NB: Instead of focusing on a particular book or author, Guest Ranter Emerentia wants to discuss the trope of academic, brainy heroines! Also, feel free to recommending so good academic heroines in the comments.
Emerentia spent her teenage years ignoring the protest “but you’re a girl!” every time she mentioned her interest in physics, and went on to become an astrophysicist anyway. When she doesn’t study black holes, she is passionate about diversity and inclusivity in the science community, and can also frequently be found reading (and nitpicking) romance and science fiction novels.
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Dear Romance Author Who Writes About Academics,
I have a bone to pick with you. I like your books. They’re generally fun, witty and entertaining. They make me laugh or swoon and sometimes both. They give me an entertaining few hours.
But then you decide to make your heroine a scientist. By scientist, I mean “walking and talking collection of horrible cliches,” and suddenly I want to throw your book at the nearest wall.
Do I need utter realism in my romance novels? No. But I need to be able to empathize with the characters, and they need to be at least somewhat believable. The caricatures of women in academia I see described in your book embody exactly the stereotypes that, as a female physicist, I fight against every day in my real life. When I see the same stereotypes woefully exaggerated and glorified in books, it makes me feel so unbearably angry and sad and helpless that I can’t keep reading.
Representation in books matters. Books have the ability to shape our thinking and our ability to empathize with others. So here are a bunch of tropes that I can’t stand in a heroine who is also an academic. I’m not saying that none of them exist in real life, or that any of them are intrinsically bad, but the fact that all female academics I’ve seen described in romance novels so far basically exhibited the majority of these characteristics (and others) makes me think there’s something seriously wrong with how society views women in science.
1.) The heroine has four PhDs before she’s 25, and is clearly a “prodigy” or “brainiac.”
First of all, really? It’s either “Oh, I’ve never been good at maths, haha” (that pisses me off, too, but that’s a rant for another day) or “I’m so smart I did four PhDs and didn’t think of anything else, ever.” Nothing in between? Nobody who maybe started out struggling in school, but then ended up discovering a love for, say, chemistry, and persevered?
Here’s something that anyone with a PhD will tell you: intelligence alone is not a great predictor of success in academia. The main ingredients of a PhD are: (1) time, (2) perseverance. This is the thing that gets me with the four-PhDs-before-25 scenario: even in the best-case scenario, in science, a PhD will take between three and seven years (YMMV depending on subject). That’s a long time. And a lot of that can’t be cut short, because experiments take time, field work takes time, data analysis takes time, and writing papers takes time. Most of which is out of the PhD student’s control. Do we really have to settle for the lazy “she’s so super smart she could do it with her eyes closed with a snap of her fingers” method of heroine development?
2.) The heroine has “no time for anything outside of research” because she’s such a prodigy and brainiac that it never occurred to her to do anything else, ever.
Are most academics driven and often work long hours? Sure. “Publish or perish” is real. But the academics I know who are interested in a topic long enough to complete a PhD on it are generally also interested in other subjects – otherwise you wouldn’t see me writing rants about scientists in books! And if you make your character all about her research, how does that ever make for anything more than a one-dimensional stick figure? How can you ever actually add depth to a character when her defining characteristic is “does work”? How about also making a heroine an activist, or someone passionate about rock climbing, or running a cooking club for her friends? Literally anything that would show us she has a life outside of work and adds some dimensions to her character.
3.) The heroine is a virgin, because of course she is.
I have no issues with virgins, but somewhere on a blog, I read this comment about a heroine: ‘She has four PhDs, she has no time for anything outside work, let alone sex’. And that just made me sad. See also my point about “interests outside the lab” above, and yes, one of them could (and maybe should) be sex. I know there’s this idea that academics are all brainiacs who don’t think of anything other than science all day and all night, but seriously, we went through college just like everyone else. And not all of us knew at age four that we were going to cure cancer and henceforth did nothing but study microbiology all day and all night. It won’t diminish your heroine’s love for research or dedication to her work if she goes out on a date once in awhile. Many of my female friends in academia tell me they find dating quite frustrating, because apparently many men find women with PhDs somewhat intimidating. How about including that in a book for a change?
