Neither did super-filthy, boundary-pushing love scenes. Neither did heroines in their late teens/early 20s. Alpha heroes and strong women who push back against them didn't just crop up five years ago. And trends within the genre have always been cyclical. The writing and reading of romance has always, always, been a feminist act for its time. I'm just pointing out that none of this is new. I'm not going to go over the ground that many academics and romance historians have already tread. We could even go all the way back to Heyer and Austen. Romance has been blazing trails since the 1970s. Given how much gatekeeping we already have to deal with from publishers, do we really need the extra elitism and attempts at taste-making? It would be kind of funny if it weren't so divisive. Whether it's declaring historical romance dead and hailing the rise of New Adult, suggesting the New York Times review these authors and not those books for a "smarter" presentation of romance, penning pieces about the "new" heroines of "new" feminist romances, or dismissing Harlequin as outmoded and out of touch compared to independent authors.someone is always trying to reinvent the wheel to their specifications. Every few years - hell, maybe it's every few months - someone tries to set themselves up as the arbiter of what romance novels have validity and deserve to be representative of the genre.
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