(no subject)

[which_chick]

The vindaloo recipe on the back of the Penzey's vindaloo spice bottle? Not bad at all. I use a medium amount of vindaloo spice, halve the suggested water, add a cup of yogurt, and throw in a handful of chopped cilantro as a garnish. I also use less salt than they suggest. However, it's dead easy and quite yummy. You might give it a whirl some day when you're in the mood for half-assed Indian food.

Here follows the first of what will probably be several posts on getting a methodology to support A Longitudinal Study of Idealized Heteronormative Sexual Experiences, as Limned By Romance Novels, 1980-2008, my proposed entry into the genre of satiric research papers. I'm hoping for something more useful than the sort of support you might get if you taped popsicle sticks to a limp prick in order to use it for shagging. That kind of support would be funny, but real data would be even funnier. I realize that this sort of crap is called soft science but there's still no reason for having poor data to back up the mockery.



I want to do a satiric research paper. Actually, for real, this is a shining thing that right now is the most appealing idea ever. It looks like it would be loads of fun. Yeah, there'd be some work, but still. Wouldn't that be totally fucking hilarious? The theory that I have, here, is that it'd be interesting to examine the romance novel genre (by date -- a broad survey of the practices occurring in the literature every five years or so would be particularly useful) for what romance novels tell us about normative attitudes towards assorted sexual practices. I think we can all agree that romance novels are a mass-market, LCD sort of lowbrow literature. They're formulaic. But... a lot of women buy them. A lot. They take up huge swaths of shelf space at yer average bookstore. I think they have something to tell us and I rather expect that *what* they're going to tell us is that, these days, expliciticity is through the roof and the variance in practices has spread more than Moll Flanders. (Not married to Ned Flanders, people. That was *Maude* Flanders.)

Measuring this, though, is going to suck. There's going to have to be data-gathering, not just data from what I have in my stash, but also data from outside my stash. It is going to have to be a fairly broad data pool, so's to encompass the genres available to me. I'm going to have to read authors whose work I *do not like* on any level. I do think, though, that I can do this fairly quickly and without spending a huge amount of money.

What sort of data would we like to see in this study of romance novels? Interesting question. One of the things I'd like to take a look at is the difference, if any, between what you get in "historical" romances vs. what you get in "modern" ones. I'd like to see if there's a difference between the "divorcee" and the "single, never-been-touched" novels. (The romance novel is a very tightly controlled and marketed thing. There's an entire genre of "second chance at love" books out there. For real.) I'd like to see if there's a difference between the "under a flag" romances, those written as Harlequin Silhouette books, and the stuff that is more freelance. (The stuff for H and S is very formulaic, written-to-a-standard, and I wonder if the author-based-marketing books are any different.) I'd love to take a look at the practices depicted, the average onset of activity, the... you know, if I did this like a read-along purity test... it'd be a rigorous method of data-acquisition and ALSO a fun fill-in-the-blank thing that I could do while reading.

I'd need a form for collecting information...

Book title, author, publication date (book must be between 1980 and 2008 to qualify for this study).

Is book a historical romance or a modern romance?

Is book Harlequin, Silhouette, other chain-romance-novel, or by an author?

Name of heroine:

Name of hero:

Is heroine a virgin when book starts?

Is hero a virgin when book starts? (Sometimes they tell us this.)

Page # of the scene wherein our hero beds the heroine for the first time.

Hashmark checklist of practices *involving the heroine* that are depicted in book (it's okay if they're by "the bad guy"):
kissing the heroine
messing with boobs of heroine
guy's got his hand down her pants/up her skirt
he goes down on her
she's got her hand down his pants
she goes down on him
fucking, him-on-top missionary
fucking, her-on-top missionary
fucking, doggy-style (marketing, we need a better name for this. srsly.)
rape scene
anal sex
any kink (explain)
other sexual activity (please explain)
instances of vaginal intercourse that do not result in female orgasm for the heroine?
instances of vaginal intercourse that do not result in male orgasm?
any instances of bisexuality anywhere?
any discussion of birth control and/or HIV status?
does anyone at all in the book wank, either alone or for an audience?
does the book end with the heroine married to the guy?

Is there anything I'm missing? Anything? I'm open to suggestions, here. Also, later, there will be statistics and stuff. Maths. I'm going to maybe need help with those, though I do have a statistics textbook here somewhere.

Oh, yeah, and I'd like a complete list of the employed circumlocutions for penis. That, too. Florid, purple prose welcome here! (This metric is, of course, for the lulz.)

I think I need to make a photocopyable form, here.

The game plan here is to divide the books into year-bands, or possibly cohorts (eg 1980-1984, 1985-1989, 1990-1994, 1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2005-current kind of a thing) and then look at the data to see what there is to see. Graphs! Charts! Tables! How much data, btw, do I need for this to work? There have to be enough oysters for it to look like an actual stew, here. I would hate to have a less-than-representative sample of the works available to me. Twenty per cohort from a publisher (harlequin or silhouette), twenty per cohort that are "author" books. We're right now going to limit the selection to books involving actual humans. I don't want books with werewolves or elves or vampyres or other magical things. I want normal-people romance novels, okay?

This seems like a lot of books, but I read alarmingly quickly. Romance novels, in particular, I go through like a knife through butter. (Still, that's a daunting amount of reading. Anybody want to volunteer? It's fill-in-the-blank stuff, for real.) So that's forty books in a five-year span, six by forty is 240? That's not so bad. No duplication of authors (we're gonna go by 'published' author name and ignore the fact that many romance authors write under several names), must have at least one book in each year of the cohort. Of the forty books per cohort, half should be historical romances, ten of those on the publisher side and ten from the "author" side.

I think that'll do. And now... I've got to drive into town and turn on the heat for the empty apartment for the night so that the pipes don't freeze. When I get back, I can sort through my books to see what I have on hand and what I'm going to have to beg/buy/borrow/steal. Fortunately, there's a handy used bookstore in Everett where I can probably even-up swap my trashy romances for other trashy romances of the same-shit, different-day variety. And there's Ivy, who has buckets of romance novels. Aisha has buckets of romance novels. La's friend Amy has buckets of romance novels. I think I'll be fine for source material that doesn't cost me money.

Comments

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

If you decide to farm out some of the research, I'm happy to help with some of the "category romances" (the Harlequin/Silhouette stuff) over the entire time-period of your study. (In fact I've been vaguely looking for an old Harlequin from the 70s or maybe early 80s called The Leo Man for ages. That book was the start of my sexual awakening. :D)

I don't mind reading some of those for you the sake of science.