Plain Jane romance

In trying to find romance novels with normal-looking characters, all I can find is stories with gorgeous guys and plain Janes... because obviously that is way more realistic than the stereotypical beautiful heroine hooking up with the gorgeous hero.

By "normal-looking" I mean your average human being that is neither drop-dead fake Hollywood gorgeous nor homely. Most people are in a gray area where they can either be straight-up ugly or straight-up beautiful if they either let themselves go and look like Sasquatch or get themselves a Hollywood pit crew to do their hair, make-up, diet, weight training, etc. That's your average person, and that is the type of person I was trying to find in novels. Just your average subjective beauties (where some find them ugly, some find them average, and some find them good-looking).

Instead I find novels with the perfect 10 guys, and either deformed or plain Jane women with serious self-esteem issues. In fact, I have such a novel where the woman has a huge red-wine colored birthmark covering half of her face and the guy is handsome... or he might have also been deformed as well. Either way, they (or she) are deformed. It can't simply be normal. It has to be extreme ugly. ... and this is a Christian romance.

Then there are the fat women with the good looking man. I'm not saying such a matching is impossible. In fact, many a good-looking fellow likes him a woman with extra meat on her bones. It's just bothersome, because it's used as a gimmick. "Oh look at my story. I'm so deep, because I have a fat woman instead of the stereotypical perfect beauty." Yeah, except your story still has the unrealistically gorgeous hero.

Funniest of all is the plain Jane/ugly Betty coupled with the blind guy. ... (sigh). Because heaven forbid a man that can actually see hook up with such a woman. "Here you go, Steve Wonder. Take the ugly woman. Not like you can see her horse face anyways."

And I know novels are for escaping the real world and diving into fantasy, but it is sometimes nice for fantasy to be somewhat realistic. If people are willing to read romance novels about deformed, blind, and plain Jane women, surely they would be willing to read about normal-looking couples... or maybe not. I would at least.

Romance Me

I’m supposed to be fasting the internet (though I kinda failed at that, since it’s hard to fast the internet when taking summer courses online… I don’t think I thought the fasting thing through), so this blog post is a bit of a breakdown in my self-discipline.

Anyways, I said I’d make a blog post a month (at the very least), so I’m trying to make up a quick little blog post. I just made a 2-part blog post on a review of a book I read, Never the Bride, in my book reviews blog, so now I’m thinking about romance. For the past few weeks I’ve been really focused on romance. Particularly, romance with God. It seems the concept is highly underrated.

In the book, I got it with the hope that the ending would be about the girl choosing to forgo a corporal romance and revel in the love of God instead. It would have been inspiring to read such a book. As is, I have now come to the conclusion that the old saying about "if you want something done right, do it yourself" is true. It seems a difficult concept to write about, especially since my relationship with God is rather juvenile at the moment, but I intend to write a story about a woman choosing to “marry” God instead of a man, and to be satisfied in God instead of looking for satisfaction elsewhere.

Satisfaction is not about giving up the idea of one day possibly marrying an actual person, but living for today, and focusing on what one can do for God today instead of focusing on the possibilities of tomorrow, as the Bible tells us in Matthew 6:34.

I imagine the story will be a bit of an autobiographical sketch, as I will be “writing what I know,” so as my own relationship with God develops, the story will unfold as well. I intend it to be mostly a work of fiction, though. As I learn to live more for God each day, and develop a relationship of love and romance with Him (Song of Songs, except less… well, the relationship can’t exactly be temporal). I think of the song Dance With Me, where the chorus sings “Dance with me, O lover of my soul to the song of all songs. Romance Me, O lover of my soul to the song of all songs.” I want a relationship with God that is so intimate that the chorus will be more than simple words when I sing it. I love the song, but I know I certainly do not have that sort of relationship with God.

What is sad is that so many Christians are afraid to have such a relationship with God. Songs like Dance With Me, Draw Me Close, How He Loves, get labeled as “homoerotic” (usually by men who feel uncomfortable about singing such songs to God), and people say such songs show the “feminization of the church,” which I could make an entire blog post about how that little gem bugs me.

Those songs don’t “feminize” the church (at least, not in the horrible sense that people intend the phrase to mean), and they are not homoerotic. They simply show another side of who God is. He is the Great Romancer of our Souls. He is All We Need. He does Love Us So. Read Song of Songs. Not only is that a book to show the sort of love that can transpire between a husband and a wife, it is a book to show us the sort of love that can transpire between God and His bride (the church). God can be a love to both a man and a woman. The Bible says the church (not just the woman in the church) is His bride. I don't suppose there are any Christian males that will call that homoerotic?

God does want to love us. He does want to cherish us, and care for us. Yes, He also desires our love (agape), and holiness, and obedience, but it does not have to be one or the other. We do not have to chose holiness and obedience over a cherishing relationship with God any more than we have to choose a cherishing relationship with God over holiness and obedience.

In fact, I think the two would work together. The more I learn to love God by obeying Him and being holy, the closer I will draw to Him and learn more of who He truly is, and be better able to enter into the sort of relationship with Him outlined in praise and worship songs like Dance With Me.

I think it is a glorious and beautiful thing to think about, and if I was not trying to hammer this blog post out in such haste, I would provide more scripture to back up what I am saying. As is, that will wait until August. Or, better yet, anyone that reads this post and thinks what I am saying is questionable can be like a Berean, and do his/her own research on the subject (because I certainly haven't spent enough time researching the subject yet). Since this was written in haste, I am sure that something I said might possibly be written in such a way that it could contradict scripture (even though the idea in my head of what I am saying I know doesn’t contradict scripture). If I said something wrong, or if you happen to find something that would add to this subject nicely, feel free to comment.