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Let's Talk... What Women Want
Published in Blush May, 2019
I first encountered romance when I snuck a copy of Catherine Coulter’s Aftershocks off my mother’s bookshelf. I locked myself in my room and finished it over the course of a day before stashing it under my bed, where it remained until I moved away for college. I’ve long forgotten most of that book, but I still remember the heroine, Georgina, telling the dashing Dr. Elliot that she’s a virgin. He responds with, “George, only a woman who’s lived in a convent or is a sexual neurotic is a virgin at twenty-three.”
The case of Georgina is a classic catch-22; shamed if you do, shamed if you don’t. This is just one example of how the romances we know and love–the ones written for and by women–can also be bad for women. There have always been concerning elements in romance that cast dangerous, reductive portrayals as natural or desirable: possessive heroes, traumatic backstories, evil other women. It’s true that the genre is changing with the times; much of the behavior in “old skool” romances wouldn’t be tolerated today. But these tropes remain popular. Beautiful Disaster, a novel whose hero controls and isolates its heroine, sits atop a Goodreads list titled “Best Book Boyfriends.”
It’s easy to reason away the significance of these plot points. After all, romance novels aren’t truly aspirational–no one thinks amnesia is the ideal way to meet a partner. However, doing so downplays the significance of the genre itself. Romance is a billion-dollar industry. Women, including young women, read these stories, often consuming two or three novels a week. This genre has cultural weight, and what’s condoned and condemned within its pages matters.
Here’s a confession, though: even though I want to see the increase in equitable relationships and emotionally fluent heroes continue…sometimes those problematic tropes and those arrogant alphas are what I really want to read about. I love a good paranormal romance, a corner of the genre in which the declaration, “You’re mine,” is almost laughably common. And if the heroine finds herself in physical danger from which the hero must rescue her (preferably by breaking down a door or braving fire)? Hold on while I grab some ice cream and settle in for the night.
There’s something about these set-ups that feels liberating. They act as a respite from the very real fears we carry with us every day. Our fears are often more nebulous and mundane–failure, rejection, if you’re me, finding a spider in your bedroom–than the exaggerated threats our heroines face. That’s part of what makes them so cathartic; amorphous fears are replaced on the page with a tangible, imminent threat that is then removed by, or with the help of, the hero.
The traditional knight and damsel roles that the characters are cast in can be enjoyed in the story world without the implications that such fulfillment might have in the real world. Whereas out here in the wilds of reality, the hero’s white knight moment might indicate that the heroine is incapable of solving her own problems, or worse, that he thinks she is incapable, the romance novel can operate in a world free of those gender and power conflicts. As readers, we’re invited to accept his actions as motivated purely by love, unaffected by the cultural morass surrounding real relationships. It’s an appealing reprieve.
Still, I can’t help but feel guilty for buying and enjoying romances that I know contain these problematic tropes. In doing so I become complicit in perpetuating such depictions; as long as there’s a market for bruising kisses and possessive heroes, authors will meet that demand. So, do I, do we all, have a responsibility to resist our desire for such stories?
Yes. Absolutely, yes. But also… maybe no. Buying books with problematic material creates a market for that material, but I don’t think avoidance is the only way to effect positive change. Rather than putting my energy towards resisting stories that I like despite their failure to portray healthy relationships, I plan on embracing those that do. Every day more and more authors are writing stories that prove explicit consent and emotional fluency are sexy, and that supportive female friendships are satisfying. That’s the direction I want to see romance go–more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable. Those are the stories I want to want and the stories I want. But if I do find myself craving a romance in the style of the old skool broody hero, I won’t fight that impulse too hard. After all, if romance has taught me anything, it’s that the heart wants what it wants.
We're Talking: Audiobooks
Published in Blush April, 2019
About a year ago, I got a dog. She’s a cute little Brittany named Dixie who is very well behaved–unless she doesn’t get walked twice a day, every day, at which point she will shred any paper products she can find in protest. Needless to say, I am now very familiar with every inch of my neighborhood. And while Dixie may find our walks endlessly fascinating, I’ve quickly found the importance of a good audiobook and some earbuds.
