Monday's Whine: Men are Good

Very good news. I started writing the second Courier book last week. Not so good news. I have so much editing to do on the first book my head is spinning. Still it felt soooo wonderful to start the next book on my hand held recorder while walking the dogs. I'm going to leave it to an hour a day on the recorder, so I can really think through the storyline in book two and catch up on editing the first.

Cold/flu virus #4 of 2010 has invaded our home. So far I haven't gotten sick, and am doing all the Voo Doo spells I can, short of signing a contract with Margery, to keep it out of my system. ;-)

Now on to my Monday morning whine... Last night I started reading yet another romance novel that depicts the male figure as a womanizing beast. Now I haven't read many romance novels because they've never really been my cup of tea. But recently I had a few paranormal romance authors highly recommended to me. So what the heck, I ordered them up from the library and away I read. I got 100 pages into the one I read last night and threw it to the side, sickened by the set up of a relationship between the heroine and an archangel who was more like a fallen angel. This was another novel where I got to a point I had to ask, how was the author hurt by men and projecting her own experiences into the story.

I've had absolutely wonderful men in my life who would fight to the death for me. That's the sort of guy I like reading about. Prince Charming, who will come and rescue me. Although we watched the Shrek movies over the weekend, and Prince Charming in those movies is even a bastard. Is the strong male figure in romance novels dead? Are we women alone in saving ourselves?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Wendy, I needed to comment on this, and I know I'm a few weeks late...

From personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that about 90% of the women out there say that they want Prince Charming, say that they care about romance, and emotion, and love, yet, those same women always go out with abusive, self-absorbed, emotionally stunted men.

I first noticed it in high school. There was a girl, call her Tammy. Now Tammy was, quite possibly, one of the most amazingly gorgeous girls I've ever met. Blond hair, model's body, and whip-crack smart. Now Tammy also had a boyfriend who literally beat her on a weekly basis. Not just a slap either. She had broken bones. He also was known to skip dates, drink heavily (remember, high school), and often was seen with other girls.

And when I'd walk down the hall of the school, every single girl in the halls would be talking about how lucky she was to have that loser.

On the other hand, there was another girl, call her Julie, who was also a stunning blond, who I tried to chase. I brought her roses, I wrote poetry, I went out of my way to make her life easier, or do the little, chivalrous things for her...

She eventually told me how much she loathed me, and how she was seeing a much better man than I could ever be. I later found out that her "much better man" gave her three different types of venereal disease from his rampant sleeping around.

I'm convinced that, from my experiences, most women want an abusive man. For some reason, that dominant, abusive, self-centered personality is somehow written into the genes as the ideal.

Now don't get me wrong. I think men should be different from women, they should be more independent, strong-willed, and courageous. I find the romantic ideal male more in the legend of King Arthur, a strong, chivalrous, idealistic man who did what it took to make things right.

But somewhere along the way, the ideal became Lancelot (13th century France, maybe) where the self-centered (cheats with his best friend's wife, Gwenivere), abusive (Lancelot was always a merciless fighter), unfaithful (see "The Girl in the Tower" in the Chevalier Mal Fet), selfish (he hates Sir Galahad for being able to retrieve the Grail - Parsifal) man is held out as the ideal of courtly, romantic, love.

Life, as I've often pointed out, is unfair. And when it comes to what women apparently want, it's also incomprehensible.

Unknown said...

Ah... I could say so much in regards to this comment, and I almost don't know where to start. Let me just say that not all women will tolerate jerks and it sounds like you've been chasing the wrong type at some points in your life.

You nailed it in one of your lines: "who I tried to chase." We all want what we can't have or what seems difficult to obtain must be worth more.

We don't want jerks, but we don't want a man to fawn over us until he truly knows us. If he buys us flowers, writes us poetry and tries to make our lives easier after he gets to know us, then he seems more sincere and not like he's trying to get into our pants.

I don't need a story book "alpha" I need an equal. And I can't speak for all women, but I stopped dating jerks a long time ago. Sounds like you just needed the women to grow up is all ;-)

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