Dealing with love, romance and rejection on Valentine’s Day

Playing with the affections of the heart can be tricky on Valentine’s Day. Flickr/tanakawho , CC BY-NC Lisa A Williams, UNSW Sydney

Take care lovers, wherever you are, as Valentine’s Day is soon upon us. Whether you’re in a relationship or want to be in a relationship, research over a number of years shows that February 14 can be a day of broken hearts and broken wallets.

A study by US psychologists in 2004 found that relationship breakups were 27% to 40% higher around Valentine’s Day than at other times of the year. Fortunately, this bleak trend was only found amongst couples on a downward trajectory who weren’t the happiest to begin with.

For stable or improving couples, Valentine’s Day thankfully didn’t serve as a catalyst for breakup. (That said, science has more to say on the predictions of any breakup in a relationship.)

But it’s hard to avoid the pressure of Valentine’s Day. This time of year, television, radio, printed publications and the internet are littered with advertisements reminding people of the upcoming celebration: Buy a gift! Make a reservation! Don’t forget the flowers! And by all means be romantic!.

Think you’re safe and single? Not so fast – ads urging those not in romantic relationships to seek one out (namely, via fee-based dating websites) are rife this time of year.

The origins of Valentine’s Day go back many centuries and it is a time of dubious repute. Originally it was a day set aside to celebrate Christian saints named Valentine (there were many). The association with romantic love was only picked up in the UK during the Middle Ages. Thank you, Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Mass-produced paper Valentines appeared on the scene in the 1800s, and it seems that the commercialisation of the day has increased ever since. Now, many refer to Valentine’s Day as a “Hallmark Holiday” – a reference to the popular producer of many Valentine’s cards.

Avoid the commercialism by making your own Valentine’s Day card. Flickr/Jamie Henderson, CC BY-NC-ND

No matter the history, or whether you are a conscientious objector to the commercialisation of love, it is difficult not to get swept up in the sentiment.

Despite the research (mentioned earlier) that Valentine’s Day can be calamitous for some, other research speaks to how to make this day a positive and beneficial one for you and your loved ones.

My funny Valentine

For those not in a romantic relationship, it’s hard to avoid the normative message that you are meant to be in one. But is it worth risking social rejection by asking someone for a date on Valentine’s Day?Unfortunately, science can’t answer that one. What we do know is that social rejection hurts –- literally – according to Professor Naomi Eisenberger, a social psychologist and director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at UCLA. She found that being socially rejected results in activation in the same brain areas that are active during physical pain.

Even though we may treat physical pain more seriously and regard it as the more valid ailment, the pain of social loss can be equally as distressing, as demonstrated by the activation of pain-related neural circuitry upon social disconnection.

A low dose of over-the-counter pain-killer can buffer against the sting of rejection. And, as silly as it seems, holding a teddy bear after the fact can provide relief.

If you do decide to seek a partner, dating websites and smartphone apps are a popular option. In 2013, 38% of American adults who were “single and looking” used dating websites or apps.

Dating websites such as eHarmony even claim to use scientific principles in their matching system (though this claim has been heavily critiqued by relationship researchers).

On this point, US psychology professor Eli Finkel provides a timely commentary on smartphone dating apps such as Tinder. He says he can see the benefits but he also points out that “algorithm matchmaking” is still no substitute for the real encounter.

As almost a century of research on romantic relationships has taught us, predicting whether two people are romantically compatible requires the sort of information that comes to light only after they have actually met.

Can’t beat the face to face encounter. Flickr/Amanda Oliveira, CC BY-NC-SA

The multi-billion dollar dating website industry would have you think it is a path to true-love. Though the fact of the matter is, despite several studies, we simply don’t know if dating websites are any more effective than more traditional approaches to mate-finding. So, on this point, single-and-looking payer beware.

Can’t buy me love

Speaking of money, the consumerism surrounding Valentine’s Day is undeniable. Australians last year spent upwards of A$791 million on gifts and such. Americans are estimated to spend US$19 billion (A$24 billion) this year.

Spending in and of itself, however, isn’t a bad thing. It turns out it’s how you spend that matters.

First, given the choice between buying a thing and buying an experience – ongoing research by Cornell University’s psychology professor Thomas Gilovich favours opting for the latter. Chances are, you’ll be happier.

In the case of Valentine’s Day, spending on a shared experience will make your partner happier too – research from US relationship researcher Art Aron suggests that spending on a shared experience will reap more benefit than a piece of jewelry or a gadget, especially to the extent that this shared experience is new and exciting.

Second, if you’re going to part with that cash in the end, you might as well spend it on someone else. Across numerous experiments (see here, here, here, here and here), individuals instructed to spend on others experienced greater happiness than those instructed to spend the same amount on themselves.

The effect is even stronger if you spend that money on a strong social bond, such as your Valentine.

It’s not always about the gift, sometimes it’s the shared encounter that’s more important. Flickr/julian wylegly, CC BY

Third, if you do give a gift, you’re best to pay heed to any dropped hints by your partner about desired gifts.

This is especially the case if your loved one is a man. In one study, men who received an undesired gift from their partners became pessimistic about the future of their relationship. Women didn’t react quite so poorly to a bad gift.

All you need is love

Of course, don’t think that love is just for lovers – even on Valentine’s Day.

Love Actually anyone?

Given the robustly supported conclusion that close non-romantic friendships can be just as rewarding (and health promoting) as romantic relationships, an alternative is to treat Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to celebrate all of your social relationships.

Scientific research supports the benefits of the following, simple (and free) acts:

• a thank you note can boost relationships of all types

• a hug can make both parties happier and even less stressed

• simply engaging in chit-chat with those around you could be extremely rewarding

• just a few minutes of loving-kindness mediation – wishing for happiness for yourself and those around you – can lead to a sense of deeper connection with others.

If all else fails on Valentine’s Day, then settle back and listen to Stephen Stills’ classic song Love The One You’re With: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Lisa A Williams, Lecturer, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Romantic breakups can spark severe trauma in young people – new study

Alberta SJ van der Watt, Stellenbosch University

What should I study? What do I want to be? How will I pay for my education? Who do I want to spend the rest of my life with? These are the life-changing decisions many young people face.

