Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Heaving bosoms

I'm probably oversensitized to this phrase right now, due to that Fox News article, but when I see authors write something like, "I write romance, but not the heaving bosoms kind-- the spicy, realistic kind!" it makes my teeth grind together. What exactly is the "heaving bosoms" kind of romance? Have you read a romance since the eighties? Have you seen a heaving bosom in a romance since then? And why are you trying to get me, a romance reader, to read your books by using an outdated and cliched phrase that's often used to insult romance as a whole?

Could we just delete that stupid phrase from our collective vocabulary, please?
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2 comments:

  1. Jody W.June 15, 2011 at 3:32 PM

    Also delete: bodice ripper

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ellen FisherJune 15, 2011 at 4:50 PM

    Oh, I totally agree. And that's another phrase that authors use to (inadvertently) insult: "I write out-of-the-box romances, not BODICE RIPPERS!" Um, who writes bodice rippers any more? When authors say stuff like that, it just makes me think they don't know much about the genre, frankly.

    ReplyDelete

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