[Note from Frolic: We’re so excited to welcome author Gina Fattore to the site today. she has some great suggestions on what to stream. Take it away, Gina!]
The instinct to binge romantic comedies can be powerful in a crisis. Happy endings for everyone! Plus, a few laughs, some cute outfits, maybe a good makeover montage. The heroine of my debut novel, The Spinster Diaries, loves rom coms so much that she’s actually trying to write one, but who’s got time for that during a worldwide pandemic? Much more fun just to watch them. Unless, of course, you’re a singleton on Day 27 of being home entirely alone, distressed about your romantic future, and feeling the sting of physical and emotional isolation most acutely. In that case, maybe the sight of two incredibly good-looking people FINALLY kissing after 98 minutes of adorable banter doesn’t seem so entertaining to you anymore. Maybe it makes you want to…
- Ugly cry like Dawson after Joey has just run off to be with Pacey
- Eat all 28 of the single-serving bags of Skinny Pop you ordered online and had to wait a week to get delivered from an office supply store
- Throw open a window and scream, “Why?! Why does love come so easily to these women? Is it because they all look so good in sleeveless outfits?”
If this scenario sounds at all familiar to you, you may need to take a break from rom coms and supplement your viewing with a genre I’m going to call Ladies Who Have Other Stuff Going on in Their Lives Right Now, Thank You Very Much. Do these intelligent, complex heroines have time to pursue a romantic subplot or two? They do. They most certainly do. But finding a romantic partner is simply not their number one priority at the moment. Instead, they’ve got big career dreams to chase, artistic ambitions to fulfill, social conventions to defy, baseball games to win, and personal demons to conquer. So without further ado…