Stop Conflating Glamour with Romance
Who else has a fetish for DEFINING THEIR TERMS!
Something that’s come up as I’ve worked on my Lana Del Rey series is I’ve seen people charge her with both “glamorizing” and “romanticizing” various things. She’s “glamorizing” drugs or “romanticizing” violence. And what I’ve come to realize is that glamour and romance are both present in Lana’s work, and yes, sometimes in troubling or taboo ways.
But glamour and romance are not the same. And this matters to you even if you aren’t interested in Lana Del Rey because each quality has different applications and features that can be useful when you need to persuade or charm somebody. Which, of course, we all do—unless you are so rich already that you get to behave however you want. This distinction is especially important to understand if you work in marketing, advertising, or are running your own business.
Specificity matters. So today we’re going to look at the difference between glamour and romance, and what that means for you—whether you work in marketing (like me) or are just a regular person who wants to be more deliberate in your presentation or your storytelling.
Glamour
Glamour is a composition of elements that makes something difficult appear effortless. It’s aspirational. And it exists in a moment suspended. It isn’t part of a story. This is one reason why you’ll find glamour in a lot of still images or artworks or advertisements. In the medium of film or television, you’ll see it in grand entrances or set pieces. Here’s an example of the glamorous grand entrance off the top of my head, from the Valentine’s Day episode in the second season of Mad Men:
This is not a moment of narrative tension—it’s just a chance to show Betty Draper at her most beautiful, her most graceful, fulfilling a mid-century ideal of beauty. No doubt it took Betty hours to look this good, including a trip to the salon and getting her nails done. Not to mention her relentless regime of chainsmoking and eating nothing but Melba toasts. But all that effort is concealed in this moment, this shot. The concealment of effort is the point. This is what allows us to project our own fantasies of beauty and ease onto Betty Draper. Even if we know it’s not real.
This moment stands in stark contrast to the scenes that follow, where Betty and Don are so unhappy together that they can’t properly, ahem, celebrate Valentine’s Day1. This is because one of Mad Men’s core themes is dismantling and unraveling the glamour of the mid-century and nostalgia for the past. In order to dismantle that glamour, they have to create it first, and Mad Men’s costume and production teams did it flawlessly. Which is why Betty and Don became style icons during the show’s run.
So, to sum up: glamour is mysterious and momentary.
Romance
Romance, on the other hand, is narrative. Think of the old-school Arthurian legends and their ilk: Tristan and Iseult, The Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Guinevere. (Lana no doubt is team Guinevere). Romance exalts the struggle, the tension, between two lovers to be together…or the struggle of a hero or heroine to become worthy of their Beloved, a journey, or the Grail. Romance elevates effort and struggle. It turns it from mundane to thrilling. The training montage in Rocky Balboa, therefore, is romantic:
The composition of this montage makes the drudgery of physical exercise into something beautiful, heroic—and it doesn’t shy away from showing Rocky’s effort. The effort is the point. It ultimately serves a narrative function, moving Rocky’s story forward.
Put another way, glamour is a projection of already being who you want to be.
Romance makes beautiful the process of becoming who you want to be.
Both glamour and romance apply a Vaseline sheen over the lens of mundane reality. They are a kind of magic, a kind of spell. They make us see things that are not real—they make us see things differently from how they are. They both obfuscate “the truth” of the exterior world.
Yet somehow they reflect the interior truth about us. About what we truly want. This makes romance and glamour useful artistic and persuasive tools.
I know this might seem like I am nitpicking. And I might be. Blame it on my philosophy training—I’m obsessed with defining my terms. I’m serious, babes. You want to stop having random arguments with people? Step one is make sure you’re both talking about the same thing and you’ve defined it from the jump. Then use only that word to refer to that thing. You know, like, think the opposite of SEO. No search term variations!
What This Means For You
Your task now with glamour and romance is to determine which of these spells is useful to you in your situation—in your work or in your life. Are you marketing a luxury good? Then most of the time, you’ll heavily leverage glamour. Are you advertising a more pedestrian product, or one that connects people? Then utilize romance.
On social media, or in your personal presentation—do you want to give off a sense of cool mystery and aloofness? Personify a certain archetype or ideal? Glamour. Hide the brushstrokes. Present finished looks or projects, rather than processes. Do you want to tell a compelling story about yourself, even if your life feels kind of boring? Learn to romanticize it. Showcase the effort in an elegant way. Treat the effort as beautiful2. You can switch between these modes of presentation depending on what your end goal is, or the season of life you’re in.
When you choose to present yourself in either a glamorous or romantic way, what will happen is that some people will be repulsed by an apparent “lack” of “authenticity.” Just like what happened to Lana herself in 2012 when people were mad she changed her name and allegedly got lip injections. But other people will be taken in and find it interesting. Cultivating a beautifying perspective, whether glamorous or romantic, is not going to appeal to everyone. And that’s ok, because things that appeal to everyone are boring. You are not boring. You are an artist. Whether you hide the brushstrokes or not is up to you.
I hope this was helpful, and thank you for reading!! Also, would anyone be interested in a standalone newsletter about the glamour and tragedy of Betty Draper? Because I have Thoughts.
More specifically, DICK WHITMAN is not able to perform.
I hate to say it, but a lot of tradwives are very good at romanticizing their efforts. You’ll notice that this irritates many people and magnetizes others.