writers, and Nora Roberts’ books come to mind, is seeing what job the heroine will have.
I know Candy and I have mentioned in passing to each other at least once the many, many heroines who have creative right-brain jobs, and heroes who have businessy left-brain jobs. I’ve encountered it time and again, so it makes the curious exceptions so much more entertaining. And for the hero to have a technically detailed and challenging job such as medicine – which often involves the human element of caring for other people – well, that character line has oft been explored as well. (My personal favorite example, for the record: Dr. Cox on Scrubs. John McGinley does a wonderful job with the crusty-exterior/wounded heart-of-gold character that is almost a cliche sometimes in the hands of the wrong writer.)
When it comes to employment, it must be a challenge to pick your character’s career, especially in the US where your job is so closely tied to your identity. One asks what someone “does” for a living, but often the answer is, “I am….” A job is often a major element to one’s definition of self. So in the context of romance protagonists, career is a big, big choice.
That said, I ask the Bitchery:
1. What careers for heroes and heroines have you noticed as most common?
2. What jobs are unheard of in romance? Meat packer? Butcher? Felon?
3. What job would you LOVE to see?
There was a higher rate of unusual professions in romances of yesteryear, especially in category romances.
Such as – heroes: clown, ice cream seller, puzzle compiler, zoo keeper, pro marathon runner, copywriter [specialising in greeting cards], boxer … *thinking* … oh, yes, tax inspector!! [he was stuck with a typical free spirit during one stormy night during a stopover – that was a Loveswept, IIRC], pro drag driver, ballet dancer, recordist, TV cameraman, fire jumper, stuntman, harpist … *thinking* … oh! believe it or not, garbage man [he wasn’t even working as an undercover cop – he was severely dyslexic and had low self-esteem; he meets and falls in love with uni professor heroine during one of his routes every week; it’s a nice romance, IIRC]. Loads more.
Seeing that the list is quite long, I shan’t bother listing heroines’ here. 😀 It’s a shame that it’s a lot more restrictive these days. Mind you, back then, there were loads of heroes as businessmen or corporate raiders, which can get a bit boring.
OMFG!!! Sophie Weston was here. When I was a baby romance reader, I remember reading the sex scene of one of her Mills & Boon. I was in high school—like, actually present at school when I read it—and it went on for 20 pages, and it was sooo hott! And I was so embarrassed! I loved her books then. Lovedlovedloved them! How cool is that?!
Hey Sarah, apparently the Lady Heather and Grissom thing is not over yet. I read a recent interview where they said there would be further exploration…
And more importantly, can a boring career yield a firecracker of a romance?
Why not? Jo Beverly is taking a poll on the name “Darien” over at the AAR Potpourri Board right now, and I basically feel the same way about her question as I do about this one—in the hands of a talented writer who imagines his/her characters as fully formed individuals, names, career choices, wardrobe, quirks, etc. are all mere elements of a character. And what the author chooses to do with those elements will determine my ultimate opinion of their value. Where I have problems is in those books where it seems like the author views these elements as interesting in and of themselves and allows them to stand in as a proxy for character or relationship development (i.e. cop and suspected killer—just because there’s built in tension or drama there does not mean a whole Romance will emerge from and free-form around such tension).
Also, a career is a little different from a job, at least in my mind. I associate careers with some conscious vocational interest that blossoms into a consistent direction (even if it’s not forever). Some people, of course, can turn jobs into careers and vice versa, but I think with any career there has to be enough of interest to the people involved in it to make a compelling portrait of it in fiction (including Romance). And the same goes, really, for jobs. Think of Charlaine Harris’s Shakespeare series— Lily Bard cleans houses for a living, hardly a glamorous occupation, but one Harris uses in fascinating ways, IMO. Where it gets troublesome for me—again—is where a certain job or career becomes synonymous with certain qualities (i.e. dog walker/trainer = bubbly, quirky heroine; homicide detective = burly, alpha hero with a surplus of chest hair and a big cock—I mean gun). Oh, and I hate it when ambitious women need to be “loosened up” by the big bad alpha carpenter, or the big bad alpha cop hero needs to be “softened up” by the oh so nurturing nurse next door.
