I was looking at my bookshelf and my eyes landed on my collection of romance novels. It occurred to me that nearly all of them have a ‘doctor’ character.
Then I gazed over to my general fiction/thriller shelf, and I realized that they too all have a ‘doctor’ character. But let’s focus on romance for a moment. . .
Given we make up a very small fraction of society we are insanely overrepresented in romance novels.
The following ridiculously popular authors all have had a doctor main character: Colleen Hoover, Christina Lauren, Abby Jimenez, Monica Ali, Alex Michaelides, Carley Fortune, and Curtis Sittenfeld, to name a few.
(I will give a pass to doctor-authors because I figure they are tired of reading and want to write from experience as opposed to researching another profession).
Why do I have the authority to make such comments? Well, the majority of my friends are doctors, I’ve dated doctors, I married a doctor, and I am a doctor.
I was musing on why there are so many ‘doctor’ characters, and I landed on a couple possibilities:
1. Perhaps there is the assumption that a doctor’s job is readily understood by society. Obviously, if the main character was a software engineer it would be a bit more difficult to envision the day-to-day requirements and the sexiness of C++ (I know this is likely an old language, but this proves the point that I don’t know what they do).
2. Maybe making these characters doctors somehow feeds into a hero complex (cue: Bonnie Tyler).
3. Or there is the assumption that the profession gives immediate credibility or immediate intelligence, to which I’d say it also comes with the potential for an immediately inflated ego.
4. Do doctor characters fulfil a caretaker role? Someone who is there to suture your cut or ice your knee or sweep you off your feet at a whim?
5. And the most terrifying (and potentially inaccurate) theory of all: do people assume that an A+ in anatomy lab equates to an A+ in the bedroom?!
Spending the past 20 years of my life with doctors I’m still confused why we cameo as the main characters of romance novels so often. I’m not sure we are all that likeable. We definitely don’t have the time it takes to achieve the chiseled abs and biceps that are often seen poking out of scrub tops at the most opportune literary moments.
Should I blame hot, 90’s George Clooney in ‘ER’ or the drool-inducing duo of McDreamy/McSteamy in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’? (Though nothing is more accurate TV medicine than ‘Scrubs’).
But sometimes the descriptions of these leading romance characters are so out of touch with reality, it makes me wonder:
Have you ever met a doctor?
Have you spoken to one at a party? Or seen one out of its natural habitat?
You want a doctor character here we go: enter a middle-aged male/female, who may or may not have eaten or showered in the past 24 hours. Questionable stains on their scrubs that may be food or bodily fluids. Baseline frown lines and a cold or lukewarm cup of half-finished coffee somewhere within 5 feet.
End scene.
You’re welcome.
I’d say if we want a hero, with lifesaving abilities and a heart of gold let’s have more fire-fighter romance novels!
(I’m sure someone out there has a rebuttal for this too)
I would love some thoughts about this, so if you are an author and you’ve written about a doctor can you please tell me why?