Aw now, see, if you'd read enough romances you'd realize that is at most 12% of the genre. There's also competitive athletes having hot sex and lab science rom-coms and dragon smut and (terrible) Mafia romance and (hilarious) historicals and (wildly hot) political radicals and, um, where was I?
No I was joking about the 'men writing women' viral thing, "she breasted boobily down the stairs." I've read some castoff romance (When you're a teen 'voracious reader' before e-anything existed mom's supermarket checkout buys are low hanging, accessible fruit) and I finished them. Not against more.
(actually, I think the best tell of a certain kind of male writer is that he will always have a scene in which the female character spots her naked body in a mirror and *admires* it. hilariously terrible Male Gaze insertion. I always wonder whether editor failed to catch it or wanted him to fail)
(do y'all not do that) KIDDING KIDDING of course you do
I wouldn't know. I'm blind as a bat. Anything I see in the mirror is a pale pink blur. :D :D :D
...go on. (really and truly this time I am 100% kidding)
One of my favorite things about human beings is how WEIRD we can be when we are alone. It's why fiction/movies/songs that capture even a momentary glimpse of that can be captivating. (Or odd. I once vaguely knew someone who confessed that he fist-pumped after successful bathroom journeys and 😮😵💫🤯)
i may or not have a dumb little song...
lol, I just this week had to swap out a Tom Clancy novel from a books-to-prisoners pkg for an incarcerated woman who had asked for romantic suspense. Now THAT man couldn't write a woman if his life depended on it (although his lavish descriptions of military vehicles were...ah...something)
It's been a very long time since I read Clancy (I think Sum of All Fears is the last, and that was when it was fairly new) and I cannot remember a single female character from any of his books. There had to be some, right? But I can't remember them. Oh wait I guess Moira from Clear and Present but
I blitzed through four or five Clancy novels when I was staying at a lake house once and book pickings were slim. It's been ~30 years so I may have forgotten...nope, pretty sure there were *zero* memorable female characters.
Yeah I don't think strong memorable woman of the female persuasion character was high up on the priority list for what makes a gripping tale for the author, or the target demo.
that's more because of the movie, and mostly from the line about the answering machine being on from whatsisface.