As for what I’d like to see more of, since I primarily read historicals, I’d like to see more careers there, actually—more books written about people who work, but not in a way that they need to be pulled from the gutter and transformed into productive wanna-bes to the ton. The way some historical Romance is written, you’d think that everyone outside the ton is a mere half-step away from plunging right into the nearest open sewer, or is just on their way out of one.
In terms of contemporary Romance, fewer cops, doctors, and bland corporate execs, please. I’ve never felt that contemps were any less formulaic than historicals, and more than anything, I’d just like to see more books like, for example, Laura Leone’s Fallen From Grace or most anything by Jennifer Crusie. More women in the sciences, for example, who aren’t mousy geniuses or pseudo mad scientists bent on destroying the world or concocting a DNA cocktail with some hunky jock. More normal and less paranormal, as well.
I´d like to see a scientist heroine who is not mousy, shy, quiet, ponytail and white labcoat wearing. I´m all that, the walking proof of the geek stereotype; but my female friends from college who also are chemical engineers actually belong to the Fashion Club. Hell, they might be chick-lit heroines for what I know.
Hey, what about a chick-lit featuring a female engineer? That would be a change!
Trudi
It’s me again…
I just remembered reading on old series of books by LaNora about ballet dancers. I seem to recall that one of the heros was a ballet dancer and very yummy.
You know a profession that you never see in romance? Men in a customer service role, such as a phone bank, or a normal guy in a risk mitigation role, or a mortgage consultant. You also don’t see many men that are teachers (outside of college professors) or training consultants.
We also rarely see the anxiety that a person in a new relationship feels when someone goes away for a three day business trip that they CAN’T avoid. The h/h somehow ends up going with them, or they don’t go, and we never get to see those anxiety-ridden moments where the girl is staring at the phone willing it to ring because she really hopes that this business trip won’t cool off the possible good thing she’s discovered.
Enough rambling from me. 🙂
I came up with a story idea a few months ago about a geek girl who falls in love with a sweet-faced, shaggy-haired boy whose greatest claim to fame is his hugely popular web comic. I called it Hipsters in Love.
Yeah, personal fantasy fulfillment much?
I agree that I’d love to read more romances that feature heroes in non-traditional, non-manly-man occupations. Dude, professional dancers are HAWT. And I could totally dig a femmeboy androgynous hairdresser/interior designer for a hero, but I like femmeboy androgynous types, period. The only sticking point for me would be that I am terrible at girly-girl crap, and a hairdresser/interior designer must, by necessity, be very, very interested in things I don’t give a flying fuck about.
A tattoo artist for a hero would be interesting. I very, very briefly dated a tattoo artist, and he turned out to be an ass, but ohmigodsohot. He had a tattoo-in-progress on his back of this huge, elaborate Chinese dragon, and whoa. But then, I like a little ink and edginess on my men.
I’ve noticed that there are very few romances about grad students. There could be some interesting possibilities for conflict, especially if one of the students is involved with Freaky Research. (I mean, seriously, a lot of the gruntwork for all the freaky-deaky experiments is done by research assistants at places like CalTech and MIT.) But again, this is assuming that one finds geeks sexy. Y’all know how I feel about the state of geek portrayal in romance, I’m sure.
Oh, and I second everything Robin said. But I always do.
You know a profession that you never see in romance? Men in a customer service role, such as a phone bank, or a normal guy in a risk mitigation role, or a mortgage consultant.
My guess is that service-industry careers are too beta for a romance hero, whose pimp, I mean, publisher, insists on alpha alpha alpha heroes.
As far as felons go…what about Faking It by Jennifer Cruise? He’s a theif, which isn’t exactly felonious, but it is dangerous.
I understand why the pubs want alphas, but there are certainly enough jobs around that they don’t all have to be CEO/cop/dr. guys. What about a mediator? You get the power/leader thing, but the sensitivity to be able to communicate without the heroine teaching him. Or a male RN instead of a dr. because he got into medicine to help people hands-on. He could get with a female drug rep or hospital administrator.
