Thinking About Older Protagonist Romance Novels: the Phone Call

I had an amazing conversation with K. on Friday that was mostly (we talked about some other things first, but once we got going on this, it’s almost all we talked about) about whether or not it was possible to have romance novels with protagonists in their 50s (give or take).

I want to be clear: I _have read_ several romance novels that have protagonists which are almost 50 or well over 50. They _do_ exist. I know that. That was not my point. My point actually had to do with how there are so few that they don’t even qualify as a meaningful subgenre, and that’s because of issues with our culture, and until those cultural issues change, we are not going to have a subgenre of romance novels with protagonists who are in their 50s (give or take).

Romance novels have one requirement, and I don’t want that to change — once you change that, it isn’t a romance novel of the genre any more. It may be a fine book, but it isn’t in the genre. It MUST have an HEA. It can be an HEA “for now”. It can be a “Emotionally Satisfying Ending” HEA. But it MUST have an HEA.

But genre romances have a variety of other conventions that _can_ and I would argue _must_ change if we are going to have protagonists in their 50s (give or take). I argued — and continue to believe — that we have to quit thinking of romantic relationships in terms of (life)long(term) dyads. We also have to adjust our ideas of what it means to be physically attracted and who is physically attractive.

I know that anyone reading is going to have Issues, and one of those Issues is going to be: But I’ve Read Books Where …

So have I.

So let’s dig in, shall we!

(1) Protagonists in their 50s (give or take) could easily be conventionally attractive. Tall men stay tall. Some of them keep their hair. If they go to the gym and maybe take supplements, they can retain their musculature. Some women can continue to meet the size requirements of conventional physical attractiveness. Their hair may turn a beautiful, even whatever shade of whatever or perhaps they have a beauty routine that enables them to maintain the appearance of someone decades younger. They can meet while hiking up a mountain, and perhaps, with medication or just sheer good luck, they can have sex with a new partner and not need lube. I’m not sure who the audience would be for this type of novel? While you’re at it, why not just make the protagonists 30? Or 20? Or whatever?

(2) I haven’t dated in a while, but I know people who have. And while people sometimes try super hard NOT to bring up previous relationships on the first meet up or whatever, that kind of information is generally exchanged at some point as part of the Getting To Know Each Other Process. Sometimes, you have to talk about it, because there’s a call you have to take from your offspring, or while scheduling dates, you have to explain your custody schedule. Whatever. By the time you are in your 50s, your backstory is going to be complicated, and that is going to become a significant component of the story. Did you have a long term partner? Did they leave you? Why? How messed up are you from that experience? Did you have a series of short term things? Why is this story going to be different? (I don’t think it has to be different; but currently, convention says it has to be different or it’s women’s literature, not romance.) Did your partner die? Was it slow and lingering? Was it abrupt and unexpected? And how is that impacting you in terms of relating to other people? A lot of over 50s protagonist books are so comprehensively stuck in the backstory and/or the trauma and/or processing grief or whatever, that it’s really more about that than it is about the romance. NOT a problem, but also, not necessarily a romance.

We discussed how this could be done, because K. observed (correctly!!!) that romance is a laboratory (not her words) in which women tinker around with relationships and society, and figure out how we want the world to be, and then we show how to get there from here. True!

We discussed leaving out physical detail. That could be done, but is a convention violator and readers will ask. If you do it partway and then drop in details later, it is jarring.

We discussed including physical detail, and opting for something more realistic. Most books in which someone is NOT conventionally attractive nevertheless have protagonists who are unconventionally attractive but in pedestrian ways. She doesn’t meet the size constraints of conventionally attractive, but has gorgeous curves and a beautiful face. It’s tough to find a plausible middle-aged woman in romance, never mind one who has hit 50. She’d need to be overweight (about 3/4s of women in this age range) and possibly “obese” (over 40%). She’d have some amount of knee pain (2/3rds).

Most importantly, if you are telling a story about a woman aged 50 +/-, and you are not directly addressing perimenopause, menopause and related health issues and risks, you just are not engaging with what it is like to be a woman this age. Women in this age range may still be menstruating but not consistently, which complicates established sexual relationships, never mind new partners. Hot flashes are real, but they often start long before this age, and can last well after this age. _Managing_ hot flashes while not in private is an intermittent issue for most perimenopausal women at some point in this period, and again, tricky enough with an established relationship, but absolutely bonkers in a new one.

