Mids Need Love Too
The Need for Not-Hot Romances
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I am tired of romance novel tropes. There, I said it. I’m sick of the adults who think and act like children, the silly misunderstandings, and the weird, unnecessary drama.
Most of all, I am sick of all the hotness.
Yes, you heard me. I am annoyed at the ubiquity of full-blown hot people becoming the norm in fiction, especially in books.
This isn’t a complaint against beauty. It’s annoyance at rarity being pushed as common and the deleterious effect it’s having on our idea of romance as a whole.
Before I get too deep into my rant, if you are of the Andrew Tate/MedGold mindset that anyone scoring less than a 9 on the hotness scale should walk into the sea, I hear and respect your preferences.
But this post is not for you.
Shoo.
Do Uggos Deserve Love?
In the 2004 movie, Vera Drake, there’s a subplot involving the titular character subtly arranging a marriage for her plain and painfully shy daughter with an equally plain and even more shy man from the neighborhood. It is impossibly sweet watching these two probable autists interact and rewatching the film made me realize that people who look like this have basically ceased to exist in all fiction.
Is it online dating that banished average and below-average looking love stories?
Is it social media?
I’m not sure, but it all feels recent and sudden. Even though it’s not. Vera Drake came out in 2004 and the last time certified “Mid” Renee Zellwegger was an A-lister was, what… 2005?
As a visual medium, movies are expected to have above-average-looking people representing normies. But these attractive actors still had their own look to them. They were allowed big noses or not quite straight teeth.
It just made them more attractive, not less.
A listing of Renee Zelweegger’s imperfections were actually a part of a movie script once, to great comedic effect:
You're a very special girl, Irene. Look at you.
You're just so down to earth. I mean, look at your hair. It's like you don't give a damn, you know?
And your skin's so natural. You just let it hang out, blemishes and all. You're not afraid of your flaws.
You have squinty eyes, and your face is all pursed up like you just sucked on a lemon, but you pull it off. (weak chuckle) - Jim Carrey to Renee Zellwegger (Me, Myself and Irene)
I saw Me, Myself, and Irene in the theater, and that got a big laugh. It wasn’t at Renee’s expense though. It was at Jim Carey’s gormless delivery; he really thought he was giving her a compliment.
It seems real-life Renee got the same message we all did starting in the 2010s: Actually, being just attractive isn’t enough. You have to be hot. Or die alone.
Average Joes Will Make Your Toes Curl
Lest you think it’s only the girls who have been held to this impossible standard, the men are getting it too in ways heretofore unseen in any medium.
Women’s attraction to men has always been multi-factorial, meaning it’s not just their looks that gets us besotted with them. It’s a whole collection of attributes that can sometimes be difficult to verbalize.
Why then, are there now only two categories of acceptable male hotness: The 6’5, 6-pack dude-bro with a nine-incher OR rail-thin, square-jawed twink? Also with a nine-incher.
(Please stop putting Timothée Chalamet in every movie. Please and thank you.)
It’s all so unnecessary, as made evident by the fact that THE BEST, most sensual kiss ever captured on film was between an average looking guy and an average looking girl.
It was Renee Zellwegger, in fact. And her kissing partner was none other than the not-at-all handsome Vincent D’Onofrio.
In the Whole Wide World, Renee was playing a mousy, plain school teacher, a role she did well in with her appearance. And Vinny played real-life pulp author Robert E. Howard, a sweet but weird guy. The movie came out in 1996 and it’s STILL heralded as the pinnacle of romantic hotness (among women).
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. So why are writers and film makers wildly inflating the expectations of what the bar is for an acceptable boyfriend?
It’s important to be fuckable the have a starring role in a romance, but what that means is different to different people, which such be reflected in different works of fiction.
Think of David Petrakus in Speak (both book and movie). This was a teen drama, so the rules are different, but David was an average-looking, lovable dork. He was sweet, cute. But also brave. And we were all screaming for Melinda to take down her walls and let David in.
Think of Adam Driver. Full stop. Adam Driver is. NOT. Handsome. But it doesn’t matter. He has a charisma and magnetism that shines through the screen, hence all the Reylo nonsense. I don’t think I’m being controversial by saying, “More of this please.”
There are a lot of people out there in the dating market who are also charisma-filled sex pots… it just doesn’t come through in the pictures. It’s not until you shake their hand, look them in the eye, get a whiff of their perfume/cologne that you sit up and take notice.
I won’t tell authors what they should do in their fiction; I wouldn’t dream of messing with your money.
I’ll only say that as a consumer, I would like a wider variety of fictional people to be attracted to, and I think the swaths of terminally-online single people would benefit from it.
Oh, you too?? Haha, this is one of my perpetual rants. I think werewolf and vampire romance exists as an excuse to have body builders as love interests. "It's their powers, and immortals are hot".
My first intentional rebellion against this was my YA paranormal romance Malevolent. Mal is not a vampire (he's something worse and underused), but Libby thinks he is. Mal is also patterned after Matt Smith. Matt Smith is not handsome. His brows are too heavy and he has a pointed goblin chin. But I watched him through multiple seasons of Doctor Who and forgot that he wasn't handsome. It's the same with Mal.
I'm sorry to say that most men aren't handsome and most women aren't that pretty. But a sense of humor goes a long way. I think we really do need more normal people romance that isn't gross and contrived. But that's plot stuff, not beautiful people stuff.