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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Those Mills & Boon Nurses

Did you ever go through the Mills and Boon or Harlequin stage? I did, the ‘60s and ‘70s ones because I was reading from my mom’s collection. And don’t knock them, I learned so much from them too - not about things like relationships and love as you would suspect (because whatever they call it, it’s all fantasy, hehe), but about things like geography, politics, botany,  general info, etc. How many times have I answered trivial pursuit or jeopardy questions correctly thanks to information I gleaned from reading five and dime type of romance novels? Innumerable, lol. I especially liked reading those nurse romances. The work and that kind of environment were interesting to me, even if I knew that I’d never actually be a nurse myself since I was too wussy about blood and guts. I liked their uniform too - the white dress and cap. There was something romantic and noble about the ensemble, something like that of a nun’s (btw, back then I thought some of the nurses were actually nuns because they were called “Sister”, hee!). Nowadays, of course, you’ll hardly ever see a nurse wearing the old attire, except maybe in costume parties. Out with the white dress and in with the more practical nursing scrubs.
Scrub clothing isn’t as romantic as the old uniform, but I can imagine it as something really comfortable to wear, something that medical professionals would be grateful for when they pull a 24-hour shift. Scrubs look really utilitarian and unisex though so I can’t imagine today’s nurses in the stories I used to read—which makes me wonder if they still write those nurse romances. Not without the white dress and cap, I bet. Anyway, romantic novels aren’t what they used to be.

2 comments:

Sharkbytes said...

Sorry- I can't bear romance novels.

spinninglovelydays said...

I loved them in my early teens even though I did think they were ridiculous. Nowadays, I get sporadic urges for some super light reading and get hold of one.