4.) The heroine approaches everything in life, including relationships and sexuality, as an experiment.
There actually is a tendency in particular among physicists to think that because they’re good at problem solving in one area, they’re good at solving problems in others (whether they actually solve problems in those areas or create more is a different question). This largely does not apply to daily life. I don’t approach cooking the way I do data analysis, nor do I set up experiments and control groups to figure out how the washing machine works. Honestly, it’s not nature, so doing experiments is stupid if you can just as easily read the manual or recipe or find a YouTube tutorial online. Your heroine, being super clever and all that, should probably know this.
I’m still waiting for the romance novel where the inevitable brainiac scientist virgin heroine has sex, hates it, and goes “Well, N=1 is not a statistically sound sample, and I’ll have to control for confounding variables, too,” so she goes out and has multiple sex orgies with a hundred different people in different positions. Then, of course, she performs multi-variate regression to figure out if she actually likes sex or not.
5.) The heroine is socially awkward.
The real trope here is “I study the universe/mathematical equations/bacteria/X so I don’t understand people.” There certainly are socially awkward scientists. I don’t at all pretend to be the most suave person on the planet. But that doesn’t mean we’re all incapable of finishing a whole sentence without stammering, or generally act like a grown-ass human being in the company of others. I suppose it’s difficult to write an interesting conversation if “intelligent” and “science!” are the heroine’s only characteristics and interests, so it makes sense in that case to describe her as socially awkward. But let’s call it what it is: a cop-out.
6.) The heroine dresses like a nun, has the worst haircut ever, and never wears make-up.
That’s one I have mixed feelings about. Because there’s a kernel of truth in some of that, but not for the reasons authors seem to think. In books, the heroine is usually too busy thinking about her world-changing science, so she doesn’t have time to think about trivial things like clothes or hair or make-up. I guess that makes for a good Cinderella-type story, and that’s a trope that seems to be universally popular (because women are only worth their looks, <insert eye roll here>). I’m sure there are scientists like that, but I also know a scientist who runs a successful fashion blog aside from stuff like, you know, figuring out how black holes work. I have another scientist friend with whom I trade YouTube links for make-up tutorials.
The sad reality is: appearances matter, and they matter all the more for female academics. I’m a physicist. I have to work quite hard to be taken seriously by men at all, so I’m actually very conscious about all of my appearance in a work context, all the time. If I dress too casually, will my students take me seriously? If I wear a skirt at work, will the visiting professor think I’m the admin and ask me to bring him coffee? If I wear this blouse at a conference, will my expertise in the subject wrote my thesis in be challenged even more often than it usually is? I wish I could just not care and wear whatever I want, but I can’t, not if I want to keep having a career. I feel like there are probably interesting stories and topics to explore here, but that sadly never happens, because that wouldn’t fit into the whole make-over narrative.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of that trope is that on the one hand, it may seem modern and progressive to write a heroine who is smart and in a stereotypically male profession. But at the same time, any progress is negated by giving her a storyline that literally tells the reader the heroine’s worth depends solely on her looks and ability to attract a man. Yes, because that’s the real reason someone spends their entire twenties in higher education on abysmal pay.
I don’t want this to get any longer than it already is, so I’ll stop adding gripes here. My point is, there are lots of interesting topics and (romantic) conflicts to explore for a heroine who is in academia without making her a walking, taking assembly of tropes. Pop culture hasn’t been very good at this, so you have a real chance here to write something new and different. Please write a book with a heroine I can actually identify with, and who I don’t want to take aside, shake really hard and then spend some serious time mentoring. If you need advice on what academia is like, or what real scientists are like, please talk to us! I for one would be happy to help.
As I said above, representation matters. Representing female academics in this one-dimensional way, as hapless brainiacs with no life experience and no character traits outside of “does research” perpetuates harmful stereotypes, and those of us in academia spend a great deal of time and energy fighting exactly those cliches every day. While I don’t think a romance novel will be the deciding factor in a woman’s decision not to go into academia, it’s yet another piece in the larger puzzle of societal expectations about what professions women choose and how they conduct themselves in these professions. Please allow us to be real human beings in your books, so that for a change, I can enthusiastically recommend them to all my scientist friends!
