In the spring of 2014, once I got down to write the novel that will change into The Concept Of You, I didn’t plan on writing one thing that was revolutionary or controversial. I needed to write down a narrative about Solène Marchand, a lady on the cusp of 40 who rediscovers and redefines herself via an surprising love with a a lot youthful man who occurs to be a world-famous superstar. As somebody who was in that age vary and who ought to have simply been hitting my stride in my skilled life as an actor, I used to be seeing the sudden shift in components obtainable to me. The characters had change into extra staid, the alternatives fewer and additional between. I used to be studying the laborious means that in Hollywood, after 40, ladies are a lot much less fascinating. The idea was that we ceased to be sexual beings and had been thus much less beneficial. I used to be desperate to show the business—and our tradition at giant—unsuitable, in my very own little means.
Shortly after the e-book’s publication in 2017, I spotted I used to be additionally bumping up towards one thing else. Some readers had been viewing this story about ageism, sexism, the double commonplace, motherhood, feminine friendship, company, and the darkish aspect of superstar as nothing greater than “fluff.” They centered on the love story and the intercourse to the exclusion of the opposite pertinent themes of the e-book. They known as it a romance. It was not. Romance novels have particular guidelines, and my e-book didn’t comply with them. But it surely was labeled and categorized as such.
Was it as a result of it centered on a lady’s love story? As a result of the principle characters, Solène and Hayes Campbell, two consenting adults, had a wholesome sexual urge for food? Or perhaps it was the duvet and the writer’s advertising marketing campaign? I’ll by no means know. However I began receiving messages from ladies that started with self-conscious and belittling openings like, “This isn’t the kind of e-book I usually learn, nevertheless…” and “I didn’t assume I used to be going to love this e-book, however…” Then they’d proceed to debate all of the themes I’d got down to grapple with in writing the novel. It was clear that they had made assumptions. They didn’t assume a narrative a couple of lady’s midlife sexual awakening may include one thing deeper. They couldn’t think about it is likely to be each tantalizing and complicated.
I’m a lover of literary fiction. I recognize tales with characters who should not essentially like me, who expose me to new worlds and new methods of pondering via elegant prose. I crave tales which can be multilayered and have one thing profound to say. However I additionally get pleasure from tales that entertain, that present levity and occasional escapism. And I’ve at all times tried to write down in an area encompassing each.
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There’s a scene in The Concept Of You when Hayes, a member of the chart-topping British boy band August Moon, is disparaging his work because the group’s founder, and Solène, a classy artwork seller, is imploring him to not discredit what he and his bandmates do.
“It’s artwork. And it makes folks joyful,” she says. “And that’s an excellent factor. We’ve this downside in our tradition. We take artwork that appeals to ladies—movie, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it may possibly’t be excessive artwork. Particularly if it’s not darkish and tortured and wailing. And it follows that a lot of that artwork is created by different ladies, and so we undervalue them as properly. We wrap it up in a fairly pink package deal and resist calling it artwork.”
That sentiment has resonated with me extra within the years since I wrote this line of dialogue than ever earlier than. I considered it when Barbie turned the largest box-office hit of 2023 and the highest-grossing movie ever directed by a lady, but Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren’t nominated for Finest Director or Finest Actress, respectively, on the Oscars. I considered it once I revisited critics’ resistance to Taylor Swift and the dismissal of her fandom for the primary decade of her profession, writing each off as juvenile and unserious. Everyone knows who acquired the final snort there. In April, Swift was named to the Forbes billionaire checklist, turning into the primary musician whose earnings stem solely from her songs and performances to take action. Not so unserious now, is she?
In no different case does Solène’s description of that sentiment really feel extra private than with the responses to her story. Labeling it as “fluff” or “fanfiction”—notably when performed by those that haven’t learn it—is each reductive and dismissive. And this isn’t one thing that occurs to male authors. It’s dangerous sufficient that so many novels with feminine protagonists are labeled ladies’s fiction, whereas these with male protagonists are merely fiction, and that these categorizations exist no matter the truth that fiction readers throughout the board are disproportionately ladies. However assuming a novel with a fictional superstar in a relationship should be primarily based on an current superstar—on this case, the web has determined, Harry Types—is unimaginative at finest and sexist at worst.
There are some good, beloved writers of fanfic on the market, however fanfiction is simply not what I do. Hayes Campbell, like Solène Marchand and the myriad different characters on this e-book, was impressed partially by folks I’ve encountered and by artwork I’ve consumed, and he got here to life because of a wholesome dose of my creativeness. It’s how most writers I do know, no matter gender, create their characters and their worlds.
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My case is only one symptom of the bigger illness within the broader literary world, the place comparable works by ladies and men are given inequitable weight. “First-person narrative by males continues to be printed and reviewed as extra severe and will get much more cash and protection,” creator and educational Kate Zambreno mentioned in a latest New York Occasions interview. “It’s additionally often not dismissed as merely autofiction or memoir, as a substitute learn as literature encompassing psychogeography, philosophy, artwork criticism. Even when a lady is doing precisely that, she’s often nonetheless marketed as merely writing a lady’s expertise or, worse, a mother memoir, if she has kids.”
What’s it about artwork made by ladies and marketed towards ladies that makes us view it as lower than—that makes us assume they’ll’t be complicated and necessary? We don’t wrap male writers’ books in pink and inform readers they’re nice for the seashore. We don’t frown upon customers of male fiction as juvenile. We don’t scale back their writing to fanfiction and fix a star’s title for clickbait. Backside line: we don’t undervalue them and their work.
I by no means got down to write a novel that will spark this type of debate. Hayes and Solène’s story has made readers take into consideration their company and ambition, about love and getting old and the that means of human connection—and it’s made them snort, cry, wallow, and sigh within the course of. Maybe it’s artwork, in any case.