Romances with women protagonist(s) who are in this age range really _ought_ to be incorporating all of this into the background. But if this is too foregrounded, the book quits being about the romance, and becomes a Disease of the Week novel instead. I’m not looking for that. But if someone tells a story where a woman never becomes terrified or enraged that seems absolutely unrelated to anything going on, and oh, yeah, had a hot flash, where a woman never has to stop doing something because her knee just won’t let her, a woman never struggles with what to wear because things are either too loose or too tight _and diets don’t fix that_ (because water retention related fluctuation over the course of a day is Real in this age range) — I’m basically going to wonder why I bothered. This isn’t a character who is this age. This is a character that is a different age, and someone put an “age suit” on her.

Thinking About Older Protagonist Romance Novels: Lists!

I decided to make a good faith effort to find out what is actually out there. Perhaps there _is_ a subgenre and I just don’t know about it!

There are lists.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/12-romance-novels-with-older-main-characters.html/

https://allaboutromance.com/aar-loves-seasoned-romances-completed/

https://finerthings.com/older-women-as-main-characters-romance/

https://www.women.com/kelleyobrien/lists/romance-novels-about-older-couples-082919

The term “seasoned romance” appears, and apparently includes any romance in which one or both of the protagonists is over 35; I didn’t include lists that had characters in their 30s — I’m looking specifically for 50 +/-; many of these focus on late 40s and up.

Several books appear on multiple lists (Courtney Milan’s _Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure_, _Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand_, both of which I own; _Royal Holiday_ by Jasmine Guillory, who I’ve been reading lately, but I haven’t read this one, so now I’m thinking about it). Jennifer Crusie’s work appears, which I own and have loved. The Crusie — for that matter, _Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand_ — are _not_ recently published! The BookRiot list is a little better, and included Olivia Dade’s _Teach Me_, which my friend K. recently read, really loved and we talked about at length on the phone call that started this thought process and research.

I made a good faith effort to find something to try, and _Apples Should Be Red_ sounded like fun, and short, so I went to buy it on Amazon … only to find I already owned it, since 2017. Again, _not super recent publication_. My sister bought that one, so I asked her what she thought of it. Her recollection was vague but mostly positive — it was funny, she said. So I gave it a try, and bailed out, because while I do love f bombs, I _don’t_ love it when people use the r-word (equivalent now would be developmentally delayed) as an insult. When the first words out of the Hero’s mouth are that, and he’s smoking a Marlboro, I’m out. Maybe he quits; maybe he becomes a better human being, but I sorta doubt it, and honestly, I’m not looking for _that_ kind of book, either.

There are several LGBTQ+ books on the list, some of them appearing on multiple lists, and I may yet read one or more of those. They are actually a delightful solution to the problem of: how can we make _this_ relationship be Special / The One (NOT required for a romance, and in fact one of the obstacles facing novels with protagonists who are Mature, shall we say). Answer: the were flexible enough to conform to social pressure to marry het, but now have a Second Chance at love with a same sex beloved they knew when younger. Delightful!

Another issue that crops up is the difference between _age_ and _birth year_. I probably don’t really want a contemporary that is edging onto becoming a historical. Altho it’s a little depressing that the boomers couldn’t get it together to have more selection when they hit this age.

Finally, there is at least one younger author writing older protagonists, which would be awesome, except she’s got contemporary people barely older than my age who are fans of movies that my mother liked. *sigh*

In any event, the duplication across lists, the issues I’m seeing with the entries on the lists, and the fact I’ve read as many as I have — these are things that make me feel like I have in no way misunderstood the situation.

A New Search String for Food Waste: psychology overbuying food

I’m trying to find source reduction approaches to reducing food waste that are tips and tricks oriented approaches to helping people _bring less food home_. (I just drove my daughter over to Tougas Farm where we picked 8 quarts of strawberries so I hope you can clearly see the hypocrisy here.)

