Today's Special - - Rose Lerner

Today, we welcome Rose Lerner back to The Romance Dish. Rose's new book, Listen to the Moon is the third installment in her Lively St. Lemeston historical romance series. Janga and I both highly recommend her books. (Read Janga's review of Listen to the Moon) If you haven't read her books yet, the first two in the Lively St. Lemeston series are currently on sale in e-book format. Download Sweet Disorder at $0.99 and True Pretenses at $1.99. Sign up for Rose Lerner's mailing list at http://bit.ly/roselist. Connect with her at Twitter and Facebook. 

Hi everyone! So excited to be back at the Dish. Today I’m talking about makeovers!

There’s a scene in my new valet/maid Regency romance, Listen to the Moon, where my heroine Sukey decides to splurge on dressing up for the New Year’s servants’ ball in Lively St. Lemeston. She wants to impress her new husband John:

She’d never much minded wearing her only gown before. When you dressed for coal-stains and dust every day, it was exciting enough to be clean and curl your hair and leave off  your cap and neckerchief. She’d always felt pretty. But she hadn’t been married then. She’d  had nobody to impress.

John had laughed up his sleeve at her when she’d bragged of Lively St. Lemeston servants’

balls. God only knew what the servants he’d been used to living among got up to at the New

Year. They drank champagne, most likely. They owned evening gloves and dancing slippers.

She was tired of feeling small and young and country mouse, and as if John had done  her a favor by condescending to marry her. She wanted him to pay her court, and feel smug about his luck. She wanted to be better than pretty. She wanted to be beautiful.

There is something about a makeover scene that is so satisfying! That moment when one protagonist sees the other dressed up, really dressed up, for the first time (often at the top or bottom of a staircase), and their jaw drops to the floor...I love it every time! I love it when:

•       someone says, “You do clean up well”

•       the buddy cops have to dress up for a case and see each other in a tux/dress/whatever for the first time (in fact, I love formalwear episodes of every kind)

•       someone takes the shy debutante under their wing and teaches her to dress to flatter her figure/face

•       someone tugs uncomfortably at their tie/the neckline of their stunning gown/dress uniform because they are a rough-and-tumble person, really--but damn they look incredible right now

I COULD GO ON.

So, ten of my favorite fictional makeover/dressing-to-impress scenes and stories!

1. Iron Man, when Tony sees Pepper in that sea-green dress and for a second he doesn’t recognize her—and then he does and he’s so, so happy!

Tony already thinks Pepper is the most perfect, beautiful person in existence, but something about her being at a party (even if it’s an office party) and wearing a fancy dress gives him permission to shift things in a romantic direction—and it makes Pepper feel brave enough to think about letting him. Every line of this scene makes me squee.

2. Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare is one of my favorite Pygmalion romances. I still think about the dowager duchess’s advice for walking in heels every single time I wear them, which is not often (imagine there’s a thread attached to your navel pulling you forward).

The scene where Halford sees Pauline in her “duchess” get-up for the first time during a fencing lesson and is so distracted he falters and gets cut is amazing, even though the fencer in me is screaming WHY AREN’T YOU WEARING A DAMN HELMET? WHY AREN’T THERE BUTTONS ON YOUR FOIL?

3. Laurel Lance dressing up for Tommy’s fundraiser in Arrow (episode 1x6). He’s throwing the fundraiser for her law clinic because he lurrrrves her, so she’s dressing up for the law clinic...but also to say “thank you” to Tommy. Her willingness to abandon her flats for a night is a signal to him that she’s willing to give their relationship a chance.

4. A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev. Mili can barely pay rent. Her wardrobe consists of the same cheap t-shirt in ten colors, so when her friend Ridhi loans her a sexy churidar suit for her wedding...well, I’ll let Samir tell you:

“It had been hard enough when she wore those boxlike T-shirts on her unboxlike body...[T]he last thing he needed to see, to know, was that she blushed with her entire body, that the glistening luminosity of her skin wasn’t restricted to her face, to her arms. Shit, he was thinking about the skin on her arms. And he couldn’t believe how bloody erotic the thought was.”

Yes, yes, and yes. Of course Mili falls down the staircase into Samir’s arms instead of gracefully descending it, but hey, that’s still part of the fantasy, isn’t it? I’m still my normal dorky self under all this silk.

5. Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers, when Harriet wears the wine-colored frock. I love everything about this scene: that Peter told her he wanted to see her in a wine-colored frock because it would suit her honey-colored skin; that she ran back to the car to ask him what kind of wine; that he answered with a vintage and year (“Château Margaux 1893”); that she actually bought the dress because she is totally softening towards him; that when they dance Harriet is totally caught up in the romantic fantasy of the makeover/party while Peter (either out of gentlemanliness or obsession) restricts his conversation entirely to the case; that her feelings are hurt (“Wimsey had never danced with her, never held her in his arms before. It should have been an epoch-making moment for him”); that he SEES that her feelings are hurt and he is SO FLATTERED; and that, best of all, he lavishes theatrically-overdone-but-entirely-sincere compliments on her, including:

“I have waited a thousand years to see you dance in that frock.”

My darlings. MY HEART.

6. 12 Monkeys (the Syfy series), pretty much every time Cole and Cassie have to go to a fancy party as part of their mission--but especially in the pilot, where they attend their first gala at an art gallery. The makeover moment is especially amazing because time-traveler Cole is from a violent, impoverished dystopian future where having really clean clothes, enough to eat, or even just five minutes to relax is an idle fantasy. He loves his suit, he loves her dress, he loves looking at art, he loves dancing, he loves dancing with Cassie, and he’d really like to just take a moment to enjoy the party with her. Cassie is very goal-oriented and doesn’t let him slack for long, but they do get a lovely dance in...

7. Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O’Keefe, in which TV morning show host Maddie has to give her ex-husband Billy, a fighting hockey superstar, a makeover on camera. My favorite thing about this was how the new clothes and look gave Billy a new sense of worth and potential. He’s used to thinking about his body as something that’s just for fighting, that isn’t valuable or worth protecting or paying attention to, and seeing him put on a nice soft sweater and think that maybe he’s more than that...I’m kind of tearing up writing this sentence, actually.

8. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This show is actually pretty giving when it comes to both formalwear and dress uniforms (as is Arrow), but I think the time in the season 1 finale when Jake and Amy had to go undercover as competitive ballroom dancers is particularly worthy of note. Jake blurts out that Amy’s dress made her look like a mermaid (it did) and then he teaches her to dance!

9. Rebecca. Okay this is not really the trope but it’s such a beautiful subversion of it that I had to include it. The second Mrs. de Winter is so desperate to impress her husband with how well she hostesses their big masquerade ball, and she sends away to have the outfit in one of the family portraits copied (at the suggestion of evil housekeeper Mrs. Danvers). She descends the stairs, gleefully anticipating Max’s reaction...

only to have him practically throw up and demand that she change her clothes. Oops! Turns out his dead first wife Rebecca wore that costume at the last ball! Max also hates it when she orders new clothes from London. He doesn’t want her to look grown-up and sophisticated and like a member of his own class; instead, he wants her to stay a grubby poor child he can control. Because Rebecca is not a romance! Seriously, I love Gothics so much. The real villain is always the patriarchy.

10. Jeannie Lin’s My Fair Concubine, another wonderful Pygmalion story. Like Max de Winter, Fei Long doesn’t like watching Yan Ling’s transformation from tea girl to noblewoman...but it’s because he misses her bold outspokenness, now buried under a layer of manners and propriety.

When she and her new maidservant Dao experiment with makeup, Yan Ling loves how different it makes her feel. She’s crushed when Fei Long reacts with shock and criticism...but he is only masking how overcome he is by attraction! As she tries to scrub the makeup off, mortified, he seizes her in his arms and kisses her for the first time:

“[H]is kiss soothed over lips still sensitive from the rough scouring she’d given them.”

Mmm. You know how sports fans watch TV, shouting at the screen? That’s me reading this scene: “MAKE OUT! MAKE OUUUUUUT! Wooooo!”

What’s your favorite makeover moment?

Rose is giving away an e-copy of Listen to the Moon to one person who leaves a comment on today's post. 

John Toogood dreamed of being valet to a great man...before he was laid off and blacklisted. Now he's stuck in small-town Lively St. Lemeston until London's Season opens and he can begin his embarrassing job hunt.
His instant attraction to happy-go-lucky maid Sukey Grimes couldn't come at a worse time. Her manners are provincial, her respect for authority nonexistent, and her outdated cleaning methods--well, the less said about them, the better.
Behind John's austere façade, Sukey catches tantalizing glimpses of a lonely man with a gift for laughter. Yet her heart warns her not to fall for a man with one foot out the door, no matter how devastating his kiss.
Then he lands a butler job in town--but there's a catch. His employer, the vicar, insists Toogood be respectably married. Against both their better judgments, he and Sukey come to an arrangement. But the knot is barely tied when Sukey realizes she underestimated just how vexing it can be to be married to the boss...

Warning: Contains a butler with a protective streak a mile wide, and a maid who enjoys messing up the bed a whole lot more than making it.