Emerging adulthood (between the ages of 18 and 25 years) is a critical stage in the life course, especially for identity development. Emerging adults are neither dependent adolescents nor independent adults. It is a time of exploration and frequent change.

And all this is happening while their brains are still developing, especially in areas associated with higher cognitive and emotional functioning. This functioning helps an individual plan, monitor and successfully execute their goals.

Amid all these important life choices, romantic relationship breakups can be devastating. After a breakup people may experience poorer academic performance, intrusive thoughts of the ex-partner and intense grief, and can even attempt suicide.

Yet, breakups among emerging adults are often dismissed or trivialised as a rite of passage. A trauma response is shrugged off as exaggerated or overblown.

Added to this, the psychiatric literature does not see breakups as potentially traumatic events.

As a mental health researcher with experience in romantic attachment and trauma research, I co-authored a paper exploring romantic relationship breakups as potentially traumatic events among university students. The research aimed to investigate whether their experiences fitted the official psychiatric diagnosis of post-traumatic stress.

Identifying potential trauma following a breakup could help young adults get appropriate treatment and support.

When the romantic attachment figure is no longer there

In several studies we tested the idea that breakups can be deemed a potentially traumatic event based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition (DSM-5) definition. Mental healthcare providers use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a guide to diagnose patients with, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder.

A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is based on various criteria, including Criterion A: exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. Criterion A acts as the “gatekeeper” to this diagnosis.

Asking the questions

Based on their self-reported responses on the Post-traumatic Stress Checklist for DSM-5, our participants fell into three groups:

Group one (breakup group): 886 participants who endorsed post-traumatic stress symptoms based on their most traumatic breakup.

Group two (trauma group): 592 participants who endorsed post-traumatic stress symptoms based on a DSM-5-defined traumatic event (for example physical and sexual assault).

Group three (control group): 544 participants who endorsed post-traumatic stress symptoms based on their most stressful experience (for example relocating homes or a parental divorce).

We found breakup participants, those in Group One, reported significantly more post-traumatic stress symptoms, such as flashbacks, recurring memories, and nightmares about their former partner, than both the other two groups.

Looking at the brain

After the questionnaire, a subset of students from each of the three groups completed brain scans so we could see which brain areas were activated in response to specific stimuli.

During the scans, they rated images as positive, negative, or neutral.

• 36 participants from Group One (breakup group), rated photos of their ex-partners

• 15 participants from Group Two (trauma group), who specifically indicated physical or sexual assault as their most traumatic event, rated photos of physical or sexual assault

• 28 participants from Group Three (control group) rated general negative images (such as children playing in polluted water). These photographs were part of the International Affective Picture system, widely used in studies of human emotion.

We analysed the brain activation (increased blood flow) of the amygdala and hippocampus within the temporal lobe. These regions of the brain are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and form part of the fear-based limbic system that is part of our “fight or flight” system. They have also been linked to real and imagined romantic attachment rejection.

We found similar activation levels in the amygdala and hippocampus when breakup group participants rated images of their ex-partners to when trauma group participants rated images of physical and sexual assault.

Sex, religion, and other factors

Thirdly, we focused on the breakup participants only. We found that their emotional response to the breakup was influenced by:

• demographic characteristics such as sex, sexual orientation and religion. Specifically, participants with a minority sexual orientation and who reported not being religious reported higher levels of breakup distress.

• characteristics of the breakup such as the perceived closeness of the relationship and reasons for the breakup.

Moving forward

The combined results support our hypothesis that romantic breakups can be potentially traumatic events for emerging adults and may be experienced as life-threatening.

Validating experiences of breakups as potentially traumatic may cushion their negative impacts, encourage emerging adults to seek help, and promote mental health.

Mental healthcare providers and student counselling services should recognise the possible intensity of breakups and consider screening for post-traumatic stress symptoms following a breakup.

Trauma-focused treatment, such as prolonged exposure therapy, may help students, especially those who cannot avoid breakup-related cues such as seeing their former partners in class or on social media.

Since romantic breakups are not considered traumatic events within the psychiatric literature, our findings are controversial, and we do not claim that all breakups are necessarily traumatic.

More research must be done, especially with a more diverse set of students and a larger sample size for the brain scans.

• I acknowledge the contributions of Prof S Seedat, Prof E Lesch, Dr A Roos, Prof Kidd, and Prof S du Plessis to my research.

Alberta SJ van der Watt, Researcher, Stellenbosch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What is this thing called love?

Researchers are divided about the nature of love, and whether it is universal or changeable. Shutterstock Sarah Pinto, Deakin University

Love it or loathe it, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romantic love. But what exactly is romantic love? Researchers are increasingly interested in this question, and the answer is not at all clear.

What is an emotion?

Everyone from Plato to Taylor Swift has pondered the meaning of love. But, in the last two decades, researchers in the humanities and across the social, behavioural and cognitive sciences have also investigated romantic love.

Most – though not all – researchers are happy to call romantic love a human emotion. But what researchers mean by “emotion” varies.

Some explain emotions as hard-wired biological processes that are innate to humans. Others talk about them as behaviours or experiences that involve cognitive judgements. And still others think emotions are socially constructed, meaning they are social rather than natural phenomena.

Romantic love: universal or changeable?

Almost everyone separates out romantic love from other kinds of love or intimacy. This separation is usually about sex: when most people talk about romantic love, they mean love that involves sexual desire.

Many researchers think this kind of love is experienced by all people across time and place, and there is research to support this. Anthropological studies of romantic love across cultures show that love is likely to be a universal human emotion. Neuroscientific investigations of romantic love find similarities in the brain activity or chemistry of people who report being in love.

But the historian William Reddy cautions us not to “make too much of” similarities in romantic love across cultures, and with good reason. There is ample evidence that romantic love varies over time and place.

Cross-cultural studies of romantic love show significant differences in the emotion. And historical investigations almost always demonstrate changes in how people experience or imagine romantic love over time. Is romantic love universal or changeable? There is research to support both viewpoints.

Radical or conservative?

