The Magical Healing Hoo-Hoo
I read Michelle Buonfiglio's Romancing the Blog post last week, and it's a hoot. She recalls, with affectionate snarkiness, the romanceisms we've all become accustomed to: the roving eyes, the wandering hands, and the poor heroines' lips that are bitten, worried, and chewed yet still stay full, moist, and petal-soft.
My personal favorite? "He seized her, pulling her against the long, hard length of him."
I love it when they're subtle.
The comments degenerated, as most discussions in romancelandia do, to what to call the all powerful hoo-hoo. Michelle proposed a workshop at RWA on penile and clitoral terms for the euphemistically challenged; I don't belong to RWA so let's have our own!
I have to start out by saying that I have a personal boycott on pebbled nubbins. Don't wanna read no more nubbins, pebbled or otherwise.
"Velvet sheath." Now, I'm pretty happy without graphic depictions of moisture, but you know there's gonna be some. Wet velvet sounds graphically unsanitary. It is usually accompanied by the word "impaled," which makes me think the story's going Stephen King on me and the hero's going to slice clean through the top of her head.
"Feminine passage." Most often paired with "feminine folds," I can only guess that the author really, really, really wants me to understand that this is, indeed, a girl.
"Flower of womanhood." See Tiger Lily above. Put your own de-flowering or thorny bush joke here.
"Damp heat." Okay, I can take that. Damp I can handle. Damp is good. It's when the hoo-hoo starts weeping, sighing, sobbing and drenching that I begin to worry the girl needs a doctor. No hoo-hoo should drip.
"The Enchanted Grotto." I've mentioned this one before, and it still squicks me out. A grotto is full of dirt and rocks and slimy moss, no? (One of Michelle's commenters read of a heroine's cavern. Unfortunately, at that point in the story the hero's face was at the critical juncture and she had visions of him yelling "Hellooooooooo" just to hear the echo.)
I like the simple approach. Overwrought descriptions make me laugh. Or cry. Some of the best scenes I've ever read just said, "her."
What about you? Words for the hoo-hoo?
posted by Robyn | 6:15 PM
11 Comments:
I read one years back that actually described the hair more--it went something like "he parted the soft down that shielded her secrets". I was like, what?
Last night I went through your old posts and spent a good hour giggling and guffawing. Esp. the Johanna Lindsey covers--those were some of the worst ones of her whole collection, I agree! thanks for the snark!
"Soft down." Now I'm thinking ducks.
Yes, Johanna is the queen of the clinch cover!
The cover makes me think of that vulgar expression "puttin' the boots to her...."
Took me a long time to figure it out.
Urgh, nubbin. I hate that word, and I've never used it. There is nothing sexy about "nubbin". Nothing. (Or "nuthin", if we want to rhyme.)
Since I write graphic, I tend to use the C word. It used to bother me, and I still don't generally SAY it, but I've come to really like using it and find it hot to read. It's nice to have another word to use for really hot scenes (I don't use it in the more romantic ones, but in the monkey sex ones, oh yeah.) It's nice to just be able to call a spade a spade (so to speak) instead of euphemizing.
JMO. Once I got used to it, it didn't bother me.
Well, I suppose if the heroine has a "cavern" it explains why the hero has to be of such a, ahem, size.
Puttin the BOOTS to her??? Scary.
DQ, I'm all for calling it what it is, especially in context with your particular story.
HEE, Carla!
I just remembered hearing one that is kind of odd: cafrina. Not positive on the spelling, and I think it's some kind of latin or italian slang for a ladies..ahem... hoo-hoo.
I am too young to be participating in this conversation...
ROFL! Dude, it's hard enough to READ the older romances without snarking, but you try WRITING a sex scene and coming up with something non-offensive.
My 5-year-old son calls his wanker his "chum."
I like "her," too. I try so hard not to name anything. All names just sound ridiculous to me! The clinical names sound too ... clinical.
What can you do? Michelle's right. It's SO HARD!!!!!
You don't want to know. I think I've used all of these. *Blushes*.
Maybe not soft down. LOL.
I really want to use "Who Ha" or "Woo Hoo" some day. LOL.
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