What about the creative end of business, like art directors or filmmakers (indie, please)? Chefs? Photojournalist and foreign/war correspondant or translator? A man who makes beautiful custom furniture and an interior designer? The strong craftsman with his powerful, deft hands might go over better than the moody painter of lighthouses.
I’m with Candy on the grad student action. Geeks are so sexy. Think of all the time in the lab late at night and the awkward sexual tension… I’d like the heroes to be smarter and not so powerful. The heroines should be less naieve and dreamy.
As I was thinking about this, a lot of the pairings I came up with seem more suited to erotica than traditional romance. Probably something to do with the power balance… Man masseuse and executive woman. Artist and model.
Suddenly thinking of Sam, the pickle salesman, from a delightful little movie called “Crossing Delancey.”
I loved him. I want more pickle salesmen in romances. Maybe a little more ethnicity, in general.
There did seem to be more category romances from the 80s/early 90s where the h/h had different jobs. Loveswept were great at this. To add a few more to Maili’s list: professional diver, anthropologist, photojournalist, politician, sculptor, ice climber, botanist, art restorer. Even a female carpenter, as I recall. What happened?
A few other careers to throw into the mix: poet, museum curator, adventure travel guide, comic (funny is sexy), environmental technician, working for a non-profit organisation, running a music store and gig coordinator.
I’m with everyone bemoaning the lack of females in tech-type office jobs too. Women usually seem to have creative/customer-facing roles. Maybe it’s partly because the work in these sort of jobs is easier for people to get their heads ‘round?
And sorry, but I’m absolutely fed up with military/secret agent/spy/warrior heroes. These days, I’ll read the back of a book and think, “Oh, another navy SEAL. And look, he has half a dozen equally sexy team-mates. In a bachelor auction. Yawn.” Selah & annElise pointed out some of the other pitfalls.
Why on earth is an alpha hero the only kind that can make the heroine’s life better? And why have so many careers become so identified with specific personality traits that people feel they can’t get past the stereotype to the author’s own ability to create a character?
BTW I reckon Grissom got into the BDSM scene during his mis-spent youth and he’s been running from it ever since.
you guys all stole my ideas.
but i’d just like to put my two cents in for Nora Roberts, because no matter what career her characters have, you can always tell that she researched it in a major way. one of my favorites is Born in Fire, because glass-making is SO cool! (hehe no pun intended). from arson inspectors to photographers, they always seem so real and believable. yup.
The most cliche in my opinion would have to be the hero being an ex vetran. Or is in the Military in some form or fashion.
You have to admit, nothing beats a man in uniform ^_^
Currently reading: Hazard – Jo Beverley
I’m with everyone bemoaning the lack of females in tech-type office jobs too. Women usually seem to have creative/customer-facing roles. Maybe it’s partly because the work in these sort of jobs is easier for people to get their heads ‘round?
Or because a) those jobs are more “left brain” = female, and b) they are easier to back out of when the heroine—satiated with her 50th big dick induced orgasm of the day—realizes she’s IN LOVE and can’t wait to ditch her job as a jingle writer for life as the wife of a corporate CEO cum Navy Seal and birth a whole lot of babies as she stares at her antique platinum wedding ring set and her spends her days shoe and bootie shopping?
Speaking of music stores, I remember that the heroine of Tom and Sharon Curtis’s The Golden Touch owned a music store. The heroine of LaVyrle Spencer’s Spring Fancy was a physical therapist, but instead of it being one of those “I am woman see me nurture” kind of things, it was “I am jock and I like physical work (and I like to see people get better).”
You know, I totally understand the way that the “superwoman” thing has created a tremendous bind for women, many of whom would love to stay home but financially can’t, most of whom end up doing both the out of home working and the in home working, married or single. And I realize that perhaps part of the fact that career roles are seeming more constrained might have to do with a certain backlash against the increased roles women have in the various professional spheres, but can’t we still have reactionary Romance that’s interesting and creative in terms of career/job choices? I love a good comfort read (sans subversion), but definitely not a boring one.
