How might one apply to become Fabio's PR spokesbloke?
Recently I was gobbling material for book covers, to complement the ones I'd thrown together at mikeyclarke.co.nz/apocalypse. Who's splashed across hundreds of 1990s romantic novels? Fabio, that's who.
I bumped into https://nypost.com/2023/06/17/romance-novels-ditch.... Turns out he's got a few things to say about today's romance novel artwork trends:
Kaitlin Olson, a senior editor at Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster, told PW, “More readers are asking for ‘cinnamon rolls’ — described as sweet, supportive and kind types of dudes, and ‘golden retrievers’ — men sporting floppy energy and positive attitude.”
In romance novel publisher-speak, that means male lovers who are more, well, puppy-like, soft and cuddly, and less toxic — certainly not the hard-bodied, fiery Fabio type.
“Hogwash!” declares Fabio Lanzoni, the multimillionaire retired cover boy star of romance novels, who turned 64 last March, and still looks as hunky as ever.
In an exclusive interview with The Post, he scoffed at romance publishing’s “soft masculinity” concept, and blames it on the “progressive woke movement” that he feels is being promulgated by “the political far left and the Biden administration.”
“In life, there are trends, and this is nothing more than a trend. It’s ridiculous, like all the rest of the woke movement.”
“I talk to many people, I talk to many women and the women say, ‘We can’t find real men anymore,’ and they say, ‘We want a real man, not a metrosexual,’ so what they say is happening in the new romance novels is detached from reality. It’s La-La Land.”
As tempting and as hilarious as it may be to blast the "progressive woke movement", as he phrases it, such word choices can be a teensy bit waffly and misleading.
I think we can all kind of see what Fabio's getting at, but might I suggest an alternate blurb?
I ain't got no quarrel with merely broadening romance novel artwork! Seriously, ladies, it's all good. Might these squishy golden-retriever beta-males better satisfy your cravings for passion? Might you hunger for more varied feasts of resplendence and raunch? Sure, why not? Betas welcome, says I. Loads of room for all.
But what I'm protesting is today’s sterile glut of nothing BUT squishy betas.
Don't get me wrong! I realise that I, friggin' FABIO, am the LAST person positioned to critique romance art gluts. Come on. For much of the '90s, most bookstores felt like I'd wandered inside a glittery disco mirror ball. Wherever I stared, I beheld ONLY my own chiselled jaw, my luscious locks, my rock-hard abs, and my modesty pouch. It's like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox but beefcake. These should be SOMETIMES foods, as Sesame Street's Cookie Monster so sagely reminds us all. He's my Yoda. Yumyumyum.
Yet '90s romance publishers strained our fandom’s patience by squidging my friggin’ likeness into every damn crevice imaginable. You know Lake Vostok? It's sandwiched between four kilometres of Antarctic ice cap above and aeons-ancient bedrock below, pristine and undisturbed for fifteen million years. Scientists recently drilled in search of bacterial life. They instead uncorked an oil-gusher of my own pulped paperbacks. And not my earliest ‘80s work. Recent stuff! I couldn't believe it! My likeness scuttles everywhere! Sometimes I fear I’d always been nine million cockroaches in a trench coat.
Loads of romance fans thus not unreasonably thirst for more myriad fare. And I agree! Bring on the betas and the twinks and the supple squishy femme-b0is. Fair's fair, fellas. Let’s do it!
But our romance publisher overlords have instead switcheroo’d one noxious raunch hegemony with a second. Beta twinks now clog the universe. Exotic invasive plump femme-b0i butt-cheeks routinely displace indigenous muscle-taut glutes. Geologists unshroud antique dino fossils twixt slutty strata of metrosexuals. Mars rovers pierce rock ancient even at the Solar System's creation and a trillion flimsy twinks flop out. They're everywhere. They're the microplastics to my asbestos. They're a wobbly scourge of wuss. Old-school romance fans mourn their missing macho. Those who once feasted on your classic virile masculine vibe, moi, now face famine and drought. Betas are so much empty styrofoam. Fuck ‘em.
Or don't! Whatever does or doesn’t light your fire, hawt-stuff. And that’s my point, really. It’s a huge world. Surely there’s oodles of room for all appetites in bodice-rippers? Let's cater to all tastes. Something for everyone. Let a billion hard-ons bloom.
