SBD -- nicknames

[jmc_bks]

'Tis Monday! Smart Bitches Day! And an urge to expound upon romance has spread like a plague across the land. Well, maybe not all across the land, but at least to little pockets of it.

Today's exposition shall be brief, forsooth. Nicknames. Honey. Baby. Sweetheart. Querida. Dorogaya. My little cabbage (pronounced in an appropriately cheese fake French accent, please). Sugarbritches. Bitch. Well, maybe not that last. Although I do love the t-shirts that read, "You call me a bitch like it's a bad thing." Hee.

Will someone please explain to me the nickname "honey girl"? Puh-leeze? Pretty please? I've read it in contemporaries; I've read it in historicals; I've read it in nookieless romances and in erotic romances. Elizabeth Lowell's heroes in particular love the moniker, mostly to refer to women they have a hard on for but don't trust at all. I don't need a literal explanation -- the hero is referring to how sweet he thinks the heroine is...or so I imagine. But I need to understand why so many authors think it is a sexy endearment. Because it strikes me as patronizing (girl, along with the idea that a woman is desirable only because she is sweet and innocent), along with being kind of porn-ish. Truly, when I read the phrase in a novel, the porn soundtrack starts playing in my head -- bow chick a bow wow. And I expect a cheesy sex scene, with really poor dialogue and lighting, to follow immediately. It just seems totally forced and unsexy to me. Am I missing something?

Comments

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

Dorogaya? Gee... where did you read that one?

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

An old 80s romance with a Russian count or prince for a hero. One of the early romances that I read in secret. It took me forever to figure out what dorogaya meant.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

Ah. The standard in the Lindseys I read was 'milaya', I think.

Milaya

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Forgot that one! Except I don't remember it from any other than an older Nora Roberts category.

[(Anonymous)]

But sometimes it works. I love it when Gomez calls Mortica "Cara Mia" I go all melty in my goosebumpy flesh.

I agree that "Honey Girl" is annoying and patronizing and ew ick. I'm not a fan of honey-ish sweetness anyways. Honey Pie is perhaps the most sickly moniker. Gives me toothache.

It reminds me of Nell Carter. I don't know why.

Lyvvie

Honey Pie

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

When I read Honey Pie, I think of the waitress Flo from the TV show Alice's Diner. I think that's what it was called, with Linda Lavin? I couldn't tell you why -- I don't know if Flo ever used the term. That's just what pops into my head. That and "kiss mah grits!"

[eackerman.livejournal.com]

Maybe you have to be Southern to appreciate "Honey Girl". It sounds just fine to my Floridian ear.

I've never been a fan of "cupcake" as an endearment, unless it's used in a supremely sarcastic mode.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

"Cupcake" is probably the reason that I can't like Morelli in the Plum series. Of course, I'm not a huge Ranger fan either. Or a Stephanie fan. Which explains I don't read that series any longer...

[(Anonymous)]

Babe used to drive me batty. I always thought of an over muscled dumb jock whenever the hero said that but Linda Howard pretty much hammered me to death with it and now it barely registers. Until Evanovich who has Ranger use the word as a verb, noun, adjective etc. Ugh.

Anything to do with cats. Kitten especially.

I'm having a brain melt because there is a phrase that I can see coming a mile away and I always pray it isn't about to happen and then WHAM, it's there and I want to cry. Hmmm, I really thought it was kitten, oh, and I never need to read 'sheath your claws, kitten' again in a book.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Babe as a nickname never bothered me, although it isn't really romantic to me -- when I think of "Babe", I think of the older fellow who owned Babe's Market a few blocks down Main Street.

Ugh, kitten. And I'm reading an ebook now where the hero calls his lover Pet. Ick.

[(Anonymous)]

Morticia and Gomez. Sexiest couple ever.

Nora

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever watched any of the original Addams Family tv episodes, but Angelica Huston and Raul Julia in the movies? Verrry sexy.

lowell

[rosario001.livejournal.com]

But "honey girl" is probably the least weird of Lowell's nicknames. I remember the one in which the guy kept calling the heroine "fancy lady", and then there was one in which the nickname du jour was "small warrior". She drove me nuts with that crap.

Re: lowell

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I forgot about "fancy lady"...was that in a historical? I don't remember "small warrior" at all, which is just as well, since that would bother me at least as much as "honey girl."

Re: lowell

[rosario001.livejournal.com]

One of her western historicals... Only Something, the first one in the series, I think (I could never tell those apart from the titles). The hero thought the heroine was a fancy lady (i.e. a prostitute), so he kept calling her "fancy lady" all the freaking time.

Small warrior was a contemp, Love Song For a Raven. Probably Lowell's beta-est hero, but boring as hell, I'm afraid.

Re: lowell

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Did the heroine *know* that the hero thought she was a prostitute and was calling her one? Eew.