@Emily C – Exactly!
@SophieK – I am both book smart and a feminist and agree that “feminist does not equal smart, rational, or logical.” On the other hand, “feminist” doesn’t preclude those traits either. I don’t agree that “maximizing [their] looks” is something all females should be putting energy into, nor that not focusing on their looks makes them “illogical, lazy, bitter women” who are blaming other women for anything. I consciously choose what I want to put my brain, talents, and energy into and spending time putting on makeup because someone else thinks it’s a necessary part of being female just isn’t on the list.
Jeffrey Archer’s short story, “Old Love” is probably the best “love between academics”. It’s only slightly better than Gaudy Night. And now I’m getting all teary-eyed just thinking about it.
Personally, I don’t read too many of the oblivious-nerd-genius-dork-transformed-into-HottieO’Sexkitten tropes (but they don’t bother me too much. Now journalist…won’t even buy the book no matter how much I love the author. Could somebody please write a rant?
@SophieK – I’d never, ever argue that pretty women, or women who are interested in fashion or put a lot of energy into their looks, are dumb, bad, or unfeminist. I loathe femmephobia (look up bi trans femme feminist Julia Serano’s work on the scapegoating of femininity sometime) and can’t stand it when supposedly “feminist” women hate other women because they happen to be pretty.
But your comment was flat out misogynistic. Excoriating all women who aren’t pretty or don’t put lots of time and effort into beauty as “illogical, lazy, bitter women” who are blaming other women and apparently attacking you by existing…? Insisting that every woman must devote lots of time, money, and effort to beauty? Boasting about your looks while looking down on other women who aren’t as beautiful, not only because of their looks but because those looks supposedly make them lazy and mean and morally deficient? Mystifying accusations that this site in general or maybe the commenters on this post in particular are bashing pretty women? (Also, “skincare” is not going to make everyone gorgeous.)
I’ve rarely been shocked by a comment I’ve read on this site, which is usually quite civil, but this one shocked me.
@StarlightArcher: “Pounded in the Butt By EVERYONE, FOR SCIENCE!” Yes, this needs to happen.
…on a more serious note, I’m like zillionthing the annoyance at the overabundance of characters improbably young for their jobs. I remember years ago, like maybe as a teenager, reacting with total scoffing disbelief to a 23-year-old PhD professor heroine who was obviously financially well off.
I’m also annoyed that characters seemingly always have to be super successful hotshots who are awesome at their jobs. I mean sometimes that’s great to read, and some of my favorite characters are hyper-competent, but as someone who is not a superstar and never will be I’m discouraged and alienated by so seldom seeing people like me in books. Give me more main characters who are screwups, please.
I’m also like zillionthing the Courtney Milan recommendation. The Countess Conspiracy, Talk Sweetly to Me, Trade Me, and Hold Me all have awesome STEM heroines (and Proof by Seduction, The Countess Conspiracy, Trade Me, and Hold Me have STEM heroes too). It helps that Courtney has been a scientist herself – she has a PhD in theoretical physical chemistry.
I am a PhD developmental psychologist who is an academic. Psychology and academia is so misunderstood. Also, people think Freud is psychology when academic psychologists know how much of his theory is in error of cannot be proven.
Speaking as another physicist, this rant was spot on!
Possible recommendation for someone – maybe take a look at author Catherine Asaro? She has a Ph.D. in chemical physics, and is a dancer, and writes fantasy romance and science fiction with romantic elements based on both of those aspects of herself. Her science fiction (Skolian Empire) is not the lightest reading (lots of politics and some of the cultures are outright brutal – these will not be for everyone) but the woman blows my mind writing books where the character and relationship development are analogous to planetary and subatomic physics for gosh sakes. Her fantasy romances are lighter, but I can’t recall if any of the characters in those could exactly be considered academics, I haven’t had the chance to re-read lately.
