You know what makes me happy? Reading a cutesy romance book where the two leads flirt, hold hands, kiss and do other cute couple things has me kicking my feet and giggling.
You know what DOESN’T make me happy? Reading a romance book where the two leads stumble into a bedroom, lustfully ripping off each other’s clothes, whispering dirty phrases to each other as they tumble into bed and… yeah. You get the picture.
Do you want to know how many times I’ve been innocently reading, and the next thing I know, I’m thrust in the middle of a scene with grotesque words and descriptions that make my eyes bleed? Do you know how much time I’ve spent Googling, “Is [insert book here] smutty?” and wading through the minefield of sexually explicit literature that’s floating around?
It makes my stomach churn.
Call me a prudish pearl clutcher all you want, but I HATE smutty content in books. Smut is the term used for sexual content within fiction, and sometimes readers refer to this literature as “spicy” or “steamy.” These words have become a euphemism to describe books with long, intimately detailed sex scenes.
My biggest gripe with it is how, in the vast majority of cases, it does nothing to progress the plot or develop the characters, and it exists purely for vanity. These scenes show icky depictions of things that should be intimate and sacred between two people, and there’s no need to put it under the spotlight.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James is one of the most iconic smutty romances of the last 15 years, but there has been a recent spike in popularity within the “romantasy” genre. Books like “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas have dominated BookTok, the reading niche of TikTok that is the greatest supporter of smut.
“#smut” has over 600,000 tags alone on the site, and I had to scrub my eyes, clear my search history and reevaluate my life choices after scrolling through that page because of the vulgar audio and screenshots of book pages with sex scenes.
Most casual readers know of Yarros and Maas’ books because of the smut they contain, which is very disheartening. I can personally attest that “Fourth Wing” is not a spectacular beacon of literature, but the book being known mostly for its spicy romantic elements is still wild to me.
Forget Yarros’s fantastical world-building and funny character banter; the sex has the internet in a chokehold.
I hate scrolling social media and seeing readers recommending books based solely on the “spice level.” What happened to talking about intriguing characters and intricate plots? Why has smut become the key thing some people watch for when looking for things to read?
Can you honestly look at me with a straight face and say that a graphic, explicit sex scene that’s five pages long is absolutely 100% necessary to the plot of any book? No. You can’t.
For most people, I think the indulgence factor is why it’s so popular. There’s no judgement from the outside world when you’re reading alone in bed late at night, and fulfilling that obsession is gratifying to lots of readers who have never experienced true romance, let alone sex.
While I can empathize with that to an extent (to be frank, I would love attention from a tall, dark-haired man), smutty books cross far into lustful territory. The content seems inescapable.
This Goodreads chat thread contains various comments of people saying how they stumbled across smut at a young age, and regardless of your views on sex, a person’s first encounter with it should not be in a pornographic manner like this. The solution, whether it’s using an explicit warning sticker or some other indicator on the cover, can be a step toward protecting people from being exposed to this.
Even so, that won’t change how the graphic depictions and vulgarity tarnish the value of the book. These scenes exist only for shock value. It isn’t good writing. It isn’t good storytelling. It’s a shallow hook meant to grab the audience by the throat when there’s nothing of value to offer.
The love stories I remember the most are the ones where each lead truly loved and cared for the other person while growing and learning themselves, just like Katniss and Peeta did in “The Hunger Games.”
I want to watch more fictional relationships unfold without smut. I want to watch them learn to rely on each other and grow. I want to yearn with them. I want to cry with them. I DON’T want to know every excruciating detail about sex and lust and have it be masqueraded as love when it clearly isn’t that.
There is so much more to relationships than sex, just like there is so much more to reading than lustful indulgences. There are bold stories to be told and emotions to be felt that don’t need to revolve around smut. Period.
