Today, we're pleased to welcome Sarah Anderson back to H&H. Sarah is an old-timer by now, having written A Penis by Any Other Name and Names for the Vagina and today's post was inspired by some lively Twitter conversation about romance novels and current popular events. The heroine of Sarah's brand-new book, A Real Cowboy, also suffers through slut-shaming, but ends up, thankfully, with her own happy ending. Thanks, Sarah!
By this point, the names alone should be all you need to hear. Janet Jackson. Kristen Stewart. Kate Middleton. Anne Hathaway.
Not that these women have been alone in experiencing the horrors of being publicly slut-shamed. They’re just the most recent in a long line of women who have been put in their “place” by means of manipulating sex and perception. We’ve been told over and over that their sexuality—the fact that they either had sex or even just had body parts involved in sex—was dangerous, dirty, wrong.
Who could forget Janet Jackson? Remember what she did during that Super Bowl Halftime routine? She stood by while Justin Timberlake ripped part of her costume off, thereby giving birth to the phrase “wardrobe malfunction.” Justin issued a statement apologizing, yet the world went on as if Janet had personally corrupted an entire generation of youths on purpose.
Kristen Stewart—well, no, she probably shouldn’t have been kissing with that married director, Rupert Sanders. But the vitriol poured on a young woman was stunning—so much so that Jodie Foster had to ride herd to defend her. And Kristen’s major crime? Cheating on someone who was really cute. That was, hands down, far worse than what Sanders did—breaking his marriage vows to his wife, no doubt doing serious damage to his two kids (his wife has just filed for divorce, by the way). By and large, the press left Sanders alone while they crucified Stewart on the alter of gossip.
Even royalty—Kate Middleton—do not escape. She had topless photos of her suddenly appear globally—not unlike what happened to Anne Hathaway, who had paparazzi snap photos of her sans underwear as she exited a vehicle. In an interview on The Today Show, Matt Lauer acted the part of the creepy old uncle as he pressed Hathaway on what she’d “learned” from this incident—as if she had done something wrong by not wearing knickers with a floor-length gown. At no time did Matt ask what the paparazzi had done wrong—taking a crude, intrusive picture of someone’s vagina and selling it for mass consumption. To her credit, Anne did a damn fine job of pointing out how society at large treats women as consumable sex objects and tried to turn the conversation back to Fantine, the character in Les Miserables that she plays, that (Spoiler alert!) coincidentally also suffered a fatal case of slut-shaming.
Everywhere we look, young girls and women are told they must be sexually available, sexually ready at all times—but when they act on that (or, in the case of Janet, Kate, and Anne, exist near it) they are held up as examples of sin embodied, everything that’s wrong with our sex-obsessed culture.
Isn’t that why people make fun of romances? “I know what you’re reading, you dirty girl,” they seem to be saying. “You should be ashamed of that.”
Well, they can go to hell. I’m not ashamed of romance. In fact, I think romances are the place we readers and writers go to escape the pervasive sense of slut-shaming in the media today—escape and heal. Romances do something very powerful. They show us that, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what the rest of the family, town, or even world thinks, no matter what really happened or what’s only painful rumors, the heroine—and, by extension, the reader—deserve a happy ending. Everyone does.
The path to this happily-ever-after can take a few different forms. The first is that the hero helps the heroine see that she isn’t defined by the mistakes of the past. Maisey Yates has dealt with this topic several times. In The Petrov Proposal, Maddy is recovering from a Kristen Stewart-type shaming—she had an affair with a married man—her boss—although she didn’t know he was married at the time. The press got ahold of it and ran with the story. In her story, she’s shut herself off from men. She has long held herself responsible, but Alekesi (our hero!) helps her see that the other man was just as much to blame for the mess—even more. Her old boss knew he was married. He made the choice to cheat. Maddy shouldn’t bear all the responsibility and she shouldn’t let that one mistake hold her back. The hero has given the heroine the keys to be free of her guilt. That’s why we love him!
In my upcoming release, A Real Cowboy, Thalia, my heroine, also started with a Kristen-Stewart-type shaming—an actress, she had an affair with a producer who turned out to be married. She got blacklisted as a result and wound up taking the only job she could—working for the very producer who got her in so much trouble. When she finds former-actor-turned-rancher J.R. Bradley, she finds someone else who also wants to leave his past behind. But when she brings J.R. to meet the producer, the whole thing blows up in her face. The worst part? J.R. seems to agree with the producer. Unlike Maddy and Alekesi, Thalia realizes that she shouldn’t have given the producer and the press that much control over her life—and if J.R. can’t see that too, well—there’s the door, buddy. She’s done feeling guilty about it and she’s not going to let anyone else make her feel bad, either. Thalia frees herself, independent of anyone else’s opinion.
Another powerful event occurs in romance when others in the story have their eyes opened. In Vivian Arend's upcoming Rocky Mountain Rebel the heroine, Vicki, is a woman who hasn't done anything wrong, but has spent her entire life painted as a sinner by association by the entire town. While she is frustrated and angered by their attitudes, she's strong enough emotionally to not give a damn—she knows the truth even as she watches her back. It's the hero, Joel, who comes to understand that the accepted small town attitudes and slut shaming are more than annoyances or even soul-killing: the attitude of “a woman gets what she deserves” can be potentially physically devastating. The revelation changes his world and makes him into the hero she needs at her side.
No matter how our heroines get there, one thing is certain—they get their happily-ever-after. Every woman deserves one in romance—saints and sinners alike. We, the readers and writers of romance, know this. Maybe we’ve lived it, maybe we’ve seen others live it. It doesn’t matter. The only thing we want for our heroines is what we want for ourselves. It’s why we read romance, why we have hope.
No matter what we’ve done, we all deserve to have a happy life.
How do you feel about slut-shaming in romance?
Award-winning author Sarah M. Anderson may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out west on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.
When not helping out at school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband and son. You can learn more about Sarah at www.sarahmanderson.com.
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A Real Cowboy is available for order! Visit your favorite bookseller, Amazon, Powell’s, Indiebound, or B & N.
