If you’ve ever plucked your eyebrows then wondered if it was anti-feminist, welcome to my spirit canoe. It is a place of wanting cake and eating it off a strange cultural plate, where we get tangled in reclaiming our power and losing it in the same stroke. Beauty is our weapon, for example – but not if the beauty standard was set by men.
Flip sides lurk everywhere. As a Romance writer and huge fan of the genre, I think about this constantly with books. The Romance category booms alongside a news cycle that blares misogyny; men disappoint us in the real world, so we craft wish-fulfillment remodels of them and take comfort in that fiction. But what if the Happily Ever After we’re swooning over reinforces regressive ideas?
This rabbit hole is exhausting, and it’s like hey – I just want to read my book. But this is also the quagmire I kept in mind as I was drafting The Dirty Version, my debut Contemporary Romance. I kept questioning whether each of my creative choices was feminist. I had the most fun doing this in crafting Caleb, a Hollywood Intimacy Coordinator and the novel’s leading man.
Is it anti-feminist to admit that? Is loving Caleb an inverted trap? I wanted his good-ness to be extremely hot – for it to make him hotter than a Bad Boy. For his thoughtfulness to make him dreamy. A beach read is not political, and yet.
I mean, he’s also very handsome. To keep things highbrow, I put a different test to when he took off his clothes. The Intimacy Coordinator I interviewed as background for Caleb’s character said he often begins his work by asking how a sex scene furthers a project’s plot – so I did the same thing, and the process became meta. It helped me think about the novel as foreplay. Just like the burlesque show Caleb takes Tash to in The Dirty Version – the best part is The Tease.
Tash, The Dirty Version’s main character and the indie author of the feminist dystopia Caleb is hired to help adapt, is easier to explain. She’s caught in the dissonance of female existence I mentioned earlier. It has turned her angry. She is an homage to my girlfriends, and in the novel, she is buoyed by her Sisterhood. She also secretly wants to believe in good men, in a world where it can be difficult to have faith.
And yes, Tash wears stilettos. She probably plucks her eyebrows and puts on lingerie – then ponders whether it’s feminist. She probably spins out on contradiction, just like a reader who’s finished an amazing romance novel and has to reluctantly re-engage with reality.
Luckily for us, though, there is always another book waiting to sweep us away. Here are some of my personal favorites:
Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess – A sharp, sexy, and provocative debut workplace romance that questions whether you can love someone while hating their politics – equal parts desperate attraction and cultural commentary.
We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian – Another workplace romance! I guess I have a type. This one is tender and set gorgeously in 1950s New York, full of longing, wit, and chosen family.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld – A brainy, inside-Hollywood slow burn between a late-night sketch writer and a pop star, with biting gender politics and real heart.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer – Technically a break-up book, but really a sweeping, comic love story in disguise – with a Pulitzer and a passport full of longing.
Do This For Me by Eliza Kennedy – A messy, ferocious, laugh-out-loud novel about a high-powered lawyer unraveling after her husband’s betrayal – and deciding whether revenge or reinvention is the better look.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid – A compulsively readable debut about transactional relationships, race, and performative allyship – with just enough romance to keep your heart in it.
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue – A sharp coming-of-age novel about friendship, betrayal, and falling in love with the wrong people – told with hilarious specificity and aching insight.
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin – A surreal and beautiful story set in the afterlife, where love still lingers and growing up doesn’t end at death. Romantic, strange, and unforgettable.
Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan – A deeply moving, meta-romance about two audiobook narrators falling for each other – smart, sexy, and saturated with love for the genre.
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny – A gentle and quietly brilliant novel about small-town life, chosen family, and a love that evolves past its fairy tale expectations.
The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary – An aching, joyful, road trip reunion romance between two exes forced back into close quarters, with all the messy feelings and hope you’d expect from a second-chance story done right.
The Dirty Version by Turner Gable Kahn will be out on June 26th in paperback and eBook. Pre-order here.