What Heaving Bosom?!

There is good Romance. So why do so many women have a hard time with that concept? Romance still seems to be viewed as Bodice-Ripping, Harlequin throwaways when the majority of books haven't been like that for a couple of decades. And most of the Romance readers I know frequently have rousing discussions of things like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights along with neverending discussions of Austin.

Is there crap? My book club read a Cassie Edwards on a dare one time and everyone still shudders at the memory. But I can go to the 'serious Literature' section and find you some garbage there too (not the stuff that has withstood the test of time but every year there are new books with aspirations above themselves)

I think a large part of why Romance gets a bad name is because it's written by women. There are reasons why the Brontes wrote with male pen names and there are reasons why people admit they read James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks or John Grisham in public but they would be ashamed to admit they read Megan Chance, Jeanne Ray, or Phillipa Gregory. "Women's scribblings" have long been minimized and viewed as lacking value (says the woman who writes under pseudonyms and has to pretend no one ever reads it to put it out in public at all).

Romance, like most things in life, is what you're willing to see. You can focus on the crap or you can search out the good parts.