Some of the most interesting research into romantic love looks at its personal and political effects. As the sociologist Mary Evans explains, falling in love is meant to take lovers to a new and different place. Studies of people who are in love report that we understand romantic love as transformative.

And researchers sometimes talk about romantic love as a radical or subversive emotion with the potential to transform society. We can see this particularly in investigations of courtly love. Courtly love was a model of “aristocratic courtship” found in the literature of medieval France. Historians of courtly love often talk about it as a kind of radical resistance to the power of the church.

Others talk about romantic love as a deeply problematic emotion in desperate need of critique. These researchers would say that we may think romantic love is the site of personal freedom, but in fact we are living under “government by love”.

This critique was more common in the 1970s, when radical second-wave feminists attacked heterosexual romantic love as oppressive. But some researchers continue to explain romantic love as one of the ways our lives are regulated and controlled, limiting our intimate possibilities.

I want to know what love is

Some might say all this proves is that we should stop thinking we can research and understand emotions, and just experience them. But I don’t think so. Emotional experiences are a very significant part of our everyday lives, but they also have public and political effects.

Research into emotions gives us insight into the shape of these effects. It shows us the way that war widows were mobilised by their grief in 20th-century Australia, or how acknowledgements of national guilt for past injustices might lead to restitution for the disenfranchised.

Research into romantic love is built on people’s experiences and understandings of their intimate lives. What if love seems muddy in this research because people’s understandings and experiences of intimacy are muddy? What if the diverse ways that people live their intimate lives cannot be explained by a specific singular category, “romantic love”?

If that’s the case, then we don’t really need to worry about fitting into any particular romantic ideal this Valentine’s Day. And romantic love can be whatever we want it to be. Embrace it, avoid it, remake it in your own way. Love your partner, your cat, your friends, everyone, nobody. And don’t apologise for it.

Sarah Pinto, Lecturer in Australian Studies, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Royal romances have always been fantasies of transformation. How does new-generation teen fiction reflect queer and diverse desires?

Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) in the film of Casey McQuiston’s Red, White and Royal Blue. Amazon Prime Elizabeth Little, Deakin University

A royal romance is once again trending on social media.

This time, it’s a queer royal romance. And it even has its own hashtag: #firstprince

Casey McQuiston’s beloved, bestselling 2019 young adult novel, Red, White and Royal Blue, has just launched as a movie, on Amazon Prime. And fans are excited. The story follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the first female American president, and his developing relationship with Henry, the Prince of Wales.

As a genre, “royal romance” follows many of the regular romance conventions, but must include a member of a royal family or peerage as one of the love interests. Book blogs and Goodreads are full of suggestions for getting your Prince (or Princess) Charming fix.

Until recent years, the royal romance hasn’t reflected the desires of LGBTQIA+ youth. But that is changing.

The queer injection into the young adult royal romance reflects a broader shift in what’s being published and read. Last year, research showed LGBTQ fiction sales in the US jumped 39% from the same period in the previous year. And young adult fiction grew in particular, with 1.3 million more books sold than the previous year.

Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, a queer teen (graphic novel) love story, adapted for Netflix, is reported to have sold more than eight million copies to date – and even to have “helped keep bookshops afloat” in recent hard times.

A book industry analyst said the young adult queer fiction growth “mirrors a generational shift toward a more open and inclusive attitude toward gender diversity and sexual orientation”.

The popularity – and acceptance – of texts like Red, White and Royal Blue means the desires and fantasies of queer youth are being normalised.

Royal romance tropes

The key to royal romance is it offers readers possibility and transformation on a grand scale: by getting that crown, the main character does not just become royal, they become their best selves – on the world stage.

It’s been more than 20 years since Anne Hathaway graced our screens in the film adaptation of Meg Cabot’s young adult royal romance The Princess Diaries (2001).

The book follows a familiar narrative, where a girl who discovers she is in fact royalty has to be transformed into a princess. Princess Mia grows into herself as she prepares to lead Genovia.

Other familiar tropes of the royal romance include the “surprise reveal”, where one half of a couple’s royal identity is uncovered, like in Netflix’s The Princess Switch.

A viral success

Released in 2019, Casey McQuiston’s book quickly went viral, becoming an instant New York Times bestseller, winning awards and making best books lists. The classic “enemies-to-lovers” romance trope takes on international significance with the offspring of two world leaders involved.

Alex and Henry’s initial dislike for each other boils over and catches media attention after they ruin the cake at a royal wedding. To try to limit the diplomatic and media fall-out, the two have to pretend to be friends – which leads to their budding romance, and discovering their sexuality together. (Alex is bisexual and Henry is gay.)

Alex and Henry’s ‘enemies’ stage climaxes when they ruin a cake at a royal wedding. Prime

Casey McQuiston, who identifies as nonbinary, has talked about how straight literature has suggested it’s statistically unlikely for more than one queer person to exist in a story. In Red, White and Royal Blue, multiple queer people not only exist: they include the children of the most powerful people of the world, and become romantically involved.

The social media response to Red, White and Royal Blue clearly demonstrates young people want to see queer romance that reflects their own lives, and their own desires for transformation.

Just in the past week, Prime launched individual Instagram accounts for Prince Henry and Alex. The comments sections have thousands of interactions already.

  

Historically in romance, queer characters have been unhappy, or even killed off. But in Red White and Royal Blue, queerness leads to happiness.

“Alex you bisexual icon,” wrote one Goodreads reviewer, who described it as “comforting” to read the book while “having my own bisexual panic”. “It has meant so much to me as a queer individual,” wrote another, cited in the same study.

Interestingly, that study found many readers were willing to forgive the book for other things they didn’t like, because they were so excited by the queer representation.

More royal romances that explore difference

Other popular young adult royal romances explore queer relationships, too. Her Royal Highness, by Rachel Hawkins, is set in a university in Scotland, where American Millie discovers her roommate Flora is a Scottish princess. The trope of “surprise royal” gets its queer retelling when Millie falls for Princess Flora.

Her Royal Highness is a companion story to Hawkins’ first (heteronormative) royal romance novel, Prince Charming (originally titled “Royals”). Hawkins’ choice to explore queer romance was, she says, a response to what fans wanted. And she was keen to “restore balance” and write a tropey rom-com, but with lesbians.