Prior to dog-walking duties, I didn’t listen to many audiobooks. I prefer music and podcasts for my daily commute (less chance of missing my stop), and the comforting heft of a book can’t be replicated by the compact power of a smartphone. But audiobooks offer a flexibility their physical counterparts can’t. Washing dishes and folding laundry become remarkably less tedious with a good book in your ears. And if you’re in need of a little self-care? Pairing a story with your needlecrafts hikes the indulgence level right up. Any activity that doesn’t require your full attention can be improved with an audiobook.
Not all audiobooks are created equal, though. Just because you love reading a particular author or series doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy experiencing it through your ears. Take a pass on that new release everyone’s talking about, the one with the experimental structure tackling themes of power and politics. Trust me, those books are not best consumed while trying to scour last night’s dinner out of your favorite pan.
Romance though, is a genre which lends itself generously to the audio format. It’s involved enough to keep you listening, but usually formulaic enough that it doesn’t require your undivided attention every second. No need to worry about losing the thread of the story if you have to shift your focus to an inadvertently slipped stitch in the sweater you’re knitting.
I’m not the only one who’s realized how well-matched romance and audio are. In 2017, Romance Writers of America reported that 35% of romance readers were also audiobook users, and that number is going up. In the past, one of the barriers to audiobooks was their high price tag. They can be expensive to produce, and that cost is passed on to consumers, with the audio version sometimes costing three times the physical book. That cost has gone down in recent years, though. Audible launched its Romance Package in 2017 which allows readers to listen to as many books as they like (so long as they’re included in the package) for the cost of a monthly fee. With services like Audible and expanding library partnerships, audiobooks are more accessible than ever.
So, what makes for a great listen? Personally, I’ve found the most important factor to be the narrator. You’ll be spending hours with this person’s voice; you should like the way it sounds. Always listen to the sample and read the reviews. I once read the reviews of an audiobook I was considering and found several people mentioning that the narrator’s voice got oddly breathy at the end of sentences. I hadn’t noticed this myself, but upon re-listening, yep, there it was, and it was all I could hear.
However, if the narration is good and the content piques your interest, the battle’s mostly won. Those are the basic makings of a good audiobook, but there are also some bonus features that make for a next-level listen. First up is length. No matter how good the story, my interest will wane if it takes more than a week to finish. For me, this means it needs to be under about twelve hours. Plus, if the book clocks in at thirty hours, that’s usually a good indicator that the plot is too complicated for my liking (see above re: split focus). This is not the time for Games of Thrones level world-building.
Next, because you’re hearing the story performed, good dialogue can really shine in the audio format. Shelly Laurenston’s books are a great example of this. She writes characters, both female and male, with humor to spare, and she gives those characters plenty of dialogue to voice that humor. On the page, it’s witty and delightful. In the ear, it’s even more so (think Gilmore Girls with more innuendo). Hearing that dialogue performed elevates the story to the point that I prefer listening to her novels over reading them.
Of course, there will always be books where the opposite holds true. There’s nothing better than curling up on the couch to sink into the latest release of a much-loved author or flip through the pages of an old favorite. But since I’ve discovered audiobooks, I’ve managed to fit more romance into my reading life than ever before–and what’s not to love about that?
Almond Butter to Get You Through the Apocalypse
Published on Crimson Fried
The lights are out. It’s dark in my apartment. But darkness is expected at two in the morning; it’s the silence that awaken me, the jarring absence of modern life’s electronic hum, that jolts me from my sleep. It’s eerie, but I pound my pillow a couple of beats and go back to sleep. Electricity goes out occasionally–a strong wind, a blown fuse. By the time my alarm chases me out of bed in the morning, and I stumble towards the kitchen, rubbing sleep from my eyes, the power is back, and the lightbulbs shine their yellow light at the flick of a switch.