@SophieK, I’ve been reading this blog for almost as long as you (I found it through the whole Cassie Edwards thing), and I don’t remember anyone ever putting down pretty women. In fact, I have only ever seen the Bitches prop up and defend women. Your comment, however, does both of those things. Just because you feel the need to wear makeup and enhance your looks does not mean that other women feel the same way. Just because they do not choose to spend their time on their appearance does not mean they are stupid. Personally, I love makeup and have for as long as I can remember. My cousin, who is the biggest girly girl I know wears makeup only two or three times a year. She also has a masters in a STEM field. She just doesn’t care about the enhancements and that is absolutely her right.
Women need to stop attacking other women over every little thing. Working mothers attack stay at home mothers. Stay at home mothers attack working mothers. Women who wear makeup attack women who don’t. Women who don’t wear makeup attack those that do. It is all ridiculous. We can blame the Patriarchy because we’ve been conditioned to tear each other down in order to get the best man, but at some point, we need to look at ourselves and wonder if we’re a part of the problem. We’re smart enough not to continue the cycle and yet many of us do.
Your instinct to attack the Bitches is worrisome. There was nothing at all demeaning about this post and yet you reacted to it as if they were attacking you personally. I feel like I can speak for everyone here when I say that that was not anyone’s intention.
This rant was really needed! Thank you! I’m not a scientist but I did graduate from a large university, so the amount of bullsh#t in romance novels with scientist heroines was both obvious and also really annoying. The girls who studied science in my uni were really nothing like that. Actually girls who studied humanities (I’m one of those) are nothing like in most romance novels either. Because (again) the whole book loving thing really doesn’t mean we don’t know how to people or are all virgins. I wish romance novels represented women better. I mean, as SBSarah says, they are written about women for women by women. And if we won’t do it right who will?
@scifigirl1986 Kathy Reichs, the author of the books series that the Bones t.v. show is based on, a series loosely based on the author’s life, got her BA at 23, her Masters at 24, and completed her PhD in Physical Anthropology from Northwestern when she was 25. She was born in 1948, so she obviously wasn’t in her 20s when 9/11 happened, but she was part of the team that went in to identify and handle the remains.
Loved this rant! All about reading female heroines who are well rounded and defy the stereotypes. Thanks for this very well thought out essay.
@Althea Claire Duffy- I just want to double thumbs up both of your comments! First, can I add that “feminist” “pretty” and “smart” are certainly not mutually exclusive nor are they all-inclusive.
And also, while I love fiction because the characters can be and do whatever the author commands, reality is that even though some women are heroes in their field and excelling at all they touch, so many of us are just doing our best and making mistakes. It’s refreshing to read about screw up and recovery sometimes.
I think I enjoy historical so much because I can’t compare their reality to my own to the same degree as in a contemporary. I imagine its the same for readers of paranormal and sci-fi too.
Finally, I truly appreciate this site as a place where women can honestly discuss our lives and experiences alongside the discussions of books. With the dumpster fire that is so much of the social side of the Internet right now, I applaud the Bitchery for being a safe and supportive place.
I’d suggest Lara Lacombe as an author – she has “a PhD in microbiology and immunology and worked in several labs across the country before moving into the classroom” (quote author bio) and while I’m not a PhD/academic, I don’t believe any of her heroines suffer from the issues mentioned in the rant. My favourite of her books is Killer Exposure.
Try Shelly Laurenston’s short story “Miss Congeniality” and her novel “Go Fetch” for some awesome kick ass science heroines! She turns tropes upside down by roundhouse kicking them to the curb!
Argh – THANK YOU, Emerentia! I’m also undersigning all of the above comments!
I’m in my mid-thirties and currently working on wrapping up my PhD (fingers crossed!), I don’t think I’m socially inept, and I have friends and hobbies! Craziness! What’s even crazier – I’m not the exception!
Reading stories about 25 yr olds with multiple PhDs is so disheartening sometimes especially when dealing with pressure to finish and defend (internal and external) and bouts of impostor syndrome (it’s a real thing). Romance novels are my ESCAPE – they are what keep me going when I need a break from my multivariate regression analyses! Having all that pressure come back to via characters with impossible standards is not what I’m looking for. I love to read stories that are set in worlds and settings I connect to, but if I read in a blurb a description of a 25yr old multiple PhD character, I can tell you I will be steering in another direction.
