Okay so like, seeing the way that reylo is shipped made me realize something.
A vast, vast majority of the reylo blogs I see are 15/16/17 year old girls, and I can’t actually say I’ve seen any that aren’t that specific demographic. What that says to me is that the issue with Reylo isn’t teenage girls romanticising abuse, it’s with the way that romance is sold to young girls.
I consumed a lot of “girl” media when I was younger, I read so many YA romance novels. And I know that a lot of people are aware of this because of all the jokes about “brooding YA love interests” but it’s really obvious the way it bleeds over in the fact that young girls, when presented with this angry, abusive character, automatically interpret him as a love interest. They hear the “I can take whatever I want line” and there are so many similar lines that have been painted to them as swoon-worthy. Young girls are taught to see the anger and aggressiveness characters like Kylo display as attractive qualities- especially when combined with his conflicted nature, which shows them he’s in some way “redeemable.” The “save the angry misunderstood loner from himself” narrative is sold to teenage girls so frequently that it’s almost impossible not to look at the way Kylo talks to Rey and see dozens of books I read when I was a kid.
Everyone remembers Twilight, how young girls were crazy over it and thought Edward was the boy of their dreams despite him stalking and manipulating and abusing Bella, because he was painted as such a romantic, misunderstood character. It was obvious with Twilight, because it became so endemic and everyone read it, but how many adults can say they’ve read a romance novel targeted at teenage girls in the past five, ten years? Because, let me tell you, Twilight is not alone in painting abuse as love, it’s just a very famous (and, admittedly, somewhat extreme) example.
Even ignoring the whole possibly-incest part of reylo, which is an equally nasty aspect in and of itself but not something I feel I can or should talk about, the biggest problem I see with Reylo is that the writers wrote him in a way that was most likely meant to be scary and abusive and threatening, and young girls are interpreting that as romantic, and the issue I see with that isn’t the shippers themselves, for the most part, but the kinds of things that society paints as romantic to young girls. So, yes, absolutely call out reylo for its myriad problems, but remember also that a lot of shippers are going to excuse those problems cause they’re young and this kind of cruelty is what’s been sold to them as romance for a long time.
Not here to endorse any ship-shaming.
But this is an important thing to remember. Society has created a niche and asked young girls to internalize it, and then when they do, it seems kind of hypocritical to place the entire fault for that on them. Call out the media on this bullshit and have meaningful conversations with young women who enjoy those depictions about why they like them and how they can be harmful. If you’re just sitting back and shitting on young girls for their like of this or that ship which may display abusive tendencies, you’re ultimately just shitting on young girls, not solving any of the problems you’re lamenting about.
This being said, my primary thought while reading this was: How convenient is this for teenage nice guy™ nerds? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s also that teenage girls aren’t dumb, and many of them enjoy the angsty romance while also recognizing that holy crap, you don’t actually want that in real life. Because even 15/16/17 year old girls usually have a friend who’s dealt with harassment or stalking. Sometimes indulging the immature angst in a fantasy world that they control is a good pressure valve.
We talk a lot about how fanfiction can help young people explore their sexuality. There are dark, twisty elements to sexuality, too, even in young people. And sometimes that needs to be explored in a safe way.
And I hate this idea of having to list your traumas in order to justify shipping something problematic, because there are also survivors who will say it’s still not okay, but can we talk about how, even if we do know which relationships to model our own after, even if we’ve come to realize that the person who hurt us will never be redeemed, that it can be therapeutic to fantasize about that? Or to fantasize about being the one in control of the situation? (And I’m not specifically just referring to Reylo here because I don’t consider their canon relationship to be abusive. They’re enemy combatants.)
I’m also super uncomfortable with the fact that this post was written by a man (please correct me if I’m wrong about that.)
It always comes back to trashing romance novels, doesn’t it? And as always, it’s done by people who DO NOT READ THEM. Seriously. Read romance NOW, read YA NOW–not ten years ago–and then start talking about how women and young girls are being “conditioned” by it.
It’s crap. Women WRITE these things. They are writing fantasies for other women. Sex and romance in romance and YA stories has grown and changed over the years as women’s sexuality has changed. Do you know why there was so much ‘forced seduction’ and ‘no no no okay yes’ in old school romances? Because women at the time did not have the full permission to take control of their own sexuality. It was only ‘okay’ if the man swept you off your feet and you just couldn’t resist anymore.
As that changed, the stories in romance have changed. Yes, you will absolutely find bad boys and dangerous boys and problematic shit, but you will find as much if not more progressive “I’m a woman going after what I want” stories.
The ‘bad boy’ is always going to be a trope. It’s a fun fantasy. But the VAST MAJORITY of women/girls who enjoy reading about a bad boy are perfectly capable of separating fantasy and reality. Please stop infantilizing us by assuming that we can’t do that.
1: There’s a lot more healthy romance and YA fiction out there these days. There is also still a lot of trashy* stuff–and not only in written fiction, but even more so in TV, movies, magazines (especially movies, holy crap)… Many young women are still being inculcated with skewed, creepy ideas of what’s ‘romantic’ and desirable.
2: I’m not blaming them for that, because you know what? Those twisted ideas of romance are all over society, and they tend to start with men. Male authors, male authority figures…men as a demographic have a kind of vested interest in promoting the idea that women are supposed to accept this kind of attitude as desirable, because it keeps all the power in relationships on the male side. Sure, some women absorb this stuff uncritically and propagate it, but when I see it in fiction, it’s usually from male authors.
3: As it happens, I (and many others I’ve talked to) find it very enlightening to indulge in a certain amount of trash fiction and shipping anyway. It’s going to get in your head regardless, but enjoying it with awareness can help you get the toxic stuff out of your system, give you opportunities to work through WHY this stuff pushes your buttons while staying in a private, safe environment, and help you think about what you REALLY want in sex and relationships, as opposed to just what makes your lizard brain sit up and take notice. And THAT is all stuff that teenaged girls really do need and don’t get enough of.
So I’m all for trashy id ships, in conjunction with robust and engaging discussion about them. Forming communities where we can enjoy this stuff without being judged for it, AND be thoughtful about what exactly it is we’re enjoying–that’s where women of every age can learn more about who we are without absorbing the idea that we’re terrible for it.
* ‘Trash’ here is a value judgement on the quality of the media, not the person who enjoys it. Just because it’s bad doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.
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