As for the military heroes, while many readers might find those books patriotic, during a time of war, it’s too serious a subject for me to find easy escape or romantic thrill in those books.
Or is right brain supposed to be the girly one—I can never get that straight (probably because I’m mentally handicapped by being blonde AND left-handed).
…and female, Robin. Do not underestimate the damage done to your grey matter by virtue of your lack of a Y chromosome.
Maili and EvilAuntiePeril make interesting points about how jobs seem to have been a lot more varied back in Ye Olde Days of category romance. I haven’t read a whole lot of these old category romances, and the ones I did belonged to my sister, who seemed to buy mostly boss-secretary romances (which: EWWWWWWW).
Random thought, one that’s meant mostly tongue-in-cheek: inspirational romances are experiencing quite the boom. When are the secular humanist vegan romances going to get their day, dammit? (Books printed on 100% recycled paper and environmentally-friendly inks, of course.)
…and female, Robin. Do not underestimate the damage done to your grey matter by virtue of your lack of a Y chromosome.
Oh, yeah; I forgot. See? I can’t keep very many things in my tiny little brain at once.
Maili and EvilAuntiePeril make interesting points about how jobs seem to have been a lot more varied back in Ye Olde Days of category romance.
The Spencer book I mentioned in my last post was the first Harlequin Temptation (pub. 1984), and the back cover contains the following bold statement: “The new, compelling stories of passionate romance for today’s woman.” And in that case, “today’s woman” was an unapologetic jock who cheated on her fiance—a computer engineer—with the hero—a body shop owner—and gave absolutely no hint of giving up her career.
It’s interesting, at least to me, to think about how this line was launched during the Regan years, and how people have commented on the interesting combination of conservative (i.e. rapist heroes) and progressive (i.e. heroines with actual careers who cheat on their fiances) elements in 80s Romance. I’d like to say that I think the sex is more liberated in current Romance, but having just recently read Christine Monson’s Rangoon, I can’t. Maybe today’s more progressive Romance elements can be found in the overt marketing of Romantica (even though I often find these books just as conservative as straight Romance) and straight erotica for women, and in some of the paranormal directions.
I agree with those who ix-nayed on the avy-SEALS-nay. Unless he was somehow not an alpha male dickhead. We forget that most military operations require teamwork, which means most soldiers are followers, not leaders.
Give me a guy who doesn’t fit any of the Greek letters, but is just an interesting human being. Is that so hard?
P.S.: I saw a really hot tree surgeon today.
These are all such interesting points! I third (fourth?) the grad student suggestion. I find competence and focus and enthusiasm wildly sexy no matter what they’re directed at. Does that make sense?
I’ve also been rereading a lot of Dick Francis novels lately. I like his heroes—they are the very opposite of alpha, generally fairly introverted and laid-back, but really, really good at whatever it is they do: jockey, antique dealer, hostage negotiator, photographer… It really works for me, but of course they’re all written in first-person singular from the hero’s POV, and the romance (if any) is fairly secondary. But still.
[…]I like his heroes—they are the very opposite of alpha, generally fairly introverted and laid-back, but really, really good at whatever it is they do: jockey, antique dealer, hostage negotiator, photographer…
I have to admit that I yearn for that type in American romantic fiction, but it’s so damn hard to find any. I’m f.ed either way because British romantic fiction doesn’t have enough ‘escapism’ for me even though it generally has the type of heroes I like, but American romantic fiction doesn’t generally have the type of heroes I like, even though it provides wonderful escapism.
I do find it interesting that for some rom readers, it seems important for heroes to be Alpha. It doesn’t matter what he does for a living, just as long as he’s *Alpha*, even if it goes against his background, e.g. British-set historical romances.
