When it comes to sex, what’s normal? And what is popular culture, including romantic fiction, communicating to young women about what’s expected of them sexually?

Sometimes a topic strikes me and ends up in the newspaper in my opinion column. This one will probably wind up there eventually. For now, the topic is rolling around in that cavernous space known as my “cranium,” knocking aside cobwebs and scaring bats as it goes. While I realize this may be a controversial topic, I’m okay with controversy — provided everyone involved is civil and respectful of others.

When I was growing up, I saw the covers of Playboy magazines (and, yes, more than a few centerfolds, too), as well as Cosmopolitan and other women’s magazines. I even managed to sneak a Playgirl into the house when I was about 15 so that I could satisfy my curiosity about male bodies. What did I learn from this (besides the fact that penises really can be comical)?

Here are some of the lessons I took away. Maybe some of them are familiar to you:

• Women must be sexy to be worthy of male attention.
• Being sexy means being pretty, having big breasts and being good in bed.
• You must be sexy and good in bed — but don’t be a “slut.” It’s up to you to figure out how that balance works.
  
• There are tricks you can use to be good in bed. Cosmo has new ones each month. They sound a lot like the old ones from last month. (But what do 15-year-old virgins know anyway?)
• You must have an orgasm or your lover will think there’s something wrong with you. (If he can’t get it up, there is also something wrong — with you.)
  
• Vibrators will help you learn how to have an orgasm, but don’t let your boyfriend know — and don’t become addicted to vibrators because real women have real orgasm with men.

From romance novels, I learned very little about sex other than it must be fantastic. Those were the days when descriptions of sex were mild, and you had to wonder what was happening. It was all about “manroots” and “her center.” What — like her belly button? The books seemed mostly to be about love, and they made my heart beat faster. I loved the passion of the relationship between the hero and the heroine, even if I didn’t have a reference point for what it meant to “move together in an age-old rhythm.”

The messages I got as a teen still float around in popular culture, perhaps with sharper edges than they had back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. There were teenage girls at my sons’ high school who’d already had breast implants. Talk about pressure! Bulimia, anorexia... It’s all symptomatic of a culture that tells young women they must fit a certain standard of beauty in order to be worthwhile. And that’s perhaps the least of it.

Thanks in part to the Internet and the easy availability of even extreme porn, teenagers probably see it all before they do it all. And when they read romance, they can choose books that range from mild to wild, describing acts from hand-holding to double penetration and hardcore BDSM. That’s a huge change from when I first started reading romance.

The question that I found myself pondering is this: What are we normalzing for young women these days?

If I were 17 and hopped onto Redtube.com or some other free porn site, I could watch hentai rape, anal sex, spanking, oral sex, multiple partner sex, and a whole range of bizarrely acrobatic sex and kink that doesn’t even look fun (at least to me).

Some of this is clearly vanilla: vaginal sex, oral sex, mild bondage. Much of the rest of the world is okay with anal sex. But caning? Three or four or five partners at once? Rape machines? Huh?

If I saw these things as a young woman today, would I come away expecting my boyfriend to videotape us? Would I expect myself to consent to being tied up? Spanked? Shared? Would I wonder whether it’s okay to not be a double-stuffed blonde? Would I feel guilty if I didn’t want to have anal sex?

The subculture of leather masks, chains and orange gag balls used to a subculture. I didn’t know about it until I was married and had kids. (I learned about it from the film Pulp Fiction, believe it or not.) But teenagers today see it all.

Though I think the porn industry is the most extreme in what it attempts to depict as normal or desirable sexual behavior, romance novels have certainly stretched to accommodate more, too. I’m fine with that, over all. I’m not standing in judgment of people who like to read or watch hardcore erotic materials. As long as whatever you do in real life is consensual and involves human adults, it’s your business.

All I’m doing here is asking this question: What are we as a society encouraging young women in particular to believe is normal or expected of them when they cross the threshold into sexual activity?

It’s an issue that concerns me because, as a journalist who has built my career around advocating for women, I want to know that young girls are coming into sexual maturity in a healthy way that ultimately leads to happiness and satisfaction. (Note that I haven’t said a thing about abstinence or marriage. It’s not a choice between celibacy until marriage or having sex with 15 guys and a gazelle. There is a happy, healthy balance in there somewhere, I think.)

I’m a journalist, so I’ve never been one to advocate government censorship or hiding nudity from children. When people get all ticked off because a mother breastfed her baby in public, I roll my eyes and call them silly. Breastfeeding is normal and natural. Bodies are normal and natural. Sex, for that matter, is normal and natural.

