The purpose of this thesis is to examine popular male characters trending on the social media app TikTok under the hashtags “booktok” and “bookboyfriends”, with a focus on understanding the construction of their masculinity and determining the qualities that make them highly appealing to a female audience. This will be done by researching the six most popular male characters on #bookboyfriend. Then by close reading the novels which the characters derive from.
This thesis theoretical framework is a mix between romance research, masculinity studies and a female gaze perspective. The thesis draws upon a variety of studies, including but not limited to the works of Raewyn Connell, Laura Mulvey, Janice Radway and Jonathan Allen. The novels researched in this thesis are all heterosexual, written by women and mostly by American authors. These are: Elle Kennedy’s The Deal (2021), Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (2016), Krista & Becca Ritchie’s Addicted to You (2020), Ali Hazelwood’s Love Hypothesis (2021), and Ana Huang’s Twisted Love (2021) and Twisted Lies (2022).
To analyze the male characters, I divided the analysis into two main parts: physical depiction and sexual content. The book boyfriends are portrayed in a way that is traditional to the romance genre, they are tall, handsome, and rich. However, now they are more extreme in everything, instead of just being tall they are massive. Furthermore, they are also more violent than their predecessors especially in the sexual content of the novels. This is mixed with the inclusion of sexual consent which now exists in all the novels. Lastly, the book boyfriends are all male heroes typical to the romance genre but work as a scale where some behave more as alpha males and others as soft boys.
I'm not entirely sure whether the novels by Colleen Hoover and Krista and Becca Ritchie are romance novels. The Hoover seems to be split between two different relationships involving the heroine at different times, so there isn't one central relationship, and one of the relationships does not have a happy ending. The novel by Krista and Becca Ritchie is part of a series so this book does not take the protagonists to the point where the reader sees their happy ending. However, I'm dealing with this in much the same way as I do with Twilight and Fifty Shades, which is to look for the presence of analysis of other books which are romances and/or of romance scholarship.
Here's the abstract:
I'm not entirely sure whether the novels by Colleen Hoover and Krista and Becca Ritchie are romance novels. The Hoover seems to be split between two different relationships involving the heroine at different times, so there isn't one central relationship, and one of the relationships does not have a happy ending. The novel by Krista and Becca Ritchie is part of a series so this book does not take the protagonists to the point where the reader sees their happy ending. However, I'm dealing with this in much the same way as I do with Twilight and Fifty Shades, which is to look for the presence of analysis of other books which are romances and/or of romance scholarship.