I also generally avoid romances that feature heroines as TV presenters – I can’t stand them in real life and I don’t see why I should stand them in fiction. Unfair, but there you go. To come to think of it, I avoid heroines as newspaper journalists as well. There seems to be an invisible law in romance genre that these journalist heroines have to be TSTL. Hang on, has there ever been heroes as journalists lately? I can’t think of any. Weird.
I love a good beta hero. Or even better. . . hmm, what’s the term for the quirky loner type? Omega? But the key for me, if you’re going to sell a beta hero, he can’t have an uber-beta job, like being a florist or a customer care specialist. An ALPHA hero in one of those jobs could be downright hilarious and interesting. Why are the Russian skaters/dancers sexy? Because you can tell, at a glance, that these men are alpha, or are doing a damn good job of pretending.
I’m not into the ultra-alpha hero. I don’t like him. But please, please, please don’t even give a hint that a man might be a pussy. Sensitive? Fine. But he has got to, without a doubt, be 100% dependable in a terrible situation. A man more sensitive than my inner, secret, squishy self? Huh-uh. Sorry. Call me regressive.
Grad students? No, no, no, no… Bad idea. God.
Well, maybe my problem is this: it’s not different professions I want, so much as *depth* in the profession. The top executive who seems to have endless time to chase the heroine around the world bothers me (mostly) because he’s not really an executive — he’s been stamped “executive” as if it were “blond” or “blue-eyed”, something that’s just a description, not something that you spend most of your time and mental energy doing.
A working scientist probably spends a lot of his off hours thinking more or less intensely about the stuff going on at the lab. And not blandly (“the experiments were going badly”) but in detail (“keeping the glassware clean enough for DNA work was a nightmare”). More broadly, he’s going to think like a scientist (of the sort he is) — a mathematician will look at difficulties in terms of problems that can be solved by pure thought; following the solutions becomes routine.
So, a grad student hero(ine) should *be* a grad student — and that is usually, most of the time, incredibly difficult and demoralizing (look at http://www.phdcomic.com/ for a humorous view of it). And while successfully completing a thesis would be one nice resolution, it doesn’t lend itself to tidy climactic breakthroughs.
Concretely, the story of Jocelyn Bell discovering the first pulsar sounds exciting, until you add up the number of miles (sic) of chart-recorder paper she had to examine.
Um. Or maybe the grad-student suggestion hit a little too close to home.
I read a book a long time ago in which the male was a construction worker but didn’t own the company. I think he was slumming because he was burned out on being CEO of some billion dollar corporation or something.
Seriously now, I’d love to see a female engineer as a heroine, being one myself. Maybe paired with a male in sales or marketing, where it’s not a complete alpha profession, and you can get a lot of sciency/non-sciency interaction going.
The cliched professions have been covered. I don’t think we’re going to see a whole lot that breaks the mold at least for first books, but I think established authors get to play more.
Diana Norman always gives her heroines jobs in her historicals. And not just your average run of the mill job either. She’s well worth checking out for the historical addicts, although the path of true love is always pretty damn rocky.
Also, while Minette Walters isn’t really a romance author, her books tend to contain romances in them. ‘The Scolds Bridle’ pairs a left-brain abstract artist husband with a right-brain logical doctor, and they are pretty damn hot together. Even if at the start you’re led to hate him with a very great passion, because Walters is a mean and manipulative wench.
Or because a) those jobs are more “left brain†= female, and b) they are easier to back out of…
Just to expand a bit on my comment (nice bit about the booties, btw). There’s a strong tendancy these days to believe that science and technology are fields for experts: people with years of study and experience behind them. By contrast, creative professions are supposedly more instinctive, involving people just nurturing their own natural talents.
Now I’m pretty confident that a lot of people in “creative” jobs would cheerfully beat me over the head with an aesthetically pleasing, beautifully crafted and yet substantial objet d’art if I suggested they didn’t require some degree of professional expertise to reach their level of ability. And some engineers I know would give their right spectrum analyser to be able to design elegant solutions as instinctively as the genius in the corner. So this is a pretty artificial divide.