Is being a double-stuffed blonde — or redhead or brunette — normal and natural? What about being beaten with a belt? Or, as the creators of hentai seem so fascinated by, being raped by mutant multi-tentacled plants from outer space?

The one thing I’ll say about romance novels, is that in most cases the story revolves around love. And that’s perhaps the one thing we as a society don’t emphasize enough — the connection between love and sex. Young women who read romance, even BDSM romance, are going to get the message that love is special. And that’s a good thing.

Okay, so those are my thoughts. I’ll step out of the way now and list to what you have to say.

And I can only imagine the kind of views I’m going to get from people searching the internet for some of those more X-rated terms...

This image was purchased, not stolen.

Back to our regularly scheduled program... Kind of.

I want to thank each and every one of you who posted below. I'm sorry I didn't answer individually. This week was another special edition, and my son's girlfriend came to visit, so between getting 100+ pages to press, I was running to the airport and sending off copyright infringement notices. Still, I read and appreciate all of your posts. It means the world to me that you understand and care. I adore you!!!

Thanks to those of you who took up the topic on your blogs, as well. At the very least, people who see those posts might think twice before giving in to the temptation of downloading.

Illegal downloading is the topic of this week's poll! Yes, there's a new poll. I can't see who answered or how — it's completely anonymous — so you can confess and be absolved. It's merely for curiosity's sake that I put it up, not to scold anyone. I think we've all done something at one point or another, perhaps not realizing what we were doing constituted a copyright violation.

Enough of that for now.

Foot update: I hate having a broken foot. I need to go back for more x-rays, but I haven't made the time yet. I've been going without the cast on occasion, which last Sunday night resulted in my waking up in abject agony. I believe I almost screamed in fact. I woke up shouting, "Oh, my God!" And it wasn't in the good, orgasmic sense, either.

Speaking of SEX...

Last weekend I wrote a different sort of sex scene. It's an act I've not included in my books before. Aha, you say! She's finally writing anal sex! Um... no. I'll let you guess what it was. (The excerpt is below.) The thing that was fun about it was that it was new for me and therefore an interesting challenge to write.

Despite what Cosmo tries to tell us, there really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to men and women getting it on. I see their covers with teases like: "The 10 newest sexual positions! Cosmo tells you how!" Well, those 10 positions are probably in the Kama Sutra, if nowhere else, and we all know how: Get into a funky position and then do what you always do — insert Tab A into Slot B and let the spirit move you.


This image was also purchased. With money. That I earned.

The point is that writing interesting, compelling sex isn't easy. I think it's the hardest component of a story. Any time I come to a sex scene, I know it's going to be a tough bit of writing and I'm going to want to pull my hair out. How many ways can you describe a tongue inside another person's mouth? How many ways are there to describe an orgasm? How many ways can you describe the sounds a person makes when they're sexually aroused or climaxing or sexually contented?

The more books I write, the harder it is. I keep meaning to create an Excel spreadsheet to use to organize the adjectives, verbs and other descriptive terms I use so that I don't repeat myself. We all know that some books get that way — it's the author's 15th novel and every love scene is starting to sound the same. I so desperately don't want that to happen to my books, though it probably already has!

Of course, the key is to have each sex scene develop from the characters' own unique personalities. So Nicholas and Bethie have their slow, healing progression from "don't touch me" to "No Man But Me." And Julian all but assaults Tessa on his bedroom floor, believing, until he faces his past, that he is the kind of man who could do that kind of thing. And Marc just wants everything he can get after years of deprivation (provided it's Sophie), especially a mouthful of the taste he's missed while in prison. And so on...

But even so, there are only so many ways to describe it. Most difficult of all, there are only so many words you can use to name the organs involved. I refuse to use things like "sheath" or "velvet center" in contemporaries (and even historicals). But if you use "p-ssy" or "c-nt," you're going to irk your readers. So what does that leave you with? "He thrust his cock into her wet heat." Been there, written that, probably have the T-shirt.

It's a conundrum.

So let's talk about this: repetitive love scenes and ridiculous language. Where do you draw the line with language, and how do you deal with sex scenes in an author's work when they start to feel canned? Those of you who are writers, please share with me your patented secrets for dealing with this conundrum.

And to all my American readers: Have a good Memorial Day. Prayers and thoughts for our veterans and those who've been injured or lost their lives fighting for their country.

I like talking about heroes. They're my favorite part of any romance I read. If I can't connect with the hero, I can't get into the story. I'm betting that's true of many, if not most, romance readers.

