When I was a teenager, all of the books I read about romance never actually described the female character being attracted to the male character. It was all about being “overwhelmed” by him and “surrounded” by him, maybe even “helpless to stop” whatever he might be doing. Never once did she admire his backside which is just…just a tragedy.
Now any description of actual attraction I write in for my leading lady towards her leading man seems almost transgressive.
That’s how het romance has shaped me as a writer and why, IMO, my gay romances—unburdened by ANY prior influence(which is its own problem)—turn out so much more loving so much more easily.
This is such a prevalent thing through our culture and the effects of it wind up being so bizarre. As a het guy these books and basically all other media you consume tell you that what is attractive about you is to be dark and brooding and aggressive, to be tall and powerful, to have a presence to you.
Then you come to the stage of your life where you deal with actual women who are attracted to you as opposed to just reading about it or seeing it in movies written by guys who never figured all this shit out for real, and by way of explanation they tell you “you’ve got a cute butt.”
And your brain has no response to this except “?????”
So figuring out what’s actually attractive about you is this whole bewildering process where you slowly piece together that you have a cute butt or kind eyes or a dopey smile and, in a way that your childhood media has left you entirely unprepared for, those things matter more than being some mysterious and hulking Adonis that looms over people.
Anyway we need to hold Hollywood accountable to stop teaching kids Weird Shit about sexuality and fucking them up for years is my two cents.
What I hate about heteronormativity is that you will get the most mind-blowing, realistic, palpable chemistry between two characters of the same gender in a show and the writer/cast will bend over backwards to pretend it’s in the fans heads or make out it’s some amusing and impossible joke, yet you’ll get the dullest, most rubbish, forced, stilted ‘romance’ shoved in your face and be expected to just go with it because hey, it’s a man and a lady who are white and moderately attractive, of course it’s true love. Of bloody course.