Do you know what Italian photo romances were? They were a highly popular form of romance story, told in lovely photographs and done in Italy, with amazing Italian actors, actresses and models!!!!! In Greece and Cyprus we got them in translation through magazines such as Domino (Ντομινό), Romantzo (Ρομάντζο) and some others.
The ballerina in our story was young and very beautiful, and she met a young and beautiful doctor. They fell in love and married, but he volunteered for an organization that helped embattled areas in Africa. He left to go there and sadly got killed. The day the ballerina learnt that he was dead was the day she also learnt that she was pregnant. Miserable and determined, she goes and performs that night, and ends the story in the bright spotlight!
Too romantic, you might say? Yet the older I get the more I find myself drawn again to romance. There is nothing wrong with romance, provided that it is not used to perpetuate stereotypes, prejudices and narrow ideas.
When she was widowed, our ballerina did not go, "Oh no, how can I have a child on my own, will I raise my child well, will I ever find another man"?????? She was shuttered, but she knew that she would get through. She said, "I will raise my child on my own, I can and I will"! To work, I think romance needs to be empowering.
Nowadays, I realize that the Italian photo romances have stayed with me and I write romance stories which directly descend from them. With the Internet, I think I traced the Italian actress who played the ballerina. She is sixty now and, though she has done no botox or surgery, she is still very beautiful!!!!
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