As Robin pointed out, it’s a divide that contributes to the gendering of careers. But I think it also connects to the way that we see science/technology as too “complicated” for laymen to understand and therefore less interesting. Any unqualified hobbyists in this area tend to be classified as socially-challenged geeks who only rarely contribute anything worthwhile to the body of knowledge.
Various people in this thread have pointed out that the portrayal of artists’ work in novels is usually inaccurate. But most of us have dabbled in art, and amateur and professional are perceived as points on a range of abilities. This gives anyone writing about the field a way of relating to the subject. They can imagine that if they were an artist, they’d paint pictures of horses, or people, or dead sheep in formaldehyde. Everyone’s allowed an opinion when it comes to art.
By contrast, someone with school-level science or math(s) isn’t seen in the same way. The gap between amateur and professional in the scientific/technical world is wide. The impression a lot of people have is that working in such an area involves dealing with complex concepts and absolutes of right and wrong which demand a certain level of expertise and consequent authority.
The business of authority feeds into the masculinization of these roles, and probably explains why I have very occasionally been advised that my job might a) cause my ovaries to shrivel up and fall out, or b) make me unattractive to men (presumably due to the growth of excessive facial hair and appreciation of fart jokes). It’s either that or the weird effects of electro-magnetic rays from the lab on female hormones.
But the divide between technical expert and layman affects more than gender stereotypes. It links up with the way work in technical fields is frequently so specialised that people find it rather scary and unapproachable. But it is possible to make it interesting with the right approach and decent research. This helps people feel they can get a handle on what someone does and how it fits into their own world.
At the moment, however, careers are becoming shorthand for personality traits and wallpaper rather than avenues of exploration. I suspect this has a lot to do with what some in the industry think is an acceptable level of engagement and thought on the part of the average reader, which is a shame.
expand a bit?? I lied.
I just remembered one of my favorites. I guess I did not think of it right away because it is not a typical romance novel, but the hero in “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffeneger is a librarian. I think that is pretty hot. Of course I am currently working on my Master of Library Science so I may not be an impartial judge. Henry DeTamble is an interesting character. He is a beta at heart and would love nothing more that to have a quiet life with his family, his books, and music, but his life is so screwed up by his spontaneous time traveling that he has to do some pretty badass stuff just to survive. One of my all-time favorite tortured heroes.
You know, thinking of books that are already published where the hero or heroine has a career that’s a little off-beat, I’m surprised no one has mentined Maggie Osborne’s western historical romances.
One of the things I like about her books is that the heroines are almost always unconventional in some way for the time in which the books are set.
She’s had heroines who are gold miners and trail scouts; actresses (a not-at-all respectable profession in the 1800s), store clerks, a hotel owner.
I can think of one book that opens with the female lead getting released from prison and another where one of the female leads (she sometimes intertwines more than one romance in a story) is in a wheelchair because she had to have a leg amputated after a carriage accident. In another, the book opens with the formerly-respectable, middle-class, unmarried heroine pregnant with the baby of someone other than the man who eventually becomes the hero.
Her books are on my must-buy list.
So this is a pretty artificial divide.
Definitely. Goedel, Escher, Bach anyone? (plus you’ll be happy to know, EAP, that I’ve allowed by copy of Nation and Narration to return from exile for a paper on terrorism I’m doing)
At the moment, however, careers are becoming shorthand for personality traits and wallpaper rather than avenues of exploration. I suspect this has a lot to do with what some in the industry think is an acceptable level of engagement and thought on the part of the average reader, which is a shame.
What could be more of a shame is that, by and large, those folks may have been right—at least as far as sales figures go. On AAR recently, Karen Templeton commented that sheihk Romances sell really well. WTF? (another discussion on orientalism, anyone??). And I wonder: are all these people who love love love sheihk Romances as open minded about the actual cultures/reliongs/political issues? Is this the ‘make love not war in the Middle East’ crowd, or is it simply the exoticism?