@SB Sarah – thanks for the encouragement. One of the things that I have been thinking about in context of this thread is that I get particularly frustrated with the “she is socially awkward, it has never occurred to her to think about anything but research and she dresses poorly” not only because it stereotypes things but also because it glosses over the fact that if a person is like that, then they likely have a serious underlying problem which has nothing whatsoever to do with “being a science-focused brainiac”. If I met someone like me, I’d not think it is normal, I’d talk to them about getting help just like my mentors did with me. I needed to work really hard to get better and “oh, she is in love and all will be fixed now that there is someone to think about” assumptions are really offensive that way.
@SQ – thank you for adding to and clarifying why I am bothered by the overabundance of super-characters: impossible standards.
@Emily C – one of my stories, Dreamsnare, is about screwup and recovery for both main characters (though it’s an f/f fantasy romance novella with two bisexual heroines, not historical, and neither is a scientist)
@SQ: impostor syndrome is totally real! Most scientists I know have it, and that’s especially true for the female academics (including the smartest, most senior ones with the most impressive CVs!). Hang in there! You’ll get to the end eventually.
I don’t think I would have finished my PhD without my hobbies and friends, actually. They dragged me out of my office (sometimes kicking and screaming) and kept me sane. Completing a PhD takes a lot of perservance and mental energy, and a good support network can really, really help.
Re age. Let more scientific market testing prevail, but my personal preference is very much for Vague Age. First encountered it as the trick Jane Austen used on the Crawfords in “Mansfield Park”. (Not that the Crawfords are prodigiously intelligent, just worldly. But the reader gets to decide whether they are jaded ‘for their age’ or not.)
For reasons:
(a) (likely the common one) While normally not wedded to pop science, unless the relevant characters are foregrounded as committed child-free people, I can’t sustain the necessary critical distance from the ‘ticking biological clock’. Anxiety ahoy. Sigh.…The pop sociology/science show Insight quite recently did a feature on parental age effects in children, and the late maternal age & rates of prematurity correlation really stuck with me.
(b) (the ‘weird’ reason) I strongly agree that it is not necessary for a scientist character to be ‘gifted’ [the term ‘asynchronous’ invites less preconceptions; the term ‘prodigy’ works in reverse, HARD]. But I LOVE for any asynchronous characters not to have been held back by misguided adherence to ‘normal’ pacing (= boredom, stagnation and very often, bullying /victimisation).
This is wish fulfilment for me – since I am in the category, but suffered years of educational neglect. + It doesn’t even bother me when the character is spared anti-gifted discrimination [‘mono-synchronous railroading’ (?)] only due to ‘pull’ i.e. wealth or power in the family (eg the male lead Emily Foster’s “How Not Fall/Let Go” duology.). …It doesn’t REPRESENT me, either, but I’ll leave that vein of sob stories to documentaries. (Looking forward to “The G Word” .)
@scifigirl1986: First, love your age comment, given that I was 26 when I started grad school, so I can totally relate!!! *1986 represent!*
Second, love your calling out the use of attractiveness to trivialize very complex issues… And if I can add to what you have said:
Of course there are times when people who are “attractive” get advantages, but the wonderful thing is that, it’s a choice we are making in what we put at the forefront of our self-image, and my looks is not my choice, but that doesn’t mean I detest others who have made that choice (and many people on this thread have attested to that).. I want, and I believe many others do as well, an academic “legacy” that is based on my work and contributions..But again, that’s the choice I’m making in my life to not maximize my looks.. others are free to make their choices with their careers and looks…
I also want to move beyond my own body image issues and be able to help others around me and in doing that, I’m just paying forward what my advisers did with me, in helping me develop myself and my self-worth irrespective of my or their looks…
I’d be happy to go into the intersectional aspect (definition of attractiveness varies a lot by your ethnicity, location, how you carry yourself [e.g., if you want to belong, but feel like an outsider, like an international/minority student]), but I’m sure most of the people on this thread are either already familiar with the literature or know where to get it 😉
Carbon Dreams, by Susan Gaines, is a book about a geochemist unravelling a scientific mystery. It was an incredible revelation – it gets the science right, it nails academia and it’s got romance.
