Bad Romance

“They’ll stab you in the lungs and then ask why you’re having trouble breathing.” Romance is a genre that consists of a love story between two characters that is emotionally satisfying because of their happy endings. However, the sad reality of it is that  not everything ends in a happy ending. It is believed that one of our important jobs as humans is to reproduce and keep our economy good and well. Romance is a genre created to psychologically motivate their targeted audience, women, to reproduce with the opposite sex. Although, most romance stories end with an optimistic ending, there are many TV shows, Movies, Music, and books that show the dark side of romance that include domestic violence, sexual abuse, and bullying that target children and young adults. As a result, young people start romanizing the toxic relationships that are being demonstrated to them and think it’s ok to be treated as such for the ending result to be able for women to reproduce and have it benefit the economy. 

Young adult tv shows such as Friends, depict a toxic relationship with the character Ross and Rachel that has many loving and romanticizing the couple. Ross and Rachel are an on and off couple in the show, they are jealous, selfish and immature and have trust issues with each other. Rachel is seen as interfering with every relationship that Ross has gotten in. For example, in season 2 where she leaves a voicemail to one of Ross’s girlfriends, Julie, that ends the relationship.. Ross on the other hand was very distrusting towards Rachel although Rachel showed no signs of why he should question her loyalty and was dismissive towards her feelings. Despite the toxicity of the reltionship, Ross and Rachel ended up having a baby girl Emma. Pathos is used when depicting such relationships to create strong emotions to the intended audience, women, because women have stronger emotions and love is a strong connection to another person, this connection can be difficult to handle and makes us do things without reason which makes it all the reason to target women. The rhetorical strategy used is repetition, as the couple seemed to be on and off throughout the show however still had a baby. This demonstrates to young watchers that being  jealous, selfish and immature is alright in a relationship and you should have sex and have a baby. 

Romance Novels such as those written by Colleen Hoover have been a controversial topic in the book community. Colleen Hoover’s books are known to romanticize toxic relationships as well. In one of her books November 9, Fallon the protagonist, has been in a terrible house fire leaving the left side of her body scarred. She ends up falling in love with a guy named Ben, who had been following her around and writing about her in a novel. Turns out he was the cause of the fire and in one point of the book Ben talks about him thinking about what panties she has on. ““Nice to meet you both.” He points down the hall. “I’m gonna follow Fallon to her room now so I can see what kind of panties she has on.” (Hoover, November 9). He says this outloud in front of people before discussing it with her which I find disrespectful. In another part of the book Ben undresses Fallon while she was standing still to see her scars. Fallon did not give consent. Colleen Hoover targets young women readers and having her romanticize Ben as he is being disrespectful towards Fallon makes young readers think being disrespected is a form of love. Pathos is once again used to build a confusing emotion because Hoover uses the disrespect from Ben to make Fallon feel flattered. The rhetorical strategy Hoover uses is repetition as Ben is seen disrespecting more than once. In addition to Colleen Hoover 

In Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina Love in a Maze ” deception is the main theme of the novel. The protagonist in the story described as “a young lady” who attends a box located in the playhouse was experiencing women entertaining men whom she was fascinated by. She then sees a fellow social acquaintance Beauplaisir whom she has long admired. The young lady dresses up as a prostitute and names herself Fantomina, she then decides to approach Beauplaisir and tries to do what she experienced back at the box and make Beauplasir fall in love with her. However, the young lady behind Fantomina is young and has yet experienced sex. After going after Beauplaisir and getting attention, he expects for Fantomina to do what any prostitute is to do. Fantomina tries to stall to try and not have sex with Beauplaisir but Beauplaisir insists and forces him onto her. This is considered as rape however, Fantomina still falls in love with Beauplaisir. She then continues on to disguise herself as a country maid named Celia, Widow Boomer, a woman named Incognita who wears a veil to hide her face. All these disguises she plays off were to entertain Beauplaisir. This is not a healthy ideal relationship as of the TV shows “Friends’ ‘ and Colleen Hoover’s “November 9th”. These romance genres made to target Women are depicting abusive unhealthy relationships in order to blind women into not seeing the fault in men and having babies to support the economy we live in. The ending of “Friends’ ‘, “November 9th” and “FantominaLove in a Maze’ ‘ resulted in the women having a baby.

In conclusion, the rhetoric in romance genres is to get women to reproduce and keep the human race alive and well to support the economy. In order to blind women into doing so, directors and authors are normalizing toxic unhealthy relationships and romanticizing them so women won’t see conflict and have kids with any man, good or bad. As seen in young adult tv shows such as “Friends” and young adult books such as Colleen Hoover books and seen in the early 1700s with Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina Love in a Maze”.