Other young adult royal romances have maintained the focus on boy-girl couples, but engaged with contemporary audiences in other ways, by exploring concerns around class, wealth and gendered expectations.

In Katharine McGee’s American Royals, the House of Washington are the royal family, with Princess Beatrice the heir to the throne. Beatrice, who is in love with her personal bodyguard, goes on a journey of transformation that ends with her choosing her royal duties of love, and seemingly growing up. An important aspect of American Royals is how Beatrice will cope with being the first female monarch, introducing feminist concerns about leadership.

In Kiera Cass’s The Selection, the young adult royal romance meets a dystopian setting, where in a post-apocalyptic world, girls (and boys) vie for the attention of royals, so they can escape rigid caste systems and live in a palace. It’s been described as The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games. In texts like The Selection, the concerns of young people are not limited to romantic tensions, but include body image and status, conflict and poverty.

Even as young adult romances have shifted to include queer perspectives, one key aspect remains the same – teenage love, in all its forms, has the possibility of bringing about true individual transformation.

The young adult royal romance is about so much more than just love-interests-meet-and-get-crown. It’s about young people desiring to be something more, and undergoing a clear transformative journey.

While Mia Thermopolis lost her bushy eyebrows and gained a sleek tiara, her journey was about discovering her true worth.

In Red, White and Royal Blue, Alex and Henry don’t just avoid an international diplomatic disaster by falling in love: they give voice to the desires of queer and diverse youth who want to see a happily-ever-after that looks like them represented on the page, and the screen.

Luckily, these days, there are increasingly more options to choose from.

Elizabeth Little, Early Career Researcher, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What happens in our brain and body when we’re in love?

Theresa Larkin, University of Wollongong and Susan J Thomas, University of Wollongong

Love dominates our popular culture and is the subject of countless songs, movies, and works of literature and art. But what’s happening in our body when we feel love?

Love is difficult to define, but can be described as an intense feeling of deep affection. At the most basic level, science sees love as a cocktail of chemicals released by the brain.

From an evolutionary perspective, romantic love evolved from the primitive animal drive to find and keep preferred mates. Love keeps people bonded and committed to one another, to raise children through infancy. This ensures our species will continue to reproduce, survive and thrive.

However, romantic love is not just about reproduction. Some argue we should consider love a motivation, like hunger, thirst, sleep or sex.

There are many benefits of loving others and being loved. These include better mental health, wellbeing and immune function, and reduced chronic stress and disease.

What happens when someone initially falls in love?

Falling in love typically begins when someone starts to see another person as special and unique.

The initial phase of falling in love is an extreme neurobiological state, characterised by heightened responses and high passion. Lust and attraction are driven by the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone, as motivations for sex.

Specific areas of the brain are activated when you fall in love, in particular the limbic system and the reward centres. The limbic system has key roles in emotion and memory. This causes a positive mood and explains why the memories associated with new love are so strong.

Memories of early love are strong because the brain’s limbic system is activated. Masha S/Unsplash

There is also an increase in dopamine and noradrenaline. Dopamine stimulates the reward pathways and increases motivation and obsessive thoughts and behaviours to pursue the love interest. Noradrenaline causes the feelings of euphoria, and the physiological responses of a faster heart rate, butterflies in the stomach and increased energy.

At the same time, other brain areas are deactivated. Reduced activity in the frontal cortex reduces negative emotions and judgements. This explains why initially people may be blind to faults in the person they are in love with.

But while you might be feeling less judgement, there is also increased cortisol, stress and feelings of insecurity in the early phase of falling in love.

How does romantic love change over time?

The initial phase of falling in love and intense infatuation lasts for several months.

During the next phase, there is increased intimacy, commitment and attachment. This is driven by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin helps us feel safe and secure after the initial high cortisol and stress of the uncertainty and risk of falling in love. Vasopressin promotes behaviours of vigilance and being territorial and self-protective.

Between oxytocin and vasopressin there is a balance of connecting with others while also protecting the person you are in love with and yourself.

Oxytocin helps us feel safe and secure. Alex Blajan/Unsplash

Oxytocin is often called the “hormone of love” because it facilitates the formation of social bonds and connections. However, new research in animal models suggests oxytocin is not essential for life-long pair-bonding as previously thought.

Sexual activity is distinct from love, but it does reinforce attachment. When we touch, kiss or have sex, oxytocin and vasopressin are released, which promotes love and commitment between a couple.

Years into a romantic relationship, there is often a period of transition from passionate love to companion love. High intimacy and commitment help to sustain this love. Some relationships end at this time because of the reduced passion, while other couples remain in the passionate love phase for decades.

What about non-romantic love?

Beyond its role in romantic love, oxytocin is important in all forms of love, including with family, friends and even pets. Positive social relationships and oxytocin have many benefits on human health, wellbeing and longevity.

Oxytocin plays a role in our love for pets, too. Chris Abney/Unsplash

In our research, we have shown oxytocin is associated with better quality of life and healthier social connections, among people with and without depression.

So, for the love of your favourite person, people or pet(s), whoever they are, however long you love them for, and however many times you fall in love, relish loving and being loved.

Love might just be nature’s best chemical cocktail. But all the intricacies of the complex behaviour and emotion of love continue to elude science.

Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong and Susan J Thomas, Associate professor, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Romance fiction rewrites the rulebook

The Kiss - Francesco Hayez (1859). Wikimedia commons Beth Driscoll, The University of Melbourne and Kim Wilkins, The University of Queensland

Romance fiction has one of the most recognisable brands in book culture. It is known for a handful of attributes: its happy-ever-after endings, the pocket Mills & Boon and Harlequin editions, the covers featuring Fabio (in the 1990s) or naked male torsos (the hot trend in the 21st century). It is known for being overwhelmingly written and read by women, and for being mass-produced. But romance fiction is also the most innovative and uncontrollable of all genres. It is the genre least able to be contained by established models of how the publishing industry works, or how readers and writers behave. Contemporary romance fiction is challenging the prevailing wisdom about how books come into being and find their readers. For our book Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First Century Book Culture, coauthored with Lisa Fletcher, we conducted nearly 100 interviews with contemporary authors and publishing professionals. Our research shows that fiction genres are not static. They do not constrain artistic originality, but provide the kind of structure that sparks creativity and passion.

