Today, Amanda shared with me a post from writer and illustrator Odette Locke, who recently shared information about her upcoming romance in progress, A Corps of Health and Safety, with some Instagram graphics that lit my brain on fire.
Important note: absolutely no part of this post is a knock against the author, their idea, their work in progress, any of it. This is about the larger implications of what is part of the aspirational fantasy of romance.
(Sidenote: A Corps of Health and Safety is a hilarious title and I love it.)
It’s this part that grabbed me:
Fantasy. OSHA.
FANTASY OSHA.
Does this mean that the fantasy aspects of romance – people trying to be the better versions of themselves, people loving one another as they are – now includes functional governmental regulation and oversight?
I’m completely serious when I say that this is both horrifying and alluring as a concept.
Alluring? Listen, I don’t want to weird anyone out, but the saying “regulations are written in blood” is still true, even if our federal systems for oversight, regulation, and protective rulemaking are being dismantled in favor of exploitation, profit, and really not giving a fuck about actual people.
There’s a lot of absolutely justified disparagement regarding government oversight, particularly now, but I also know that regulation of workplace safety is in dire need of improvement. Hell at this point it’s probably in dire need of EXISTING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Many of the governmental agencies that provide guidance, regulation, oversight, and enforcement that are designed to protect people have been gutted – you probably know this already.
And while I fully acknowledge that there are many, many, maaaaaany places where that regulation and oversight are applied unfairly and that the system we had is nautical miles away from perfect, the loss of much of it is only beginning to be experienced. A fuckass executive order in February halted all OSHA rulemaking, and, as reported by Sarah Kettenmann at Shipman & Goodwin LLP, paused a number of rules under review, including measures and standards designed to protect employees from heat injury. Much like many other agencies on the federal level, the mandate this year and for the next three will be limitation or elimination of enforcement, fewer resources, fewer people doing the actual labor, and of course, no new regulations that might respond to current dangers in work environments.
I kind of love the idea of Magic OSHA, a body that, I’m presuming, provides workplace protection and rules to enforce that protect magical workers. I think that’s a really fucking clever premise – especially because I love stories about the people who do the actual meticulous work behind the scenes. This sounds kinda cool!
At the same time, my brain was ON FIRE WITH RAGE at the idea that the best OSHA we have would be fictional and in a world of magic.
And most of all, that the existence of functional agencies of regulation and oversight for workplaces is now part of the fantasy of romance. Like, holy shit.
Romance as a genre and a shared universe was and is and will be a reflection of the world in which it is written and read, so this is dead-on accurate as a potential required element of a happily ever after, especially in a workplace romance. Functional protections for people in their places of work can be seen as another aspirational piece of romance, alongside all the other things I joke about being scarce in the real world, and plentiful in the books we love.
WOW. That’s bleak.
I hope Odette Locke keeps working on this book, because I need all the aspirational HEA I can get, especially when it comes to safety regulation and oversight.