Sugar-coated Pills

Val Watson, in "An Avenue of Communication", Orana 41.1 (2005): 14-18 states that:

Of all the articles in the ‘80s, ‘Sugar Coated Pills’, by Marilyn Altus (published over two issues Vol. 20 May and August, 1984) created the greatest reaction with letters published and unpublished as well as requests to reprint. (16)

This explains explains why Dianne Cooper (in Texts of Desire, Ed. Christian Smith, page 26) gives two ranges of page numbers: 70-90, 119-137.

Pam Gilbert, in Gender, literacy, and the classroom summarises and quotes Altus:

Marilyn Altus, in a detailed and very perceptive two-part paper in Orana (1984), analysed the disturbing images and motifs in adult and teen romance fiction, and concluded with the advice that teachers and librarians should not consider including teen romance titles in reading programs (pp. 128-9):

Such a strategy should be absolutely unthinkable to any professional who has examined this genre in-depth and investigated the addictive effect of formula romance fiction ...

Teacher/librarians are duty bound to present balance in the world views to which students are exposed. We must not present them with an unreal, romanticised world where women completely abdicate responsibility for themselves, where "love" is accompanied either by ringing bells or male aggression, where the sexual attraction between male and female is the only thing which matters. Such a world does not exist. (56-57)

I also found this in New Books for Boys & Girls, via snippet view (which is why the quotation ends rather abruptly):

Sugar-coated pills (part 1), Marilyn Altus. Orana 20(2). 70-90 (May 84) Quoting extensively from articles and books recently published on the art of writing romances as well as romances from a variety of publishers, Altus examines adult romances for their common motifs (Adolescent romances are to follow in part 2). Areas examined are: covers, plot, point of view, narrative structure, setting, repetition, metaphor, secondary characters, hero and heroine