As more exacting Romance readers have emerged on the Internet, I’ve noticed more comments like “you’re overthinking that” or “this is just supposed to be entertainment, not literature” or “Romance good/literary fiction pretentious, depressing, and bad”—it’s almost like a weird anti-intellectualism in the burbs of Romancelandia (another pretentious recommendation: Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life). It has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with intelligence of course, but with expectation, and I wonder—with frustrated longing and clenched fists—if what we might see as low expectations on the part of the industry have gone largely unchallenged by sales figures AND reader response. That’s one of the reasons I’m so in support of online communities like this one—because I know there are plenty of Romance readers who have different expectations and who haven’t necessarily spoken out, and who want to have more books that aspire to different directions and interests.
Plus, I’ve heard that women have more neural connections between brain hemispheres, so we’re not only better at multi-tasking, but also at handling complex information, even in our escapist literature (because “pure” entertainment? It says stuff, too, even, and perhaps especially, when we’re not so focused on paying attention).
I’ve noticed that there are very few romances about grad students.
Maybe b/c we’re exhausted, cranky, emotionally unavailable, poor, drunk, and miserable?
Okay, it’s not really *that* bad, but grad student life is so unromantic that, as much as the idea of grad student romance appeals to me, I’m afraid I’d just get annoyed if the novel made the whole experience out to seem really romantic/fun/exciting.
So I agree with Anne. However, I know of at least one great grad student chick lit romance—Megan Crane’s English as a Second Language, which is pretty much exactly the life of a grad student in English, as far as I’m concerned. 🙂
They’re not exactly romance novels—more romantic mysteries—but Donna Andrews’s hilarious Murder With Peacocks and its sequels feature a heroine who is a creative blacksmith and a hero who is a theater professor/sometime syndicated television show actor. And when the heroine first meets the hero, he’s working in his mother’s bridal shop for the summer, and everyone thinks he’s gay.
Re: grad student romances: I have more close friends with assorted post-graduate degrees than I ever thought I would. As a consequence, I got to witness a lot of the cranky, snarly, unromantic aspects of it. In between studying for their comps, calibrating lasers, tearing their hair out because of wonky data sets, bombarding nitrogen compounds with high-energy electromagnetic waves, fixing incredibly complex equipment with spit and duct tape because of budget cuts, designing their own software using C++ and a prayer because they couldn’t find something that would fit their needs on the market, etc. etc. etc., they still found time to have pretty damn interesting love lives AND run triathlons. (OK, only one of my friends with a PhD ran triathlons on top of everything else. Her idea of what constitutes “fun” is sometimes downright perverse.) The thing is, insane schedule aside, grad students tend to be dedicated and smart, and many seem to have developed a pretty wicked sense of humor (a survival tactic, no doubt—it’s either laugh or collapse in a quivering heap and sob, yes?), all of which I find very, very sexy.
I therefore strenuously defend my idea that grad students in a romance novel would be sexy. SEXY, YOU HEAR ME?
EAP, you make several excellent points about the divide between artsy/feminine and technical/masculine, especially this one: “At the moment, however, careers are becoming shorthand for personality traits and wallpaper rather than avenues of exploration.”
Ohdeargodyes. Scientist = egghead who talks like Spock, but oddly enough, doesn’t at any point actually quote Spock. Cop = alpha with big
cock
spouse-beating fists of much fistiness
gun. Computer nerd = small, skinny, milquetoast individual. Captain of Industry = hard-bitten, cynical ass given to sexually harassing and impregnating his amnesiac secretary before marrying her in a supah-secret ceremony in the hopes that he’ll win her lurve before she recovers her memory and remembers that oh, hey, he’s an ass.
OK, that last one actually DOES happen with distressing frequency in real life. But I think the point still stands.
Grad students? The hero would either be too young for my taste or one of those perpetual students. And there is nothing less sexy than a perpetual student for me. :shut:
And I didn’t find the bad housing and piles of dirty laundry all that appealing when I was IN college. I don’t think I’d be turned on now.
Totally off topic, but I found this fascinating. . . I was in Provo recently and we drove by Brigham Young Univ. You would not BELIEVE all the family housing there. I’ve never seen so many dorms with playgrounds before.
