Sexual pleasure is a fundamental concern of the romance genre, and while romance novels do prioritize ‘women wanting and getting great sex from partners who know how to deliver’, it is important to develop a more in-depth understanding of how this great sex is represented and achieved, as well as considering the potential patriarchal sexual scripts they adhere to or challenge. Without an understanding of how women (reliably) experience sexual pleasure, it is likely romance authors will continue to centre sexual representations on male sexuality, skewing the reality of what sexual pleasure can and does look like. This article identifies, and then explores, the three main tenets of sex that are characteristic of gender inequality (prioritizing of penetration, arousal concordance and genital size). Close readings of textual examples from the works of current and recent best-selling romance authors (Emily Henry, Ali Hazelwood, Elle Kennedy and Christina Lauren) will serve to explore how, exactly, the false norms and biological myths are either perpetrated or challenged within contemporary romance novels.
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Orgasm from penetration, for romance FMCs, is easily achievable, highly possible and often mind-blowing. It is an idealized version of patriarchal sex – a reparative fantasy – where sex can be pleasurable for women from thrusting alone.
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How responsible is it, in a genre known for its unashamed writing of sex that prioritizes female pleasure (McCann & Roach 2020, 418 and 421), to rely on and resort to representing a penetrative fantasy? Separating acts of manual or oral stimulation from ‘sex’ make the modes which women reach orgasm from most reliably (Kerner 2004, 58; Mintz 2017, 21) seem unimportant, with foreplay operating as a stopgap before supposedly more legitimate sexual activity. The existence of ‘foreplay’, separated from sex itself, creates a heterosexist script which prioritizes, and always leads to, intercourse.
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Encounters which do not leave the impression that vaginal penetration is ‘missing’ or necessary for sex to have occurred are, across the novels of Hazelwood, Henry, Kennedy and Lauren, far and few between. Each scene of oral sex and/or manual sex that I came across seemed to always refer to ‘need[ing] to be inside’ the FMC in some capacity (Henry 2022).
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Even if brief in reference or called ‘extra stimulation’ (Kennedy 2015b, 243; emphasis added), the stimulation of the clitoris in romance novels contributes to the decentralizing of vaginal penetration as the defining act of pleasure. Pleasure is then shown to not singularly occur from thrusting, but also in collaboration with, as Nagoski refers to it, the ‘Grand Central Station of erotic sensation’ (2015, 21).
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Across the novels of Hazelwood, Henry, Kennedy and Lauren, Hazelwood is the only author who challenges this popular cultural script and includes sex scenes which do not end in male or simultaneous orgasms.
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metaphorization of wetness (for women) and hardness (for men) as being exclusively representative of sexual arousal is common – if not a trope itself – in romance fiction.
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Relying on physiological descriptions might simply be an easier way for romance authors to signal to the reader that the FMC is aroused. Even I, in the writing of my own novel, noticed how easy it was to use a quote like ‘you’re so wet’ to describe the indeterminate excitement of arousal. However, simply because it is easier to use these physiological descriptions in proxy for subjective arousal does not mean it is a helpful or accurate thing to do. By taking this shortcut, I and other authors unintentionally provide readers with an inaccurate representation of sex that is rarely reflective of women’s regular sexual experiences.
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Romances such as The Deal and The Score perpetrate the myth that good sex is dependent upon size for success. Penises are big. Vaginas are tight. These things fit perfectly together, and give a greater sense of pleasure, despite their diametrically opposed sizing. Placing an emphasis on the size – or lack thereof – of a main character’s genitals inaccurately tells the reader: pleasure is not only dependent on your partner’s physiology, but also on your own.
The cultural messaging that surrounds a woman’s tightness – that you can ‘loosen’ over time, that pain occurs during a woman’s first experience of penetration because she is not familiar with the sensation, that some women have tighter vaginal canals than others – is yet another consequence of a lack of understanding surrounding the female sexual response.
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If romance novelists like Hazelwood moved away from eroticizing a difference in size, the greater dichotomies of male and female, of dominant and submissive (Angel 2021, 109), would be less prominent. The sex scenes in Henry’s novels are an example of how omitting descriptions of penis size or vaginal tightness can create a more egalitarian representation of sex.
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I am aware – as a romance writer myself – how difficult it can be to write sex scenes, let alone sex scenes that divert from readerly expectations of sexual scripts and strive for egalitarianism. But there is a degree of responsibility that romance novelists should take on when it comes to the sex they write and, in turn, promote.
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