What if romance novels reveal what women really want?
University of Texas scholar digs into unlikely library for science
T he age-old question “What do women want?” has been shouted into a void for so many centuries that it has largely become rhetorical in our culture. But what if there was a way to find an actual answer?
A new study out of the University of Texas at Austin may have done just that, thanks to an unlikely scientific source: romance novels.
Kate Blackburn, a postdoctoral scholar at the university, led a research team that scoured the text of 703 romance novels, determining which words were commonly used among the books with the highest ratings by readers, to discern what readers liked best.
“There are self-reports and observational data. But here, you have this natural language,” Blackburn said. “And one of the things that I love about doing research is that natural language gives us answers about who we really are and what we feel.”
She wasn’t surprised to find that these top books contain words related to arousal, sexual and primal prowess and sexual communication. But there were some other findings that did surprise her.
Fair warning: This story is about to get steamy.
To find the words that women seemed to respond best to, Blackburn and her research assistants turned to Smashwords, an online publishing platform where readers rate books on a five-star scale. The team created a list of the top 25 words found in highly rated books. And one word had a greater correlation between its use and a novel’s high rating than any other. We can’t print it here. But we can say it’s a colloquial term for a male body part, and that it rhymes with sock. Ladies! So saucy! Seeing this word near the top of the list didn’t surprise Blackburn.
“It makes sense that they’re focused on male parts, but I think it was surprising we didn’t see this as much with women’s parts,” she said. “We didn’t see ‘breast,’ or some of those things that you might think would pop up with moments of arousal. And that was kind of surprising.”
But maybe it isn’t. Here’s the
thing about romance novels — they’re one of the few forms of popular culture that don’t come from a point of view that lends itself to the male gaze. According to data from the Romance Writers of America, 82 percent of romance readers are women — largely between the ages of 25 and 34. So while mainstream movies and general fiction exist in a largely male-dominated world, the billion-dollar romance industry, is told from the perspective of women. Readers see from women’s eyes.
And those eyes often can be found staring at … well, men. (Eighty-six percent of romance readers are straight, according to RWA.)
That’s not to say that all the 25 words that bubbled to the top in Blackburn’s study have erotic leanings. Contrary to popular belief, romance novels are way more than sex.
“Whenever I meet someone — who, I’m sure they don’t intend to be insulting — but they’re like, ‘You write porn.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t write porn. Porn is sex devoid of story,” said Sophie Jordan, a bestselling romance author with more than 30 titles, who lives in Katy. “That’s not what romance is. We want the romance behind it — the story behind it. We’ll hang in there for 200 to 300 pages before we ever reach an act of intimacy. We’re getting invested in who they are as characters, getting invested in the story.”
Call that anticipation — another one of the top 25 words from the study.
Blackburn’s study seems to confirm that women are looking for more than sex scenes. While that synonym for rooster certainly pops up in highly rated romance book, it was used an average of about four times per book, making it one of the least frequently used among those top 25 words. In contrast, the word “kiss” was the most used — an average of about 39 times per book. And the second-most spotted word isn’t really romantic at all: Nod was used about 32 times per book.
Nodding, it turns out, can be sexy. It’s a signal that people are agreeing, and it also denotes consent.
“There’s different kinds of romances for everyone, but I think consent is the nature of the relationship between the hero and the heroine,” Jordan said.
“I think romance novels appeal so much because they’re an affordable form of entertainment. You can have a woman with a hard day of work, and she comes home and has a novel for $6.99, and she’ll find a relationship that is healthy,” Jordan continued. “They go through their conflict or their journey, but by the time they get to the end, you have a happily ever after and a healthy, consensual relationship.”
Really, it’s about equal footing. That’s what originally drew Jordan to the genre. Back when she was 12 or 13, she was searching for a way to keep herself entertained during a weeklong stay at her grandmother’s house when she stumbled on a shelf full of romance books. Sure, her hormones were running wild, and she said that some of the scenes that unfolded “fulfilled every fantasy I ever had.” But in the end, it was the protagonists’ strength that converted her into a lifelong fan.
“In real life, a woman is not always promised or receives that kind of agency, and our books are about women with agency. That’s why I want my daughter to read this stuff — without telling her what to think or feel, I want my daughter to be a strong woman. So here’s a romance novel,” Jordan said. “I think without being political, these books are political — they’re about healthy, monogamous relationships with two people on equal ground, demanding respect and reaching a happily ever after without unfairly compromising each other.”
But let’s be honest. There’s also plenty of space devoted to how good-looking characters are: grin, chin, mouth, leg and ass – can we say ass? – all make the cut, as well. Equal footing or not, hot bods still sell. Especially when they’re growling, wincing, clenching, grinning, lifting, chuckling or moaning.
And while that may seem trivial, there’s more to it than you might think.
In the study, Blackburn posits that these kinds of actions “may be tapping into the way readers explore sexual communication strategies and rehearse for real romantic encounters. Readers coming across the word nod in their romance novels may experience an imagined interaction, which may facilitate nodding in real-life romantic actions.”
So, with this list of 25 words, we may be seeing not just what women want — but why they do what they do.
Mystery solved.