But what if they didn’t? What if the lights stayed out, and the refrigerator didn’t cool, and double-clicking Chrome connected you to nothing (a tale of horror I assume will be added to the next Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthology)? That’s the premise of Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest. Eva and Nell are two sisters ensconced in their remote forest cabin as society crumbles. Eva, a pre-professional ballerina, misses the musical accompaniment to her dancing, but Nell is a modern girl: her longings are for internet and food.
Her desire for food isn’t about survival though, at least not yet; their cupboards are still heavy with stockpiled staples: canned vegetables and soups, flour, beans, tuna, shelf-stable milk and cheese, nine-going-on-eight tea bags. It’s this last that is most important to Nell and Eva, though it sustains them least. Their mother, dead of cancer by the time we meet them, used to drink it, and, now, all alone in their forest, it comforts them with its ties to a past perhaps lost forever.
We all lose the past though, if not quite so dramatically as these two sisters. We grow up, move away, move on. There are things I miss from my childhood (understanding my math classes for one), but Nell cuts to the quick of my nostalgia for the past when she says, “Why is it that of all I’ve lost, sometimes it’s food I miss the most?”
I miss the junk food I ate as child: chocolate Dunkaroos, those crisp cookies plunged into clouds of saccharine frosting by small, greedy hands, Fruit Roll Ups, squished into balls and rolled in palms before being popped, whole, into the mouth, Kraft Singles, folded in half so baby teeth could chomp a hole in the center, irregular like the gap-toothed smile that made it. These days I can get by without these foods; Dunkaroos were a novelty, fruit-roll-ups get stuck in your teeth, and Kraft Singles are more chemical than cheese. But I wonder: what would I miss most at the end of the world? The answer might be a gooey comfort food like mac’ and cheese hot from the oven with a slightly burned top, or it might be a special treat like good melt-in-the-mouth sushi, but I think the food I would miss the most might be something simpler: peanut butter.
Luckily, nut-butters are actually very easy to make. In fact, the only ingredient that’s absolutely essential is nuts. If you live in the Southeast, peanuts should be easy to find, even if it’s the apocalypse and the usual road-side vendors are nowhere to be found. Nell and Eva live in California though, somewhere north of San Francisco. They’re likely to have better luck finding almonds there. So in their honor (and because I happened to have some in my pantry,) I’ve decided to make almond butter. The apocalypse hasn’t come yet and my electricity is still working, so I’ve added a few ingredients and used a food processor, but if you do find yourself caught up in the end of the world and in need of a peanut–or almond–butter fix, you can grind plain nuts by hand. It’ll take a while and be hard work, but if it’s the apocalypse, you’ll probably need that upper-body strength anyway.
Cinnamon Almond Butter
2 cups raw almonds
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs vegetable oil
1-2 tbs honey, to taste
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Toast almonds in a 325°F oven for 10 minutes. Let cool for five minutes then process in food processor for 2 minutes. Add oil and salt and process for another 6-9 minutes. Mixture should begin to come together and look smooth. Add honey and cinnamon and process for another minute until combined. More honey, oil, and cinnamon can be added to taste. Store in refrigerator.
The Productive Home vs. The Average Person: Biscuits on Saturday, Canned Beans on Monday
Published on Crimson Fried
The food industry has come to a consensus: Everyone is cooking less and eating worse. Nutritionists, chefs, farmers, gourmands, productive home enthusiasts, hipsters in the granola aisle of Whole Foods–everyone agrees that there is an epic food fight being waged in our homes. Unfortunately, the rhetoric used to combat this trend is often laced with blame and judgement. “Cook all three meals.” “I hope those eggs are cage free.” “Don’t waste money on organic avocados.” You bought non-organic strawberries? Here’s a shovel. You’ll need it to dig the grave all those pesticides are going to put you in. Think fast: there’s a Chinese takeout container full of shame and guilt flying right at your head.