Genre fiction can be understood as having three dimensions. The textual dimension is what happens on the page. The industrial dimension is how the books are produced. And the social dimension is the people who write, read and talk about genre fiction. These three dimensions interact to create what we have called a “genre world”. Each distinct genre world (such as fantasy or crime) combines textual conventions, social communities and industry expectations in its own way. And romance is the most fast-paced, rapidly changing genre world of them all. When it comes to genres of articles, we have a soft spot for the listicle. So, here are five things you may not know about contemporary romance fiction – five things that show the dynamism at the heart of book culture. 1. Romance is at the forefront of digital innovation: Twenty-first century publishing has seen fundamental shifts in the way books are produced, distributed and consumed, largely thanks to digital technology. The romance genre is notable historically for its rapid production and consumption cycle. As a result, it has been well placed to adapt to the widespread uptake of digital publishing, which also moves rapidly. Romance writers and publishers are entrepreneurial and comfortable taking risks. The moment constraints are released, romance writers rush in. This is exactly what has happened with self-publishing. Since the advent of Kindle Direct Publishing in 2007, hundreds of thousands of romance books have been self-published there. Other opportunities have blossomed on sites such as Wattpad or through print-on-demand services such as IngramSpark. In Australia, for example, there was a 1,000% increase in the number of self-published romance novels between 2010 and 2016. 

Some self-published romance novels have achieved mind-boggling success. Anna Todd’s 2014 romance novel After, originally fan fiction based on the band One Direction, drew more than 1.5 billion reads on Wattpad. It was subsequently acquired by Simon & Schuster and has spawned a movie series. In other cases, romance authors have formed co-ops to publish work together. Tule Publishing is a small, largely digital publisher with a limited print-on-demand service that produces multi-author continuity series as part of its publishing model. The Tule authors we interviewed spoke of their strong community and creative connections. The self-publishing of genre fiction has blurred the lines between author, agent, editor, cover designer, typesetter, publisher and bookseller. Stephanie Laurens, one of the world’s most successful romance novelists, began writing with Mills & Boon before moving to HarperCollins. In 2012, she gave a keynote address to the Romance Writers of America convention. She used the opportunity to reflect on industry change. Soon after, she began reconfiguring her own publishing arrangements.

Now Harlequin publishes her print novels, while she self-publishes the e-book versions. She also self-publishes novellas that are prequels to, or that sit between, the novels in her traditionally published series. Laurens is a prolific author with loyal fans, an author who can afford to take risks. She realises that self-publishing potentially offers her a better deal and has been able to pursue that while retaining ties to a traditional publisher. Her career complicates any view of self-publishing as second best. Her example has been much emulated among romance writers. Such a career move challenges how we might typically theorise the power relations of literary culture. 2. Romance readers are active and engaged: The dynamism of romance fiction is intimately linked with its engaged readers. Unlike other kinds of publishing, where the fate of each book is relatively unpredictable, romance has historically had many loyal readers who subscribe through mail-order systems to receive books regularly – a model that has not worked successfully at scale for any other genre. In the 21st century, many of these loyal romance readers are online. They tweet about their favourite authors, write Goodreads reviews, and run blogs and podcasts. 

People read romance fiction for different reasons. They might be drawn to its focus on the emotional nuances of relationships, its escape into various times and places (romance subgenres really do cover the gamut), or its gold-plated promise of happy endings and pleasure. They might read casually or intensely, with curiosity, scepticism or devotion. All of these are active modes; they can’t be reduced to consumerism. There is an element of feeling to the involvement. The shared pleasure and sense of belonging that comes with being in the genre world came up regularly in our interviews. Author Rachael Johns, speaking of romance fiction, said “this is my passion, I fell in love with the romance genre”. Agent Amy Tannenbaum described the romance community as “tight-knit”. Harlequin marketing specialist Adam Van Roojen suggested the romance community’s supportive nature makes it “so distinctive I think from other genres”. People say the same thing about other genres, of course, but these claims show how people imagine genre worlds as a kind of community. Communities have boundaries and can be exclusionary. Kristina Busse has written about the impulse to police borders in fan-fiction communities, and of how ascribing positive values to some members of a community may exclude other people. 

This dynamic is at work in genre worlds, even if it is low-key or not openly acknowledged. What’s more, the inside world of romance fiction has an inside of its own. This is evident in the way readers relate to one another (there is an implicit hierarchy of fans) and in the industrial underpinnings of the genre. For example, there is a distinction between a writer’s core audience and fringe audience that affects sales formats and international editions. Core romance readers tend to read digitally, and therefore can often access US editions of a book. Casual romance readers are more likely to pick up a print book from a store like Big W or Target and are therefore more likely to be the target audience for local editions. In general, though, both core and fringe romance readers know how to read romance fiction. They are attuned to the codes that run through the novels. Back in 1992, Jayne Ann Krentz and Linda Barlow argued that certain words and phrases in romance fiction act as a hidden code “opaque to others”. Committed romance readers have a deep knowledge that makes them experts in their genre. When these readers express their views online, authors and publishers take note. One recent example involves a tweet from romance fiction author, podcaster and blogger Sarah McLean. She asked her nearly 40,000 Twitter followers to “Tell me the best romance you’ve read in the last week. Bonus points for it being 🔥🔥🔥.” The tweet was directed at the hardcore readers of the romance genre world. It assumed an audience that reads more than one romance novel per week. The 300 or so replies constitute a mega-thread of recommendations. Romance readers are generous to one another this way, as the sheer abundance of commercially and self-published romance fiction makes it hard to sort and choose. The replies also offer an up-to-the-minute map of the subgenres and tropes to which readers are responding. These include shape-shifters, second-chance love stories, queer romance, and dukes and duchesses (possibly a Bridgerton effect). 3. Romance fiction is global: Far from being circumscribed by small horizons, romance fiction is globally connected and inflected. This is amply demonstrated by the example of Australian romance fiction, which is formed and sustained across international literary markets and creative communities.Pascale Casanova’s theory of the world republic of letters notes the cultural force of London and New York as anglophone publishing centres. This mitigates against the inclusion of Australian content in popular fiction. Stories set in New York or London seem to have no limits in terms of international portability. But stories set in Australia, or another peripheral market, can be harder to pitch. Australian writers are conscious of this, as it directly affects the viability of their careers. But export success is possible for Australian work. The subgenre of Australian rural romance or “RuRo” is the best-known example. Authors like Rachel Johns are bestsellers in other territories. Romance novels set in Australia are popular in Germany – the Germans even have a name for them, the “Australien-Roman”. 

