Asia has inverted many of America’s courtship rules. While princess-ish femininity holds strong, it is the boy who acts aloof to generate female interest and not the other way around. No cheesy pick-up lines here ladies: instead, picture Darcy hounded daily… Read More ›
Yoga is a Chick-Lit standard. Heroines, busy with their work, balance all that stress and havoc on their bodies with Yoga, Pilates, and Yogalates (a mix of the two). Between dinners and drinks, diet cokes and chocolate, the Chick-Lit heroine… Read More ›
On day 17, April plays a damsel in distress wearing monochromatic browns in honor of My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Frump Girl. In one of the best scenes ever written, Toula realizes her boyfriend remembers her from a time before… Read More ›
Princess Peach—a well-known Princess-in-Pink—is not the biggest princess phenom is Taiwan. She takes second place to the Taiwanese Baby-Doll Princess. On day 16 of Romance in Real Life, BwB continues our week-long Distress in This Dress mini-series, and April plays a damsel in distress wearing… Read More ›
V-neck sweaters, pencils skirts, black pumps, little red glasses, and glossy up-do’s… We all know the tropes that give working girls such as secretaries, librarians, and teachers their Temptress Twins: the hot secretary, the hot librarian, the hot teacher (original,… Read More ›
From Givenchy to Jimmy Choo, fashion and romance seem to go hand-in-hand. Can you even imagine Audrey Hepburn without her signature black dress or Carrie Bradshaw without her Blahniks and her designer bags? We know that “clothes make the man,” do clothes… Read More ›
From man’s bacon obsession to the Chick-Lit Heroine’s addiction to chocolate and Diet Coke, Romance novels and Rom-Coms have established quite a few food tropes. These tropes don’t just tell us what to eat; they tell us how to eat, too. There… Read More ›
Playing with several tropes at once (the teach-me-something trope, the love-is-not-lost-in-translation trope, the quirky-foreigner-in-an-exotic-land trope), Books with Benefits went out into the bustling city to learn how to speak Chinese. On Day 11, April tries to find men who will… Read More ›
Female wisdom passed down from generation to generation, insists that the key to making a man love you involves two things: looking nice and pretending to like what he likes. In the land where manga is king, Books with Benefits… Read More ›
