Is Mr. Darcy Real? YA Fiction and Real Life Romance

Today's question comes via the FORMSPRING (PS: I AM SOOOOOO EXCITED THAT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY USING THIS BECAUSE IT IS WAY AWESOME AND MAKES ME FEEL SPECIAL).

The question was submitted anonymously and is as follows:

How do you think romance/relationships in YA fiction influence real life ones?

Actually, I am very glad about this question because I have an extreme, love/hate relationship with YA romance novels.

Here's the deal: Heterosexual, girly, YA fiction is rarely accurate. I mean, think about it: how many girly YA books have you ever read where the girl's crush is totally legit and realistic?

Take "The Princess Diaries" by Meg Cabot, for example. I mean, I love Meg Cabot, and I love "The Princess Diaries," because, after all, they ARE well written (I mean, grammar-wise).

In the Princess Diaries, Mia falls in love with (and eventually loses her virginity to) Michael Moskovitz. And I mean, Michael is the ultimate fantasy dude. This goes far and beyond the normal romance novel hero. The normal romance novel hero has some sort of dark and mysterious past that makes them hard to live with or something. Michael Moskovitz has none of that. Michael Moskovitz is:

1. A senior (Mia is a freshman)
2. Totally hot (he lifts weights and thus, has a six pack and nice biceps)
3. A super genius (he eventually makes it to Columbia and then, as a freshman, manages to invent some sort of robotic super-surgery arm in Japan. WTF?)
4. Musical (starts a band and writes songs about Mia)
5. Actually a genuinely nice guy and likes Mia back immediately and arguably falls in love with Mia before Mia falls in love with him.
6. Generally popular--nobody messes with him.

I mean, I feel like you can have two, maybe three, of those characteristics in high school but not all the rest. Let's face it...Michael is a super-gorgeous genius athlete. I'm not trying to be down on the human race or anything, but how realistic is that, in terms of your first love/boyfriend? Not realistic AT ALL. Not to mention the fact that Michael is a senior in high school and is dating Mia, a freshman. I don't want to perpetuate stereotypes or gross generalizations, but there is A HUGE DIFFERENCE between a high school senior and a high school freshman. Honestly, I have talked to my guy friends about this, and they all agree: dating a freshman girl is sort of embarrassing, unless you are clearly doing it for the easy sex, in which case, it is still embarrassing, just more douche-y.

High school is about cliques. I mean, MTV has created an ENTIRE SHOW about cliques and the general suckage that results from said cliques.* I mean, sure, there is the occasional really awesome, non-clique school filled with excellent people and absolutely NO drama...but let's face it, how typical is that? High school cliques are important in this discussion because transcending clique lines is something damn near impossible. In high school, your friends are all the people you hang out with--the people on your team, in your play, in your advanced classes, in your not-so-advanced-classes. Even if you participate in the Spring Musical AND are on the varsity soccer team, you're probably going to be much closer to one group than the other.

That being said, yes, it is damn near impossible to find a Michael Moskovitz. And also, what would a mature, wonderful guy like Michael Moskovitz experience if he was dating a freshman? Absolute public humiliation. I'm trying to be real here, and maybe my high school experience was much rougher than the norm--but if a senior guy was in such a chaste relationship** with a freshman girl, people would ask questions. Most of these questions would start with the phrase "WTF?" and end with "is he gay????"

I'm trying to be real here.

Also, a lot of these books are all about how it's perfectly normal to be a social pariah, especially if you are surprisingly tall and thin and no acne and maybe glasses to make you ugly. This is just BS. Take any girl in any well-established teen romance*** is an outsider who magically undergoes a massive makeover, dons a beautiful gown, and becomes really, REALLY hot.

You know why? Because girls with clear skin and tall, willowy frames will always be hot. Unless you have major dental issues or maybe hair that leaves a TON to be desired****, if you are built like a model with dewy, fair skin...you're not going to be considered an ugly social pariah.

