What a [familiar] feeling

FLASHDANCE is "love story" 101. But not the way you'd think.

Feb 26, 2025

Hello, lovers,

Welcome back to The Romantic, a newsletter devoted to the thoughtful, impassioned, and occasionally ruthless dissection of love stories, hosted by yours truly, Meg Oolders, author by day, dreamer by night, and craft-curious choreographer of the world-wide-web adaptation of FEELINGS, the musical.

For many of us, feelings (aka emotions) can be hard to navigate and even harder to express. But one thing they’re not “hard to” is access. Everyone can access feelings because everyone has felt them—I daresay deeply—at one time or another.

When it comes to writing (reading, watching, tolerating) romantic type stuff, getting on board with feelings is non-negotiable. But it’s not the emotional side of Romance that makes it hard (for many of us) to get into, it’s the mechanics. All the blushing and flirting and fluttering and kissing and aching and fighting and humping1 can be intimidating to the unseasoned consumer (or creator) of the genre.

Fortunately, you don’t have to gorge yourself on Billionaire Werewolf Romantasy to understand the fundamentals of feelings. Because while all Romance is love stories, not all love stories are Romance, meaning there’s plenty of room to practice injecting palpable emotion into knowable characters on compelling journeys without the need for cringe-sweat inducing meet cutes or sex scenes.

Case in leotard-clad point – FLASHDANCE.

If you haven’t seen the film, I don’t believe you. 😏

And if you really haven’t seen it, make it a homework assignment to do so. Particularly, if you identify as an artist. Or if you could use a 90 minute escape into a soul-fusing soundtrack wrapped in legwarmers, permed hair, and unbridled passion. (But not the kind you’d think!)

What’s the story?

Behind a gyrating smoke screen of glistening female torsos, lies the story of 18-year-old Alex Owens, welder by day, glistening female torso by night. Upon attracting the (slightly lecherous) attention of her boss, Nick Hurley, Alex embarks on a semi-sweet, semi-salacious romance with her superior, complete with adequate amounts of flirting, fluttering, kissing, aching, fighting, and humping.2

Why am I heckling this perfectly legitimate love story?

Because it's not the love story that matters. The real love story, the one pulsing with character-defining action and heart-wrenching emotion, is the one between Alex and her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, a dream she has no business pursuing outside of how truly, madly, deeply in love she is with dance.

A recent re-viewing of the 1983 film tugged at my heart in all manner of ways I wasn’t expecting. Chalk it up to age, wisdom, and my own decades long affair with creative expression. I was in it, but not for the Romance mechanics humming along in the background between Alex and Nick. I was in it for the all too familiar gauntlet of feelings keeping our protagonist in achingly relatable turmoil from beginning to end.

Hope, doubt, excitement, guilt, frustration, euphoria, heartache …

Any of this feel familiar?

How about yearning?

🔥Hot tip: Anyone who tells you a good love story isn’t 90% yearning is doing it wrong.

We don’t pick up a romance novel to read about how satisfied two people are with their lives and each other. We pick it up to read about how miserable they are without each other. That’s why love stories usually END with a couple getting together. We don’t care what happens next. We care about how they got there.

And we care the most when getting there was really fucking hard.

Flash and feels.

[SPOILERS INCOMING]

FLASHDANCE is full of tasty distractions. Watery dance routines, sweaty weight room antics, and that classic scene where Alex makes lip-love to a lobster while foot fondling Nick in front of his ex-wife and then reveals she’s basically topless under her tuxedo jacket apart from a dickie and cuffs.

But woven through all that eye candy and horny horseplay is a seamless arc of desire, despair, and self-actualization manifested through some intensely emotional scenes, many of which took my (older, wiser, creative expresser) breath away and allowed me to access a whole mess of “romantic” feelings.

“What if I don’t make it?”

Alex asks her mentor, retired ballerina Hannah, who replies, emphatically, “You will.”

What artist (or romantic) doesn’t ask themselves “what if?” every time they try to talk themselves into (or out of) something (or someone) potentially great (or devastating)? And what artist (or romantic) doesn’t seek council and encouragement from those whose path they hope to follow?

I wanted to tell 18-year-old Alex she’d eventually outgrow this part. The second guessing and the reliance on outside assurance. Sadly, I could not.

Feelings accessed: Admiration, hope, fear.

🔥Hot tip: Anyone who tells you a good love story isn’t 90% fear is doing it wrong.

“Get up, Jeannie.”

Alex watches helplessly from the stands as her best friend, an aspiring figure skater, takes a fall on the ice during an important audition. A fall from which Jeannie doesn’t get up. Not because she can’t. Because she won’t.

Feeling accessed: Heartbreak.

“I took a deep breath and jumped.”

Post-coitus, Alex asks her vastly more experienced boyfriend how he managed to leave a life unhappily married in a job he despised and start over. We all know the only way forward (in life or relationships) is FORWARD. Doesn’t make this nugget of truth any easier to accept, no matter how ruggedly handsome (and naked) the person offering it.

Feelings accessed: Admiration, envy, hope, yearning, fear.

“You give up your dream, you die.”

Okay, maybe Nick isn’t completely useless in this story. This line tags a particularly nasty fight between him and Alex after he uses his rich guy influence at the ballet school to get Alex the audition she desperately wants (and in his mind, deserves). Alex resents the fact he helped her cheat her way in and threatens to boycott the audition. At which point Nick puts the fear of death in her.

Not really.

But seriously …

For many of us, giving up on a dream (or a person we love) can feel like a little death. It grieves us to part with it. Especially when we know we could have done more to save it.

Feelings accessed: Guilt, frustration, fear, grief.

“The dresses got old and I just stopped wearing ‘em.”

When Alex returns to the bar where she works, to quit and collect her belongings, she has a brief exchange with a fellow dancer. An older gal who, to this point in the film, has held the role of “resident bitch.” She delivers a short, but powerful monologue about her own dream love story, and the unknowable moment it fell apart.

Feeling accessed: Regret 😭😭😭

“I want so much.”

Also featured in the above clip is Alex’s tearful confession to her priest on the eve on her big audition.

Just four words.

Feeling accessed: OMFG YEARNING!!!!!

“Can I start again?”

A few steps into her audition, Alex makes an unfixable mistake. Instead of forging ahead with a performance deficit or walking out in shame, she asks the table of judges if she can start the routine again. And instead of waiting for them to say yes or no, she walks over to the record player (God, I love this movie) and starts the song over.

Her second attempt is flawless.

Feelings accessed: Euphoria, courage.

🔥Hot tip: Anyone who tells you a good love story isn’t 90% courage …

You get the idea. ❤️‍🔥

Finale …

A great love story cannot survive by meet cute, bawdy banter, and lobster licking alone. To properly honor the romantic experience, and the experience of your audience, you’re going to have to get down and dirty with your feelings.

Luckily … you already know all the moves.

You just need to set them to the right music. 💕