Popular Australian romance author Rachel Johns. Goodreads

Romance fiction is energised by transnational communities of readers and writers, often mediated online. Australian romance author Kylie Scott, for instance, credits American romance bloggers with driving the popularity of her books, and thanks book bloggers in the acknowledgements of her books.

These cultural mediators assist the transnational movement of books in genre worlds. The development of digital-first genre fiction publishers and imprints also supports such movement, not least through promoting global release dates and world rights, so that genre books can be simultaneously accessible to readers worldwide. But nothing comes close to the romance fiction convention, or “con”, in demonstrating the international cooperative links of the romance community. Cons, such as Romance Writers of America, support romance writers by providing professional development opportunities; they offer structure to participants’ professional lives. For example, Regency romance writer Anna Campbell has oriented her career towards the United States. Campbell began to professionalise by joining the Romance Writers of Australia, but then entered professional prizes run through US networks, and it was these that gained attention for her writing and enabled her to get an agent. American success followed: My agent ended up setting up an auction in New York, and three of the big houses wanted to buy it. The auction went for a week, and at the end of Good Friday 2006, I was a published author and they paid me enough money to become a full-time writer. Campbell went on to write five books with Avon, then moved to Hachette for a number of books. She has now moved to self-publishing. The majority of her readership remains in the US. Romance’s capacity to reflect the local concerns of writers and readers, coupled with its responsiveness to global industrial processes, makes it one of the most intriguing genres for considering what “Australian books” might look like in the 21st century. 4. Romance can be socially progressive 

It has been more than 50 years since Germaine Greer, in The Female Eunuch, dismissed romance fiction as women “cherishing the chains of their bondage”. The perception that the genre is conservative persists. But romance writers and readers are more and more concerned with inequality across gender, race and sexuality. They are pushing back against old conventions. In 2018, Kate Cuthbert, then managing editor of Harlequin’s Escape imprint, gave a speech that revealed romance’s internal debates. She addressed the responsibilities of romance fiction writers and publishers in the #MeToo era, arguing that if we want to call ourselves a feminist genre, if we want to hold ourselves up as an example of women being centred, of representing the female gaze, of creating women heroes who not only survive but thrive, then we have to lead. For Cuthbert, this means “breaking up” with some familiar romance fiction tropes, such as the coercion of women: many of the behaviors that are now being called out – sexual innuendo, workplace advances, stolen kisses because the kisser couldn’t resist – feel in many ways like an old friend. They exist in the romance bubble […] and they readily tap into that shared emotional history over and over again in a way that feels familiar and safe. Cuthbert’s compassionate acknowledgement of readers’ and writers’ attachment to established genre norms sits alongside her call for evolution, for renewed attention to “recognising the heroine’s bodily autonomy, her right to decide what happens to it at every point”. Structural hostility in the publishing industry towards people of colour has also become a cause romance writers and readers rally behind. In 2018, Cole McCade, a queer romance writer with a multiracial background, revealed that his editor at Riptide had written to him: We don’t mind POC But I will warn you – and you have NO idea how much I hate having to say this – we won’t put them on the cover, because we like the book to, you know, sell :-(.In the wake of this revelation, multiple authors pulled their books from Riptide, as a further series of revelations about the publisher’s bad behaviour emerged. The following year, the Romance Writers of America examined the past 18 years of its RITA Awards finalists and published the results: no black author had ever won a RITA, and the percentage of black authors represented on shortlists was less than half a per cent. In response, the board published a “Commitment to RITAs and Inclusivity”, in which it called the shocking results a “systemic issue” that “needs to be addressed”. In 2020, they announced they were employing diversity and inclusion experts to help diversify their board, train staff, and help “design and structure” more inclusive membership programs and events, including the annual conference. The Romance Writers of America’s intentions have not always been successful. The ongoing visibility of marginalised groups in the genre continues nonetheless, in part driven by romance’s rapid and robust uptake of digital publishing. Access to publishing platforms has allowed micro-niche genres to proliferate. LGBTQIA+ romance subgenres have become particularly visible: from lesbian military romance to gay alien romance to realist asexual love stories.

Sometimes these stories go spectacularly mainstream, as with C.S. Pacat’s The Captive Prince, a gay erotic fantasy about a prince who is given to the ruler of a neighbouring kingdom as a pleasure slave. Originally self-published, The Captive Prince started as a web serial that gathered 30,000 signed-up fans and spawned Tumblrs dedicated to fan fiction and speculation about where the series would go.The book was rejected by major publishers, so Pacat self-published to Amazon and within 24 hours it had reached number 1 in LGBTQIA+ fiction. A New York agent approached Pacat and secured her a seven-figure publication deal with Penguin. The queer fantasy or paranormal romance has continued to thrive in Pacat’s wake. In our interviews with romance authors, questions of diversity, inclusion, representation and inequity arose again and again. In representation and amplifying marginalised voices, romance has enormous potential to lead the way. 5. Romance has gates that are kept: Romance fiction is more progressive than some stereotypes might suggest, but it is not free from exclusion or discrimination. The genre is influenced by its gatekeepers – human and digital. One form of gatekeeping takes place through the same voluntary associations that nurture community. In late 2019, the board of the Romance Writers of America censured prominent writer of colour, Courtney Milan, suspending her from the organisation for a year and banning her from leadership positions for life. 

