You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is romance author Nisha Sharma. 🔥

Nisha is a young adult and adult contemporary romance writer whose books have been included in “Best Of” lists by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, Time Magazine and more. When she’s not writing about people of color experiencing radical joy or teaching about inclusivity, Nisha’s hitting the books for her PhD in English and social justice. Nisha is the author of an awesome trilogy called If Shakespeare Were an Auntie, the third installment of which just came out last week. It’s called Marriage & Masti and it’s an absolute delight!

So we’re going to hear a bit more about Nisha’s own writing in this episode. But the main reason I asked her to come on is to discuss one big question: What is happening with bodies in romance novels?

The romance genre has always been a big business, and one of the most reliable ways for women to make money as writers. But in recent years, it has delightfully exploded in terms of diversity of all kinds. Of course, this has been uphill work. So we’re going to get into why we are both seeing more fat rep in romance—but why you’ll also still encounter so many conventionally beautiful, thin white heroines. And she also answers the question: Why are there so few fat male love interests?

You can get all of Nisha’s books —and all the other romances we discuss in this episode! —through the Burnt Toast Bookshop. Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

PS. If you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!

Episode 158 Transcript

Nisha

So I live in the Philadelphia suburbs. And I’m also South Asian, the eldest daughter of immigrant parents. I spent about 10 years of my life in corporate as a DEI professional. And now I just write, and I study, because I’m back in school to get my PhD in English and social justice as well. 

Virginia

We’re going to talk about bodies and romance novels today. To give a little backstory, I am somewhat of a recent convert to reading romance—within the last five years, I would say. Other than reading a few Harlequin romances and VC Andrews books as an 11-year-old and having my mind blown. Oh and then I definitely had a JD Robb phase in my twenties. I was really into that whole futuristic cop, hot billionaire husband plot line for a while…

But I kept putting these books down because I did not feel myself represented. They were fun, and they were a hot read, but it was like okay, it’s great that all these skinny pretty people are having great sex. It never really resonated with me. 

And then I read Talia Hibbert. And that was my first moment of, Oh, okay, this can be something really different. It was such a revelation, as a fat woman, to read a book centering the pleasure of fat women.  So I would love for you to talk to us about how romance has traditionally approached bodies, and how you see that evolving.

Nisha

That’s a really good question. I think before I answer it, I want to give a little disclaimer. I am a person who is in a fat body, I’ve been fat my entire life. And I have disordered eating patterns. Because, you know, doctors are great at making you feel terrible about the bodies that we’re in. And I’ve been on a fertility journey, which all of you know, anyone who’s also experienced any sort of infertility in the US specifically, a lot of the medication they give you can amplify a lot of the medical concerns that often are associated with individuals in larger bodies. So that’s the first disclaimer. 

The second is, as a writer, there have only been two books in my repertoire where I have fat bodies on page. And a lot of it is not necessarily me writing thin characters versus fat characters, a lot of my characters just aren’t described in a particular way. 

Virginia

I noticed that. 

Nisha

It was not intentional at first, but I’ve become more intentional about the way that bodies are presented in my own work. I think that’s important for me to level set before I answer the question. 

But in terms of the history of romance, I’ve been in the industry for quite a bit of time. My first book was published in 2018. But I have a history in the industry and the history of romance is something that I’m very familiar with. And so we have to look at where it started, right? 

The romance industry today has its roots in Europe, specifically in the UK. It then went from these category romances in the UK to Harlequin in Canada. And then we see the boom of published romances in the US. 

So romance is very Eurocentric. And Eurocentric ideologies about bodies are often rooted in racism. History is not linear, there are multiple ways of looking at history. But the one that resonates with me the most is that this colonial influence in Romance also has historically seen Black and Asian and Latinx bodies—that are larger or that are not the Eurocentric body types—as being non-conforming, ugly, lazy…all of the stereotypes that you find associated with fatness. So I think that we have to acknowledge the colonial roots of romance.

The other piece of it is that we have to see who’s making the decisions about romance. One of the most recent reports about representation data showed that still over 70 percent of the people making decisions about which books get published are white. And a vast majority of the leadership in publishing are men. So we are looking at white men, straight white men in a lot of situations, who are making decisions about romance from the very top. This influences bodies and the way that bodies are portrayed on the page. And this is influencing the way that finance and marketing work, and all the way down to whether editors are able to purchase books with characters that have larger bodies in them too.

Virginia

That is so exasperating, especially when you consider that the majority of romance writers and readers are women. And yet, this male power system at the top is is dictating what women are publishing and what women are reading. I just want to name that imbalance. That feels like an important piece of this. 

Nisha

It is. On the other side of it, we can’t just point the finger at publishing. We can’t just point the finger at colonialism. There are also readers who will say that they just don’t understand fat bodies. So we have this societal response of, “I don’t find that attractive, I don’t understand how that’s attractive.” That’s also a really terrible terrible take that is still prevalent today.

Virginia

If readers are conditioned to think certain bodies are attractive and certain bodies are aspirational and then you combine that with the fantasy element of romance, readers are gravitating towards romances that perhaps that give them this fantasy. And it matters less about whether they feel like their own bodies are being reflected. But that breaks my heart! That feels really sad.

Nisha

I’ve always said that romance is having a conversation with the world around it. It’s a back and forth. It’s never really a reflection of the world, but it’s also not a predictor of the world to come. It’s this back and forth. As romance progressed, we did start to see the rise of different body types in romance. 

But I specifically remember, as a voracious reader in the 90s, the books that had fat bodies in them, it was often a woman who was ashamed of her fat body. And this shame came from how they didn’t fit in with the society around them and how the hero had to be the person to be like, “I still find you beautiful anyway.” There is a residual effect of that sometimes still, in our genre. In the 90s, it was a thing. 

Virginia

Jennifer Weiner’s Good In Bed is the classic example of that. It was a hugely revolutionary book, in many ways. And, it is a woman being told by a man that her body is acceptable.

Nisha

And I will say, I think that with this influx, the acceptance of marginalized stories, of queer stories, of authors who are writing characters who are older—which is also very important here—we’re getting stories about bodies that are outside of the traditional white, European body that was traditionally acce