Double Standards, by Judith McNaught (review)

I officially love Judith McNaught (at least her contemporary romance). Which will not deter me from criticizing her. As a matter of fact, I suspect that I love her writing even more because I know I love it in spite of everything that riles me about it. McNaught doesn’t rub me the right way. And yet, I still get caught up in her stories and feel for her characters and know exactly what she’s talking about. At the same time as she defends opinions which I strongly disagree with, she manages to write the love stories that are closest to my heart and my experience, to tell me all over again how I fell in love. Hell, gimme more.

Self-made multimillionaire playboy CEO Nick Sinclair falls in love with small-town, virginal secretary Lauren Danner. Welcome to Ms. McNaught’s world! I don’t even know why I like it. And in a way, I don’t. I’d like to convince you that this isn’t what the novel is about, that the jet set gatherings, designer clothes, jewelry and charity balls are only there for show, for fun, kind of like reading about the gowns the princess wears in a fairytale… But that’s not even what irked me. What did are the infamous “double standards” the title tells of. You’d expect in a romance novel written by a woman, such a title announces the questioning, ridiculing and final destruction of said double standards. You’d expect the author to be in earnest when she puts the words in her hero’s mouth:

We don’t want or expect a woman to be inexperienced. We’re liberated too, you know. You have the same physical desires I do, Lauren, and you have the right to satisfy them with whomever you wish.

- Double Standards, Judith McNaught (Pocket Books, 1984)

Sadly, double standards are here reduced to an accessory device for the love story. We soon find out that the hero’s liberated view on female desire only betrays the fact that he has never loved a woman, and that the double standards he eventually pulls on Lauren are the sure sign of his true love for her. Because a man who loves you only wants you for himself. And a woman who’s worthy of love talks like this:

I can’t handle casual, indiscriminate sex, and what’s more, I don’t like people who can―people like you! [...]
I can’t detach my emotions from my body, hop into bed and have a wonderful time, and then forget about it. I’d want you to care, and I’d care.

- Double Standards, Judith McNaught (Pocket Books, 1984)

from the Delhi (India) Slutwalk

Now let’s get this straight: I’m all for exclusive relationships, fidelity, and emotional involvement. Not even because I think it’s right, but because that’s the way I happen to be and feel; pretty much like Lauren Danner, you could say. That’s what makes me even more furious. How people like Judith McNaught can (seem to) separate and oppose, virginity/fidelity/emotions/love on the one hand, and experience/promiscuity/sex drive/indifference on the other! What if a person has been committed and faithful to every single person they’ve been with, except they’ve been with several over time? It happens to women just as much as to men.

But much more importantly, casual or uncommitted sex never has to mean it’s indiscriminate or emotionless. You can care a lot, and adore a person for who they are, (and both be single and horny,) without wanting to settle down and start a family with them―which for me is the only reason why you would ever commit. Just because you’re going to have more lovers than husbands doesn’t imply you’re ready to welcome the whole world in your bed! The suggestion of which is so stupid, so absurd, so insulting, so degrading and misogynistic it should never cross any sensible person’s mind. Just because I can handle uncommitted sex doesn’t mean that I’m an easy lay, or that I don’t have feelings!

And don’t you dare tell me that I brought it upon myself. When I hear people say, “Men will respect you more if you don’t have sex too easily,” I think of two things: 1) Such men have serious respect issues and I want nothing whatsoever to do with those woman-hating jerks; 2) Who defines what “easily” is? Do you calculate it in terms of days you’ve known the guy, proofs of love he’s given you, or intensity of your own feelings? If you think I have sex “easily”, you can go talk to all the guys I’ve turned down and ask them how “easy” they think I am… I’m going to be a little nasty, but: before you go about congratulating yourself on how hard you are to get, think of how many men/women have actually made a sincere effort to “get” you. It’s easy to be a virgin when there’s nobody (good enough) to give your virginity to.

[/rant] And yet I loved Double Standards. Well, yes, because if you forget about the sly and, after all, incidental implications of Lauren and Nick’s quarrel over how to handle sex, then I fully and delightfully believe in McNaught’s contemporary love stories. They are the irrefutable argument against all the trash talk that wants to portray romance fiction as an unrealistic, distorted take on love promoting dissatisfaction in real life*. Case in point: there are so many uncanny common points between my own story and Nick and Lauren’s, starting with the main plot itself…

Woman looking for a serious relationship and a family meets womanizing man who won’t promise her more than a casual affair. Woman falls for man and contrives to make man fall for her. She succeeds, happy ever after, the end. Reading McNaught for me is like reading about us, and I never get tired of it. On top of that, I must give her credit for objectively mastering the art of twisting, wrenching and cajoling a reader’s heart. Although her stories are quite predictable, especially once you’ve read a few, somehow it doesn’t stop me from discovering each new one with the enthusiasm and anxiety of the first time. Another evidence that experience and knowledge do not “spoil” anything that’s truly worthwhile…

Since I’m on that again, I’d like to clarify one last thing regarding my stance towards sex. I’ve just expressed my support for a feminist friend’s opinion against prostitution on her Facebook wall. Just because I defend women’s sexual freedom and the equality of women’s sexual desires with men’s, doesn’t make me unaware of the pernicious, unwanted effects a certain kind of sexual liberation has on women. “Is women’s sexual liberation meant to actually free women, or to free men of guilt?” I said. Sexual liberation hardly helps us if it only consists in turning old taboos into new trends, instead of analysing what these taboos meant and implied, and going from there to build a whole new set of values for women and men‘s sexuality.

“[...] You said there was nothing promiscuous about a woman satisfying her biological―”
“I know what I said, dammit!”
“Then why do you look so angry? You didn’t lie to me, did you?”
“I didn’t lie,” he said, slamming the bottle onto the bar and reaching for a glass from the cabinet. “I believed it at the time.”
“Why?” she goaded.
“Because it was convenient to believe it,” he bit out.

- Double Standards, Judith McNaught (Pocket Books, 1984)

This is where, perhaps, Ms. McNaught almost redeems herself. It was convenient for Nick to believe that women were naturally as eager for sex as he was, because it spared him the trouble to wonder what they actually wanted, and made it possible for him to do whatever he liked without feeling responsible or guilty. If women’s liberation means that men can go on wanting what they’ve always wanted, except women now have to want it too, then it’s no liberation at all. Women’s true liberation―and in that way perhaps Double Standards can still claim to a slight tinge of feminism―means that it’s now up to women to set the rules, and to men to respect them.

How do you feel about Judith McNaught’s books? Is modern romance’s treatment of sex satisfying for women? Are you as happy as a McNaught heroine?

* Thanks to the Modern Princesses for the link: Romance novels can be as addictive as pornography (Caution! BS inside)

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