The decision was made following complaints by two white women, author Katherine Lynn Davis and publisher Suzan Tisdale, about statements Milan had made on Twitter, including calling a specific book a “fucking racist mess”. This use of the organisation’s formal mechanisms to condemn a woman of colour and support white women was controversial, provoking widespread debate across social media and email lists. Milan had long been an advocate for greater inclusion and diversity within Romance Writers of America and the romance genre. As the Guardian reported, the choice not to discipline anyone for “actually racist speech” made punishing someone for “calling something racist” seem like a particularly troubling double standard. “People saw it as an attempt to silence marginalised people,” observed Milan. The board retracted its decision about Milan. It is difficult, however, to calculate the damage that may have been done to readers and writers of colour in the romance genre world. Conversely, the use of Twitter to extend debate and eventually correct the Romance Writers of America shows change happening, in real time. 

Another form of gatekeeping in romance fiction happens through the same digital platforms that put the genre at the forefront of industry change. Safiya Umoja Noble’s book Algorithms of Oppression demonstrates how apparently neutral automated processes can work against women of colour — for example, the different results that come up from a Google search of “black girls” compared with “white girls.” In the world of romance fiction, Claire Parnell’s research has shown the multiple ways in which the algorithms, moderation processes and site designs of Amazon and Wattpad work against writers of colour. For example, they make use of image-recognition systems that flag romance covers with dark-skinned models as “adult content” and remove them from search results. They can also override the author’s chosen metadata to move books into niche categories where fewer readers will find them, such as “African American romance” rather than the general “romance fiction”. Concerted activism and attention is needed to work against this kind of digital discrimination, which risks replicating the discrimination in traditional publishing. There is no simple way to account for the dynamics of contemporary romance fiction. It is inclusive and policed; it is public and intimate. Its industrial, social and textual dimensions are not static, but interact dynamically, incorporating the possibility of change. Only by understanding these interactions can we gain a complete picture of the work of popular fiction. Contemporary romance fiction is formally tight, emotionally intense and digitally advanced. It’s where the heartbeat of change and action is in book culture. Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, The University of Melbourne and Kim Wilkins, Professor in Writing, Deputy Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of HASS, The University of Queensland, The University of Queensland This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Love At First Fight

Divya Unny at practice during a Kalaripayattu class at IIT Mumbai (Photo: RITESH UTTAMCHANDANI)