So yes, YA fiction has a lot to be desired, in terms of heterosexual relationships. I mean, Twilight features a girl who falls in love with a boy that...well...appears in her bedroom and says "I love watching you sleep and also I am dangerous." And ok, maybe not in those exact words, but just as a nice PSA to all the young girls out there:

IF A BOY THAT IS NOT YOUR LONG-TERM BOYFRIEND AND/OR BEST FRIEND MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARS IN YOUR ROOM AND SAYS "I LIKE WATCHING YOU SLEEP AND ALSO YOU SMELL LIKE DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS FOOD TO ME," DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM. SIMPLY PICK UP YOUR CELL PHONE AND DIAL 911, BECAUSE THIS BOY IS NOT EDWARD CULLEN; THIS BOY IS PROBABLY MENTALLY UNSTABLE AND YOU ARE IN PHYSICAL DANGER.

Ahem.

I think YA fiction has a lot of the same effect that porn has in terms of romance and sex: it gives unrealistic expectations to reality and people end up getting disappointed.

That being said, I LOVE queer YA romance. From what I've read (and actually, I've read a lot because my school is fantastic and has a GREAT queer YA section in the library), queer YA fiction deals more with the realistic downfalls of romance*****. This is because queer YA romance fiction exists to basically be like, "You are not alone and these are terrible emotional and physical issues that every queer person has to go through" instead of heterosexual romance YA fiction, which basically exists to be like, "I am gratuitous and isn't it lovely to experience rainbows and unicorns vicariously?"

And here's the thing: queer YA romance books can TOTALLY be applied to EVERY SINGLE RELATIONSHIP, EVEN HETEROSEXUAL ONES. Why? Because there is always that boy/girl you shouldn't date, because of your friends, or your family. There is always that magical first love that you find yourself in, that completely takes over every aspect of your life. There is ALWAYS some reason to break up that you have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL OVER.

In real life, young love is traumatic. It's exhausting. It involves way more people than just the people in the relationship. And, quite frankly, you're not going to find realistic trauma in "The Princess Diaries."******

So, go ahead, and read those deliciously gratuitous books about Princesses and Perfect Boys and Oh-So-Misunderstood-Outcasts. I mean, they're fun.

What you SHOULDN'T do, is expect for that fiction to be applicable and true to life.

Sorry for the rant...but I hope that helps! Thank you SO MUCH for one of the most interesting questions I've had :)

And remember folks, JUMP THOSE RAILROADS!"

xoxo,
Risk(Y)

PS: Don't forget, the nerdfighter thread is STILL active, and the formspring box is to your upper right! Also, I LOVE comments!
~R


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*Or, if you want another, non-trash-life example, check out the movie "Mean Girls."

**I mean, they basically just make out until they actually have sex. Mia becomes convinced that you have to "Jane Eyre" a boy to make him stay. Basically, they go from maybe a little like boob action to going all the way, magically, on the night of her senior prom, after NOT DOING ANYTHING FOR LIKE TWO YEARS WHILE HE WAS IN JAPAN. HOW is this accurate?????

***Mia Thermopolis, Bella from Twilight, Hermione from HP and the Goblet of Fire, Ginny Weasley in like, every HP book after 4, that girl from "Geek High" who even states, (and I'm quoting directly here from the ebook version): "It's because of those propaganda films that every smart but plain girl secretly believes that
one day she'll shake out her hair and the hot guy in school will
suddenly see her for the beauty she really is.
But I don't wear my hair up, or have glasses. And my clothes are pretty
much the same ones from the Gap that everyone else at school wears.
And so far, no one's ever confused me with Lindsay Lohan." (pg 45, and written by Piper Banks).

****And, I mean, even Hermione magically gets THOSE issues fixed (like, literally. She uses magic and BOOM. She's hot and Ron is all like "WTF VIKTOR KRUM????")

*****Namely, how will your friends react? Your parents? Will it last, or will you be throwing away a ton of filial ties for nothing? Don't believe me? Read "Keeping You A Secret."

******Well, ok, maybe marginally, sometimes a boy will try to get close to you by sleeping with your best friend, and then your best friend will stop being your best friend because she was in love with him and he took her virginity and lied about why he broke up with her just so he could get back to you, but you are probably not an object of desire because you are, in fact, the model-like princess of Genovia, and he is probably not the ruggedly handsome son of a Hollywood producer. Also, you may be incredibly depressed over your first true love leaving for another country because he thinks school is really important and he wants to change the world and be "worthy of you," but that boyfriend will probably not be a super-genius developing a surgical arm in Japan and your "worthiness" will probably not be determined by the gross domestic product of a small European enclave.