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/new-canadian-study-finds-canadians-can-reduce-household-food-waste-by-a-third-with-just-one-use-up-day-per-week-866844575.html

This did not turn up with my search string; I found the underlying research, but it was paywalled, so I went looking for news coverage and found this. Basically, they had people keep a journal of food usages, and they assigned some interventions.

Obviously, keeping track — even in the control group — raised awareness and all by itself reduced waste. In addition, a group was encouraged to make a meal on a “Use Up Day”, where they used things they already had that were otherwise about to go bad. Also, they were given a “3+1” cooking approach, which I found mildly astonishing mostly because I was like, wait, people do it some other way?

“how to make a meal with what they could easily grab and use from their fridges and around their kitchen, combining a base, vegetable or fruit, optional protein and a 'magic touch' such as spices or sauce to bring the dish together and give it flavour”

I mean, repertoire gives you a way to do that in a “culinarily consistent” way, but honestly, it’s going to be fine regardless because it’ll be edible and not boring.

Finally, some were given flexipes: “flexible recipes with inspiration and ideas for using up commonly wasted ingredients following the 3+1 approach”.

This is pretty awesome!

I will go look for more.

ETA:

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/09/09/psychology-food-waste-interview-brian-roe-and-laura-moreno

Meanwhile, in the US, no concrete suggestions and a lot of stuff that we know does not work well. They do have some interesting ideas about how to better track what people are doing? (No, I am not impressed either.)

I actually wish they had interrogated the people-buy-stuff-on-sale problem. I mean, if the store was going to throw it out if it wasn’t sold, and someone brings it home, uses part of it and throws the rest away, that’s a win, right? But not presented as on. *sigh*

ETAYA:

This is great! Potlucks, family style, tapas, etc. leads to excessive per person consumption / waste.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0743915618823783

“This is shown to be the result of both generosity motives and cognitive errors (specifically, failing to account for the reciprocal nature of CC). However, inflated purchase amounts in CC contexts can be reduced (i.e., consumer well-being can be improved) by (1) having consumers explicitly focus on the amount they expect to take from others and (2) providing antiwaste persuasive messages at the point of purchase.”

When we were at LegoLand this time, we did several things that we did 9 months ago (practice effect). So when we went to Royal Feast for lunch, I explicitly underordered by one full meal (4 meals for five people). It worked out almost perfectly — I had remembered just how much extra food there had been last time and compensated. We stopped at a place for ice cream, but it turned out to be all sorbet. A. didn’t want any, and I took a look at the sizes of the containers and declined as well. I got tastes of three different flavors, and it cut the total waste down to less than half of one full serving. That “focus on the amount they expect to take from others” is huge, and it helps a lot of the person who is paying for most of it does that, because they are not going to feel as much of a need to be generous by supplying food, because they are already paying.

Believing It Won’t Be There Later / FOMO / Apocalyptic thinking

I _had_ been trying to figure out the nonsense with travel and so forth, but abandoned it because it was So Much Nonsense. But in the course of reading about why people buy more food than they will get around to eating, I realized the answer to the food question actually helps with the travel thing and a lot else that is going on right now.

People are trying to buy houses, and travel and whatever else because they are actually very convinced that they won’t be available later. This does NOT make sense! But it is a powerful explanation and has the benefit of _actually being what people had been telling me_. I dismissed it, because it does NOT make sense! But, people believe it, and that is driving their actions.

I grew up with apocalyptic thinking, so I have a lot more practice at this, so while I still do some, I generally believe it to be kooky and basically wrong. It just hadn’t occurred to me that other people would engage in it — people _far_ more sane than I will ever be — with total sincerity.

Yikes.

https://www.11alive.com/article/weather/psychology-behind-rushing-to-the-store-before-a-storm/85-52262ac6-0644-4daf-a21d-1daf478e3ee7

You know, you can buy ultrapasteurized tetrapaks of milk. And eggs keep on the counter just fine. We all these buying frenzies “french toast emergencies” because that seems to be the list of what people buy (bread, eggs and milk). We mostly don’t participate, because my normal stock levels are bonkers. Altho given that the main intervention offered is See What You Already Have, who really knows what is going on out there. But the idea that people seeing what bad things can happen through personal experience or by seeing it happen to others, and then trying to avoid those bad things through preparation IS kind of what we _want_, right?