BY Divya Unny: Gyms were too cold. Yoga was too slow. Going for a jog required too much discipline, and a swim was too expensive in Mumbai. For years, I was ready with an excuse when it came to pushing my body—partly because I’m blessed with the metabolism of a new-born and partly because I never really craved a regular workout. With the lifestyle a city like Mumbai offers, you spend half your time swinging out of local trains, and the other half, working towards never having to take such trains again. As a result, your body is more or less warmed up most of the time. Plus, the secret motto of my subconscious was: ‘You are thin, why not wait until that extra layer of fat accumulates, if it does?’ All that changed towards the end of last September when I dunked myself into a 21-foot deep kuzhi kalari (underground mud pit) built on the edges of Adishakti Theatre camp near Auroville, about two hours from Chennai. To the smell of incense and the chill of wet earth, we, 20 young artists from various cities, attempted to accomplish the initial few moves of India’s oldest martial art form. We were being introduced to kalaripayattu as the first step of our actor’s training workshop. Most of us were from a space where martial arts were part of pop culture (read Jackie Chan, and in my case, Mammootty) than real life. As a Keralite, the state where kalaripayattuoriginated, for me it was about flying bodies, the clinking of metal arms and thoroughly choreographed combat moves that could only be mastered by training from a very young age. To pursue it in everyday life seemed far-fetched. That was among many other perceptions about to be shattered over the next 11 days. Our mornings would begin at 7 am in the kalari that was dotted with deities in each corner. If legend is to be believed, we were training in a 3,000-year-old spot that had hosted some of the greatest warriors of all time. The energy within the mud pit engulfed and cocooned us from the outside world for that one hour. “Kalaripayattu was always taught in isolation, away from the prying eyes of the enemy. It prepares you to combat the brutalities in the real world,” said our master Vinodji when we asked him about the significance of the closed space. With the flicker of the flame shining in front of the deities, we warmed up. We began learning the vadakkan (northern style ofkalaripayattu) by paying salutations to a seven-tier platform symbolising the seven stages of the art form. Some of us were classical dancers, others had dabbled in tai chi and taekwondo, and a few owed their flexiblity to gym equipment. But as we began with the kalari moves, our bodies surprised us. In a half sitting position for almost a minute, I was losing sense of my shin. My torso was parallel to the earth and arms extended straight following my eye line. Sweat that began accumulating on my forehead was now making the ground around me moist. “Focus on one point,” is what I thought I heard Vinodji say. As a Bharatanatyam dancer, my body was used to gravitating towards the ground, but kalaripayattu demands that you be as close to the earth as possible. It was challenging, and we had to find a motivation we did not know we had within us. The crouches, the leaps, the kicks, every thump of the leg, every cross-split, every scissor cut we attempted drew inspiration from the raw power and sinuous strength of animals; moves graciously borrowed from the lion, the tiger, the snake, the elephant, even the cock. The first few days were pain-ridden, but the key was to keep focus. What amazed me was that after an intense hour of class, I’d never feel out of energy. Instead, I felt a source of strength unleashing itself at the navel point. It empowered me like no other physical activity had. For the first time in 30 years, my body craved being wrung in ways it didn’t know it could be. “The form is so organic that it brings you closer to nature. You draw energy from the earth. It makes you agile, and once you really discover it, it’s a different kind of high,” says Nimmy Raphael, 32, the actor who coached us after our kalaripayattu sessions. Those 11 days had started something, and it was a fight I knew I couldn’t leave half way. Once I was back in Mumbai, I immediately enrolled myself for classes. The classes were conducted by Belraj Soni, kalaripayattu instructor at Mumbai’s Somaiya College and founder-director of Navaneetham Cultural Trust, Thrissur, Kerala. He had been teaching the art form for over 20 years. The sprawling sports ground at IIT Mumbai, where it was conducted, was however far removed from the quiet mud pit I had crawled out of in Auroville. There were students playing basketball on one side, hockey on the other, and right in the middle were 30 of us, kalari beginners, bare feet, with our bodies the only instrument to work with. Distractions were aplenty, and hence the challenge to combat them. Young and old, people from various walks of life diligently followed the Malayalam instructions the moves were coupled with. “Edathu neere, valathu neere, edathu neere, valathu neere,” Belraj Sir would say, instructing us to kick our legs one-by-one high up in the air and back. We trembled, limped, sometimes even cried our way through class, but did not give up. We performed in track pants instead of the traditional half dhoti, but the appeal of kalari went beyond its costumes. “Eight years ago, when I started practising it in Mumbai, barely two students were actively involved. Now, due to the overwhelming response, I am forced to limit the seats on a first- come-first-served basis,” says Belraj, who has trained over 600 students from Mumbai so far. Of late, the art form has found resonance with urban folk irrespective of age or gender. Like 17-year-old Poorvi Bellur and her mother, 45-year-old Sumana Srinivasan, who started learning it together a month ago. “I have a really stressful schedule because of my 12th grade boards. So there’s a different kind of satisfaction coming out here and letting yourself get physically beaten up. You feel like you have done some substantial work, which you don’t after six hours of studying,” says Poorvi, who has also been a classical dancer for 12 years. “The aggression of martial arts wasn’t something I really saw myself doing. As a dancer, my physical exercise has always been paired with some amount of aesthetic appeal. But that perception of kalari being aggressive has completely evaporated.” Sumana is a patient of rheumatoid arthritis. “I was always told by doctors to keep my body active. Yoga and a few other forms helped, but I was always curious about kalari,” she says, “I was most concerned about my knees and elbows, as they don’t have a complete range of motion. But with kalari, when I started doing the squats, my quads got very strong. My knee and shoulder pain has considerably reduced and I haven’t had the need to take painkillers ever since I started learning it.” I discovered that kalari in Mumbai was finding students in ad executives to housewives to PhD candidates. “I could barely climb two flights of stairs before I started practising kalaripayattu. It’s the kind of workout that works on your body and your mind. I feel way calmer and better equipped to deal with the kind of rushed lifestyle I lead,” says Priya Anchan, a 30-year-old brand manager at Lowe Lintas who has been training for over a year now. “My mother thinks I’ll build muscles and no one might marry me because of this,” she adds with a smile, “but that’s a misconception.” Purists may express dissent over the art form being perceived primarily as another method of exercise, but there is no dispute about its rising popularity. “It is good that awareness is increasing. Other forms of martial arts, gymming or aerobics concentrate on improvement and strengthening of one’s physique, but it doesn’t work your mind. Kalari aims at the balanced growth of both. The training is more acute and time consuming. It cannot be treated as a hobby,” says Belraj. As an actor, there are few tools that have helped me hold my own on stage as much as kalari. During performances, I am more aware of my body and consequently more in control of it. There is a sense of calm that has replaced the incessant nervous energy that would often rule me on stage. Kalari has always been used as a form of self-expression. But I am now able to identify the train of thought behind a series of contemporary works that have used the art form to communicate their stories. I am particularly intrigued by the Bengali play Tomar Dake, conceptualised by Theatre Shine, a group of under 25-year-olds from Kolkata. The play is a visually striking portrayal of social injustice and violence, where kalari motifs are glaringly used to symbolise growing anarchy. Says its director Suvojit Bhandopadhyay, “We specialise in psychophysics threatre, and the history of the art form worked for us. We trained in kalari for about four months before applying it to text. We used the kalari pranam to symbolise a new ruling power emerging within states. The attack and defence modes inkalari became a strong and aesthetic tool for us to portray social violence.” +++ For others, like the artists from the Adishakti Theatre group, founded by the late Veenapani Chawla, kalaripayattu is a way of life. So too for Nimmy Raphael, popular for reprising the mythological figures Laxmana and Kumbakarna in her play Nidrawathwam. “I’m a performer who doesn’t feel gender on stage,” she says, “I don’t have a very feminine body, neither do I feel very masculine. Kalari helped me with my journey in being able to transcend gender on stage. Whatever movement you do, it forces you to find something. It trains you psychologically as an actor, it lays down the basics of your movements.” Be it the Attakalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore or National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi, kalari is being used by institutions to add aesthetic and emotional appeal to works of art. This includes a recent play called Zubaan, where I perform a series of monologues to promote gender sensitisation. The play, which also has Tom Alter, requires me to act out an attack sequence as a rape victim, and to my surprise while choreographing my moves, I found myself using several kalari stances. The role, which began as a disturbing experience for me, has transformed into one where I feel better equipped to fight the perpetrator. That was perhaps also the reason for my response when my learning was recently put to test in real life. It happened one evening about five months into my kalari training. I was riding in an autorickshaw to the IIT ground. A minor dispute with the auto driver turned into a fight that had the burly man grab me by the collar, threatening to slap me right across the face. He was twice my size. But something within me nipped my fear. I did not attack him, but I found the strength to undo myself from his hold and turn him over to the police. I missed class by 45 minutes that day. “You should have done theashwa vadivu on him,” one of my kalari girlfriends told me. It was the day I realised I have a long way to go. The martial art form helps centre the mind, keep the body in shape, and for urban women living in an increasingly turbulent environment, it is an ideal tool for self-defence. “My confidence levels have increased a lot,” says Dilna Shreedhar, a 26-year-old PhD student, “The way I sit, carry myself, my personality, my walk, everything has changed. I am short and small of frame, and I often felt weak, but now I feel like I have the inner strength to deal with anything that comes my way.” We are currently learning attack and defence moves. “Look into the eyes of the person you are attacking,” Belraj Sir would reiterate. Each time he’d pick me as his opponent, I’d anticipate the pain and cringe. There are days when we students compare the blisters on our forearms, but this is only a minor price to pay. We’re gradually hoping to be introduced to sticks and daggers and swords. Full training demands a temple-like environment and a residential schedule with one’s guru. I hope to get back soon to my mud pit for a month-long workshop. But before that, I need to perfect my split. “Push, push yourself a little more,” the instructions go. Believe me, I’m trying. Source: OPEN Magazine

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