Chewed up gum, frayed thread, a flower with its petals torn away.
Like many people of my generation, my first encounter with sex came through pro-abstinence talks in my church’s youth group and through a sanitized health class in Georgia, where the teacher would list topics she wasn’t allowed to cover and instead stress sexually transmitted infections. I was given examples like those above to illustrate what it meant to be a young woman pursuing sex outside of marriage.
It fit into the wider movement of “saving yourself for marriage” championed by a handful of celebrities and the purity-culture push put forth by evangelical groups such as LifeWay Christian Resources and Focus on the Family. Their central message defined sex as something strictly between a married man and woman, often teaching women to fear sexuality rather than understanding desire, intimacy, and pleasure.
“A lot of cis[gender] women in America are really at a disadvantage when it comes to being sexually liberated and empowered because they aren’t given the tools as a young person to not only understand their own sexuality, but to advocate for it,” says Iman Hariri-Kia, a former sex and relationships editor and author of several titles, including, most recently, Female Fantasy.
Mental health professionals studying evangelical purity culture have documented rising instances of anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, but also a noticeable lack of knowledge and language around sex and pleasure. Researchers have also concluded that “abstinence-only education as a state policy is ineffective in preventing teenage pregnancy and may actually be contributing” to higher rates. And that doesn’t even touch the near-total exclusion of LGBTQ+ representation. The current cultural currents of tradwife and the manosphere echo the old purity-era ideals.
While traditional sex education in recent decades often failed to address pleasure, consent, communication, and desire, romance novels became an informal schooling system that helped readers explore sexuality without shame. The label “romance novel” has long been associated with bargain-bin paperbacks, the “bodice rippers” that show a bare-chested Fabio on the cover, and authors like Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel. Harlequin began as a dedicated imprint for these tales, frequently aimed at housewives who could pick up titles at their local grocery store.
“I learned a lot about sex from sneaking my mom’s Danielle Steel books,” says Erica Smith, a sex educator who specializes in purity culture and those leaving high-control religious settings. She’s also the author of The Purity Culture Recovery Guide: The Shame-Free Sex Education You Deserve. “Reading about other people having sex in romance novels really taught me what it could be and what it was like.”
The romance genre traces back to the 18th century, with its enduring motif of a “happily ever after.” Once derided as “smut” (though sometimes less so now), these works may have sat hidden away rather than flaunted in the living room. They introduced readers to anatomy and a sexual vocabulary that might not have been learned otherwise. Yet they were also full of unhealthy relationship dynamics and rigid gender stereotypes.
In the last ten years the category has exploded, in part thanks to #BookTok, offering diverse levels of heat and subgenres like Regency romance, dark romance, and fantasy romance. A number of titles have crossed into mainstream book-club conversations, including Heated Rivalry, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Fifty Shades of Grey, which opened many readers to BDSM—albeit through a flawed portrayal of kink. My friends and I have even debated a memorable Meghan Quinn scene described over cocktails, where the heroine dines on popcorn from the hero’s anatomy.
“Women have started to be much louder and prouder about their love of romance, using social media and online communities to spread word-of-mouth recommendations, driving supply and demand, and reclaiming some of that power,” Hariri-Kia explains.
Romance-focused bookstores are multiplying as well, such as Sincerely Yours, which opened in 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by best friends Mallory Gay and Madison Glines. They discovered the genre through reading fan fiction, a path that helped launch several mainstream titles, including the Fifty Shades series, After, and The Idea of You.
“We were big One Direction fans. That’s how we met in high school; we mostly knew each other through Tumblr before meeting in person, and we shared fan fiction,” Gay recalls. “It felt a bit like rebellion, but it also brought us a lot of joy.”
Their store is organized by romance subgenres and has even created a live community for readers drawn into this literary universe, with book clubs and craft nights inspired by these works. It’s at Sincerely Yours that I purchased my inaugural “smut” title, Praise by Sara Cate, from the dark romance shelf after hearing about the shop’s opening in my neighborhood.
Plenty of schools, particularly in states where legislatures aren’t firmly Republican, offer comprehensive, nonjudgmental sex education. Yet even there, romance novels can provide a safe and healthy way for young people—and not-so-young readers—to explore their own desires.
At first, I wasn’t sure where to begin, literally judging titles by their pastel-covered spines in a welcoming space. I’d only seen these books in grocery-store aisles, never in my own religious home. I picked up a book with a simple high heel on the cover, and its blurb dipped into kink I’d just begun exploring in my dating life. The spicy themes of power dynamics and control in that book appealed to someone who had stepped away from purity culture, and I soon found an entire shelf of titles just like it.
“Some people come in and say, I want a spicy book. They mean Emily Henry. They want one or two scenes of emotional intimacy rather than a string of explicit pages. So everyone has their own threshold,” Gay notes.
Authors, too, are rethinking how they render sexual scenes, recognizing how crucially these moments are presented to readers, especially younger ones. They are more openly addressing topics like kink, trauma, neurodiversity, and queer relationships, while highlighting communication and consent.
“It was essential to me that any mention or depiction of sex be not only empowering for the female protagonist but also educational and demonstrative,” Hariri-Kia adds. “I aimed to emphasize the ability to communicate during sex, to secure consent, to emphasize sexual enjoyment—female pleasure, female erogenous zones—and the various ways sex can occur.”
That approach gives readers a secure, private space to explore their interests without fear of judgment or real-world risk, Smith observes.
“There’s real safety there for engaging with sexual stories and fantasies. Reading romance and erotic fiction can spark inspiration, make it feel permissible to fantasize, and provide solid information about what actually arouses you.”
Fantasy can reveal things you might want to pursue in real life, but it can also remain just that—the realm of imagination. Embracing fantasy does not automatically translate into a desire to act on it in reality.
“Fantasy is where the thoughts stay… a lot of people think about things they have no intention of turning into reality,” she adds.
Plenty of schools, especially in regions not dominated by Republican majorities, offer comprehensive, nonjudgmental sex education. Yet even there, romance novels can serve as a safe and healthy vehicle for people of all ages to explore their own desires. We’ve reached a point where these forms of fiction can function as more than mere escapism.