Most grad students are right in my age range (mid-to-late 20s). Some are a bit older, having gone into a career track before deciding to go back to school—when I head back to school, I’ll be one of those, eep!
Perpetual students can be kind of hawt—depends on whether they’re getting multiple degrees in different disciplines (OMGHOT!) or putting off the completion of their thesis because they’re far too scared to ever leave academia (*cue comical trombone and boner death*). Even the latter could be explored to great effect in a romance novel, I bet, since romance novel usually deals with big, traumatic changes.
And may I gently point out that the bad housing and dirty laundry may be among those silly stereotypes associated with college students in general, and that realistic depictions may hold a lot more nuance? F’rinstance, I have piles of dirty laundry even though I’m by no stretch any sort of a college student, simply because I’m a slob, and whether I’m a student or not is immaterial to the pathetic state of my laundry hampers. I suspect these sorts of things hold true for students, graduate or otherwise.
Well, yeah, I’ve got piles of dirty laundry too, but they are now in a nice house which is a key difference for me. Now my place is more than big enough to hide weeks’ worth of dirty clothes in the closets and/or the laundry room. Loverly.
How about a forty-year-old heroine who quits her career to go back to grad school, then falls into a mad hot affair with her younger prof? Damn it, Candy, I think you’ve inspired me.
SEE?
I’d totally read that. It has the potential to be so, so wrong, but so tasty.
I’m afraid I can’t really agree that the difference between expert and non-expert in technical fields is artificial. It is real, produced by many years of hard work. If a non-expert spent (say) four years studying full-time, then yes, their knowledge might be pretty close to someone with a bachelor’s degree. But without that base of knowledge, it’s just not possible to really understand a subject. You can have an appreciation of a subject — hence Gödel Escher Bach and Six Easy Pieces — but in terms of in-depth understanding, it really does take a lot of work.
As for art, having lived with a working artist, a glassblower, it took him just as much time and concentration to acquire his expertise as it does a scientist. I could half-way understand what he was doing — all right, you lay the colours on the inside of the tube — but actually doing it required skills you just can’t get without practice.
That said, there are a lot of amateur glassblowers these days; it takes them a few years to get to be any good at it.
So the distinction is not professional/amateur, it’s years of experience/read a book about it once.
I’m afraid I can’t really agree that the difference between expert and non-expert in technical fields is artificial.
I might be wrong, but my understanding was that EAP was calling the creative/technical divide that’s often ascribed to the arts/sciences as artificial, not the professional/amateur difference. And your post definitely demonstrates how intricate and technical (and creative) both the arts and the sciences can be.
“escapist literature […] “pure†entertainment? It says stuff, too, even, and perhaps especially, when we’re not so focused on paying attention”
I completely agree, Robin. Nothing is just ‘pure fluff’. Even candy floss is sugar and colourings. And you can analyse why people like sugar, where the sugar comes from, why particular colourings are preferred, who manufactures the candy-floss machines, how the candy-floss makers feel about producing their candy-floss and whether candy floss is losing out to other forms of fair-ground food.
And I think half the fun is being able to read the book in an ‘escapist’ way, and then the other half of the fun is to analyse it in an ‘intellectual’ way (but it’s an intellectual escape, because it’s more fun, perhaps, than intellectually analysing something else).
1. Arty Farty Retail: art, flowers, witch stuff (having run one of these I can say it doesn’t pay and is a pia). Or, ‘between jobs’, or menial job because of some tragic thing involving ex-lover/husband/boyfriend that requires them to live under false identity or some other kind of nonsense.
2. Realtor. Fast food shift manager. Rat catcher. (this exists. Know someone who supervised someone who wished for their old job: rat catcher at Beechnut factory)
3. For the heroine? A real CEO, or CFO of a Fortune top 100 company, who got the job not because she was family, but becase she kicked ass and took no prisoners. And, one who didn’t need to compromise for the Hero for some lame ass reason.
Do movies count? in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain she’s a waitress and he works in a sex shop and in a haunted house…