Within this milieu of confusion, good intentions, and more than a pinch of guilt, it is tempting to side-step the minefield that cooking can become and outsource the decision of what’s for dinner to restaurants and corporations. Erica Strauss addresses this temptation, and why she resists it, in a post entitled “Zombies vs. The Joy of Canning: Motivation in the Productive Home.” She hits upon a refreshingly simple and unpretentious reason for fighting against the cultural norm of take-out and microwave dinners, as she admits, for making life harder: It makes her happy. As frightening as the threat of a zombie apocalypse or satisfying as taking down big business one organic cantaloupe at a time may be, she comes to the conclusion that, “At the end of a long, long, long day of canning, or weeding, or sowing, something greater than fear and anger has to carry you along.” I think she’s right. If you’re going to spend a full weekend canning tomatoes as she does, I hope to God it’s because you find enjoyment in it. And if you do, then congratulations, because being happy and healthy is an excellent by-product of that hobby.
It’s important to note though, that the way of life Strauss has chosen is a hobby. Some people love taking pictures, or playing music, or cooking tiny, ant-sized versions of popular foods (miniature cooking is a thing, and it is weirdly satisfying). Erica Strauss loves making her own deodorant, and harvesting honey straight from the hive.
That’s great for her, but for most of us it’s impractical at best and utter drudgery at worst.
Luckily, there’s no need to devote your life to creating a productive home if that’s not something that tickles your fancy. There’s a middle-ground between making your own jam and having the Mexican place down the road on speed-dial. For me that means that if I’m running low on time and energy when dinner rolls around, I don’t feel bad about occasionally pulling a plebeian tin of canned vegetables out of the pantry. That said, I think it’s still worth capturing some of the enjoyment and satisfaction Strauss describes by doing a little “balls-to-the-wall, from-scratch cooking” every now and then.
My favorite place to put in that extra effort is at the breakfast table. I love cooking breakfast for my family on Saturday mornings, and whether I’m dropping pancakes onto a warm griddle or frying sausage in my mother’s perfectly seasoned cast-iron skillet, I usually try to whip it up from scratch, like a modern Betty Crocker, only without much actual culinary know-how. This labor of love breakfast is a new tradition in our household; my mother’s idea of home-made biscuits is taking them out of the freezer and putting them into the oven. The truly home-made food always tastes better, but I think my family sometimes wishes I wasn’t dead set against shortcuts. For while I am an ambitious cook, I am not a fast one, and often what was intended as an early breakfast turns into brunch.
It’s about the process y’all.
These days one of my favorite breakfast recipes is for big, fluffy, biscuits. They’re sturdy enough for any topping you want to smother them in but they’re flavorful enough to be the star of the show all on their own. Bonus points: they taste best when cooked with bacon fat, so you have a built in excuse to ignore any studies about the dangers of that succulent indulgence. They’re time-consuming to make if, like me, you prefer scratch cooking to be a languorous experience, but throw on a podcast (I like America’s Test Kitchen and Radio Lab) and it will feel like time well spent. For you at least. Once the bacon starts crackling you’re family’s going to start wondering how long they have to wait for that satisfaction Strauss talks about.
Recipes adapted from epicurious.com
Cathead Biscuits
Yield: 12 regular biscuits or 6 extra large
Ingredients:
1/4 cup buttermilk powder
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbs bacon fat, cut into pieces and slightly softened
4 tbs unsalted butter, cut into pieces and slightly softened
1 cup water
2 cups White Lily self-rising flower
Instructions:
Pre-heat oven to 400ºF. Whisk together buttermilk powder, sugar, and cinnamon until evenly distributed. Add water, bacon fat, and butter, and whisk to combine.
Add 1 cup flower and mix with fork until mixture resembles porridge. Press fats against the sides of the bowl to cut into smaller pieces.
Fold in remaining flour by the 1/4 cup until a wet dough forms. Turn out dough onto a very well-floured surface. Dust top of dough with flour and knead, incorporating more flour as needed, until dough is soft and pillowy and no longer sticky. Divide dough into 12 or 6 equal pieces using a floured bench scraper.
Dip cut sides of each piece into flour and gently role into a ball. Place each ball, with sides touching, in a cast-iron skillet. Brush with melted butter and bake until lightly browned 25-30 minutes.
Honey Butter
Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
Instructions:
Combine all ingredients in saucepan and cook, stirring, over low heat until butter is melted. Drizzle over biscuits or toast.