ABSTRACT
This chapter considers three films that centre on female sex/romance tourism such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Heading South and Paradise: Love. In stark contrast to its typically utopian and even paradisiacal image, an increasingly globalised tourist industry demands to be understood in broader economic and social contexts. Jeffreys takes a diametrically opposed position and retains the term 'romance tourism' to differentiate the behaviours of women from those of men. The sexuality of men in a context of male dominance, she suggests, is 'constructed to confirm their masculinity through practices of objectification and aggression'. Because all three films recount failed or successful North-South romantic entanglements, it is useful to situate them in relation to the romance, or its contemporary reworking, the chick flick. The approach of the three films to labour in general and emotional labour more specifically can initially be considered through a comparison of the scenes showing the heroines' arrivals in their respective resorts.
