Written by Nastassia Tsialpuk
From eye rolls at cheesy movie scenes to “ugh”s to our friends when walking past couples kissing, the modern disregard towards romance is evident. It is enough to just look at Vogue’s “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” by Chanté Joseph to understand Gen Z’s complex relationship with relationships and how romance is becoming something that people find cringeworthy. Even in fiction, characters that fill the “hopeless romantic” niche, like Charlotte York of Sex and the City or Ted Mosby of How I Met Your Mother, are often shown as naive or delusional, with an emphasis on the hopeless. However, simultaneously, sales of romance books are at an all-time high, with the romance and sagas category in the UK having grown from making approximately £20m annually for two decades to £53.2m in 2022 and £69m in 2024. This suggests that despite all of the disdain towards the concept, we, for some reason, continue to consume media centered around love. So, in this day and age when being “nonchalant” is cool, why do we love to hate on romance so much? Or are we simply too afraid to admit we desire it?
Romance is something we can see being dismissed both in real life and in the media. Charlotte York has often been deemed the boring one of the group, with some considering her views and goals of marrying and starting a family to be too traditional or sometimes even antifeminist. However, isn’t feminism all about giving women a choice? The aforementioned Vogue article explained that people avoid showing their significant others online as an act rooted in feminism. Towards its conclusion though, the article argues that there is “no shame in falling in love. But there’s also no shame in trying and failing to find it—or not trying at all”, explaining that women choosing not to make their social media profiles centered around a partner is an act of rebellion against the ages-old “spinster with cats” stereotype often prescribed to single women. While reducing stigma around staying single is most certainly a step in the right direction, I believe it is also important not to disregard the first part of the sentence, which states, “Obviously, there’s no shame in falling in love,” because if we simply shift from shaming one group of women to shaming another, are we really making any progress? It is important to find a balance between not making one’s life entirely revolve around a partner, while also not quashing hope for a genuine connection.
However, if our society seems ashamed of seeking out relationships, how do we explain the huge boom in sales of fictional romantic stories? First of all, like many things, it can be interpreted as a recession indicator. Similarly to the lipstick index, according to which sales of small luxuries that bring us joy skyrocket when the economy is in crisis because they offer us what little reassurance we can afford, romance books appear to offer consolation in bleak times. According to The Guardian’s writer Ella Risbridger, the fact that romcoms are flying off the shelves shows that in these turbulent times, what we crave is connection.
This brings me to my second point, that maybe in some cases, people dismiss romance in public, but deep down do desire it. A reason for this could be that nowadays, in a culture perpetuated by situationships, textashionships, and ghosting, romance feels like something so fragile and fleeting that you’re afraid to even admit you want it, as if it might slip through your fingers if you’re not careful. Sometimes, a desire for love can be something you think about alone late at night, but are too afraid to say out loud out of fear of sounding too naive for having faith in something so speculative. It can also be something scary to admit simply because it is so personal and raw, similarly to how people often struggle to share their feelings or say “I love you” in their native language. Maybe, as Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw put it, “…looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love,” is something so hard to admit because it is so real, and one of the truest feelings one experiences.
Finally, a third reason why romance in fiction is booming even if we have mixed feelings about it in real life stems surprisingly from the power of TikTok, or more specifically, #Booktok. Before, the publishing industry’s standards were dictated by critics who decided what was “quality literature”, which in a patriarchal society was not always favourable to women’s tastes as well as women’s writing. In her research, Alysia De Melo discusses how even iconic female authors like Jane Austen were praised by reviewers for the masculine qualities of their writing, while being scrutinised for their work’s more feminine aspects. These patterns can still be seen in the modern day, where oftentimes critics leave genres that carry more feminine attributes, stories, and interests such as romance out of their recommendations. Even outside formal recommendations in newspapers, in broader social discourse, romantic stories are often labelled as frivolous or just “chick flicks”. Even The Devil Wears Prada originally had to scramble for a budget due to being labelled as a “chick flick” simply because it was a story centered around women. This, however, has been shifted to some extent with the emergence of online book-related communities, where readers have gained agency over book and author recommendations. Since then, female authors and stories have increased in popularity, and there’s been a huge growth in sales of romance and romantasy stories. From these developments, we can see how, through a patriarchal lens, romance, both as a genre and an aspect of life, can frequently be dismissed as “frivolous” or “silly” simply because it is associated with femininity.
Having established a few theories for why romance is so dismissed as a genre and despised as a pursuit, it is important to clarify a few points. Of course, the fact that some people may desire romance while pretending not to does not negate the fact that some people truly do not and are perfectly content with it. The desire for romantic love, or lack of it, is entirely unique to every individual, their values, and circumstances. We cannot shame people for believing “hopelessly” in romantic love or for having zero interest in it, and similarly, we must not pretend to be someone we’re not for others’ benefit. The role of romance shouldn’t be ignored – as a genre, it brings people joy, connection, and hope even in the darkest times. In a world where every day, we are exposed to thousands of opinions both in real life and online, fulfilling everyone’s expectations becomes impossible, so we shouldn’t fear admitting to desire simply because it “isn’t trendy” right now. Whether you believe wholeheartedly in soulmates and epic love stories or that Valentine’s Day is a hoax and 21st-century romance is doomed, the best way to go is to stay true to yourself and your opinions, without imposing them on others. In other words, let the hopeless romantics hope.