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Originally Posted by ScalyFreak
Then they obviously need to do their homework and learn the true meaning of what constitutes "trashy" before they try to use that word in a sentence... 
(Eyeroll at them, not at you. You and I are in agreement, we're just saying it in different ways.)
Genuine romance requires sex. Whether the author chooses to go into explicit details or not is irrelevant, it needs to be there in some form or fashion. Referring to that as trashy is delusional and demeaning, and kind of stupid. |
The uber-literary genre "Romance" does not "require sex", nor do many of its subgenres, e.g., see this excerpt from
Wikipedia: Romance novel: Definition:
Quote:
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Romance novels are sometimes referred to as "smut" or female pornography,[13][14] and are the most popular form of modern erotica for women.[15] While some romance novels do contain more erotic acts, in other romance novels the characters do no more than kiss chastely. The romance genre runs the spectrum between these two extremes.[16]
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However, reading the entire "Definition" section of the
above-mentioned "Wikipedia: Romance novel" article indicates kissing isn't necessarily required, either, for a book to be classified as a romance.
Like you and some others in this forum, I dislike the use of the words "clean" (used in the titles or descriptions of some books, which implies other romance novels are "dirty") or "trashy" to describe romance novels. Rather, just as I like the way the mystery genre has introduced the term "
cozy" to describe the subgenre of "crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community", I like the way All Romance uses the "
heat rating" system to indicate where various romance books lie on the chaste-highly erotic spectrum.
On another note, some of the words used to protest the use of "trashy" are as undiplomatic and poorly chosen as the word being protested against.