A Rebuttal

Hi everyone,

I just couldn't let this one go. I know I should, but it seems I can't. Here are my thoughts on this article printed in Bloomberg Business Week by author Spencer Morgan.

Let's start with the title.

Romance Fiction: Getting Dirty in Dutch Country.

When I first read the article title, I had no idea what the author meant by it. It was only after I had read the article that I realized he was referring to the popularity of Amish and Mennonite romances. I'll get to that later. What I found disconcerting is that immediately the author chose to associate the word "Dirty" with "Romance Fiction". I can't help but wonder why of all the adjectives one could use to describe Romance Fiction, dirty was the one chosen. The title could have easily been "Romance Fiction: Finding Love and Money in Dutch Country" and been more appropriate to the intent of the article, but from literally word one, okay, two, the author of the article set a tone of derision for the Romance Genre.

The opening section of the article goes on to explain how even though publishing is down by nearly three percent, the romance industry is booming.

Then the author of the article throws this at us.

"To satisfy as many lust-filled imaginations as possible, the romance fiction industry has ripped the bodice from seemingly every niche group. Nascar and transgender-themed romances are finding their way to shelves already packed with Amish, Mennonite, quilting, knitting, paranormal, and military subgenres."

After just explaining how while the rest of the publishing world struggles, romance is doing well, that piece of information can't be left to stand on its own merit. Like a 12 year old in a middle-school locker room, the author takes the success of the romance genre and belittles it with the terms "lust-filled," and the ubiquitous reference to our favorite romance genre past-time, bodice ripping. In doing so, the author paints the diversity of Romance, capable of encompassing themes from Nascar to Knitting, as something tawdry and low. Here was a missed opportunity to explore how the flexibility of the Romance genre might be contributing to its overall success in providing the stories people want to read.

Then the author moves on to quote some industry professionals. This is the real reason I decided to put a rebuttal up on my blog. Every woman quoted in the article gave smart insightful answers to why romance is popular. They genuinely gave to the author of this article the means to understand romance's diversity, strength, and business savvy. To Katherine Orr, Nancy Berland, Cindy Woodsmall, and Debbie Macomber, thank you for representing our genre well in spite of the frame this author chose to put you in. I have either seen or heard from many of you in the industry, and I know you are smart and savvy business women who do not deserve to have someone use you to shoot down our genre. That is poor writing.

Finally the article goes on to discuss the popularity of Amish and Mennonite romances. I found the tone a bit baffled, because clearly an Amish romance can't be about lusty sex? And herein lies the terrible bias at the root of all of this, that romance is about sex. That is only another lazy way to belittle a genre that explores the depths of human emotion and dares to be hopeful and uplifting. Hopeful and uplifting can exist in any context, even an Amish one.

And then this put the proverbial frosting on my cake.

"Insiders insist that knitting is distinct from another ascendant microgenre: quilting. The industry would seem challenged to find greater mundanity (bridge games? Wheel of Fortune reruns?), yet that's what the public is demanding."

Why would the author treat knitting and quilting as the definition of mundane? Because no one ever saved the world from the threat of nuclear annihilation with a knitting needle? I'm trying to remember if MacGyver did at some point.

Here's the biggest problem that I had with this article. This hurt me. Knitting and Quilting are mundane in the eyes of the author because they are women's arts. What the author has failed to realize is the immense cultural significance these arts have for women. These are the treasured skills still passed on, grandmother to granddaughter, friend to friend between women for centuries.

Knitting and quilting have kept clothes on our backs, kept our babies warm, and they evolved into intricate, technical, mathematical master arts. But they are trivial, because they are female. Quilt patterns led slaves to freedom on the underground railroad, pffft, mundane.

Stitching was one of the sole ways our great great grandmothers learned to read and write, pffft, who cares? It doesn't matter that girls were taught the only way they could read and be useful is if they were simultaneously improving their sewing skills. This is where we come from.

Women's arts need to be celebrated and cherished for what they are. They are the history of our love, our effort, our collective knowledge as women. I'm grateful for the lessons that have been taught me, and every time I take a needle to cloth or grab my hook, I remember the countless women who struggled before me for any acknowledgment that what she did held meaning.

Belittling that belittles us all.

I can't stand for it.

I found this article lazy, insulting, and a waste of good paper. I suggest the author take up crochet. Then maybe he can create something useful out of his hands.

Jess Granger