Typically, heroes have more sexual experience than heroines. There are a few famous virgin heroes out there — Jamie from Outlander comes to mind — but most have sexual experience and are known for being good lovers. That's as true in historicals, where the heroine is almost always a virgin, and contemporaries.

But how much sexual experience is too much? When does it turn you off rather than make the hero seem more exciting?

That's the topic of my new poll, but let's have some discussion.

Could you see a reformed male porn star as a hero? How about a rock star who made good use of groupies? Or a male prostitute who serviced both men and women?




One of my male friends says he thinks there's a kind of double standard in romance, one that requires the hero to be good in bed, while the heroine is a virgin. He thinks it reflects women's desire to have lovers who know what they're doing, which, in turn, puts pressure on guys. If it's "true love" we're writing about, then why aren't more heroes virgins, too?

So what about virgin heroes? A lot of readers obviously felt it worked in Outlander. Why don't we see more of that?

It seems to me that more erotic novels are moving toward sexual experience for both heroes and heroines. There are now heroines even in straight historical romance who are courtesans and such. Obviously, things are changing. How do you feel about that?

The results of my last poll show that the majority of you (57 percent) think a scene where the hero brings himself to orgasm can be very hot — depending on how it's written. The next largest group (40 percent) think it's HOT. Period. One reader, who by herself constituted 2 percent of the vote, answered that she doesn't find it hot at all. I had thought there'd be more votes in the latter category.

I found the results very interesting. I don't think I would have gotten the same answers a decade ago. I was glad to see that so many of you felt the heroine also has a right to self-satisfaction.

Sorry I've been AWOL. I had an article to write in Danish, which took up a bunch of spare time. Then last night, when I had planned to catch up, I was assailed by a migraine. I'm doing better at the moment.

You know what he's reaching for!

I'm not sure how many of you pay attention to the reader forums on Amazon, but this past weekend, an interesting topic appeared. I repeated it in my new poll, asking you all how you feel about it when the hero "takes matters into his own hands." That's a silly euphemism for "wanks."

Society has long accepted that men do this. But, oddly, in romance novels part of contriving sexual tension is putting a hero in a situation where he wants the heroine but he just can't have her for whatever reason. This leads to frustrated, sometimes rude or aggressive behavior on the hero's part because he's so hungry for her!

A male friend of mine made this point when he read Ride the Fire and said, "So do romance heros never jack off? I mean this Nicholas guy could quit kicking his traps around if he just got himself off."

In real life, of course, most guys would ease some of that tension by grabbing hold of the root of the problem. Twenty years ago, one would never have read that in a romance novel. Nowadays it's much more common. The Amazon thread, and my latest poll, ask you to say how you feel about that in a book.

What was interesting in the Amazon posts was that a lot of readers find it very hot, while others say they're completely repulsed. The latter were far fewer in number. Some said it just depended on how "icky" it was. As an expression of the hero's desperation they were willing to accept it.


A bunny is a girl's best friend!

What was just as interesting was the almost universal dislike of heroines who do the same. There's still a double standard, it seems, one that says a woman's sexual pleasure is only legit when it comes from the hands/mouth/naughty bits of a man. There was a loud rejection of "battery-operated boyfriends," though some said such things were okay if used by the hero on the heroine, again placing the heroine's pleasure under the control of the hero. (Is my inner feminist showing?)

In my historicals, there's less mention of self-pleasuring — masturbation is such a judgmental word, I think — with only Wentworth doing the deed "on camera." Refresh my memory if I'm wrong...

In my contemp RS books, Will ("Catch of the Day") admits to doing it and overhears Lissy using her vibrator, which he then sabotages. (They're in the midst of a bet to see who can make it the two weeks until their wedding without asking the other for sex, so though he is using his hand, he thinks she's cheating to use her B.O.B.) Marc does it in prison, though not "on camera," and he thinks about it when he's on the lam after breaking out. Julian and Reece reference it, but I don't think they do it when the reader's watching. (How rude of them!) As for Gabe, yep. You'll have to wait till November to see how/when.

Among the contemporary heroines, there's Kara's "jiggle stick," and Sophie's vibrator, which Marc discovers when searching her house for planted drugs. I don't think there's any mention of it with Tessa. And Kat? Nope. Her situation is very different than the others due to her Navajo upbringing.

I obviously find it sexy when the heroes at least think about it. When the heroines have toys (not that they necessarily use them), that makes them real to me. One problem I've always had with contemp heroines is their tendency to be like women from my grandmother's generation -- waaaay too goodie-goodie for a contemporary woman.

So what are your thoughts, gentle reader? Let's hear it. And there are a few more days to vote in the poll!