LOL, many of the same thoughts bothered me when I started writing. I hated the fact scientists were always portrayed as “logical.”
A bit of background–I got my PhD in Biological Sciences when I was 25 from St Andrews in the UK (first degree was from Liverpool), and did two post-docs before I had kids and started writing romance novels. There was a time when I think I had two friends who didn’t have a PhD, in addition to all of my family members (actually my brother started one but funding was cut and he never finished). I was the second person in my family to go to university. However, I was never smarter than the friends without PhDs, or my family. Having a PhD didn’t make me smarter than my sister who works in the local Spar. Having a PhD just meant I knew how to study, I knew how to set up and conduct experiments, and I knew how to persevere, because doing a PhD is HARD. The idea of anyone doing more than one…crazy.
The “logical” thing…
My friends were intelligent people who often did stupid things. Actually I sometimes did stupid things–like let too much water out of a tank holding hundreds of salmon and finding that hose PDQ. My bestie went to a Van Morrison concert in Edinburgh the day after the concert. Another post-doc friend left on his first trip abroad and forgot to take his passport with him. His dad drove from London to St Andrews and back overnight so the guy could fly out on time. My point being, people with PhDs are not infallible or magical. They’re just as normal and unique as the next individual.
I’ve written six scientist heroines into my Romantic Suspense books (one suffers from diabetes), and set two more at a marine lab in Canada. Although I left science seventeen years ago (man, I feel old), my hubby is a science prof and I understand many of the issues facing people in science today. It’s complex and varies with each discipline and country and, frankly, each government.
Thanks for the interesting post and replies! Lots of smart people reading and writing Romance. <3
Your rant is basically why I started writing romance. As a microbiologist/immunologist, I got tired of seeing these issues pop up again and again. So I decided to write my own books, featuring what I hope are more realistic scientist heroines 🙂
As a non academic avid reader truck driver I have two recommendations for books. Both by Sheryl Wright. Stay with me AND Don’t let go. Heroine is a boat building engineer. Excellent books.
I am not an academic – I got my bachelor’s and enrolled in a masters program a few years later and after one class was like nope – don’t want to read things because they are required, take tests and have to write papers on demand – just wasn’t what I wanted to do at the time. So I can’t comment from personal experience BUT my SIL is getting her PhD in clinical psychology and I know how she works her butt off so from knowing her I can see how all of these tropes would be both annoying and offensive.
I will have to say though I look at the All Souls trilogy from Deborah Harkness very differently than some of the other commenters. I have only read the first book so I can only comment so far, but I didn’t think the heroine became stupid after meeting the hero. She was pushed into a new world that she had tried to stay away from and was being pursued by dangerous people and was out of her element which I guess could read to some as stupid, but I just read it as inexperienced in the magical world.
One of my current WIPs has a an academic woman as the MC. She’s mid-30s, has dated rather extensively, and only has the one PhD (which she got in her late 20s after a normal course of events).
[…] I read an interesting rant over at Smart Bitches. The premise of the article is that women in academia are always portrayed as super smart but lack […]
DUDE! I am also a female astrophysicist studying black holes. Like, we might know each other IRL. Anyway, I agree 100%. Excellent rant.
I was once asked to critique the opening chapters of a book where the heroine, age 22 and gorgeous, had two PhDs and was about to be put in charge of a new Mayan archaeological dig.
I fear I was not as polite as I could have been.
Hell, give me a COMPETENT heroine. I am so tired of Hot Messes. I can’t even read romances anymore, because the heroines are always running around, refusing pay for providing services, refusing to fire a dishonest employee, etc. These women can’t even cross the street by themselves.
Okay, am late to this party… but as another academic just wanted to say yes yes yes! The realities of academia are: probably in your 30s by the time you get your PhD, often a very thin job market and hence no real geographic mobility. Then you get to the tenure-clock vs biology problem. Courtney Milan, Emily Foster and Rhonda Baxter are the few I’ve read who capture the feel of academia in a way that feels genuine; so many are like the worst caricatures. Would love to see more realistic portrayals!