It’s easy to recall the chokehold E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” had on women everywhere a decade ago. A book centered on an average girl swept up in a forbidden romance, supplemented with explicit passages that touched on the world of kink? Moms, housewives, grandmothers and teens were all racing to add it to their Amazon shopping carts (along with a pair of handcuffs).
Since then, the popularity surrounding similar books has continued to grow and evolve beyond the “Fifty Shades” universe. The erotic-romance genre happily found a viewership of over 4.8 billion users on TikTok under the #smut, #smutbooks and #spicybooktok hashtags.
The reason for this enduring fandom probably has something to do with the fact that it’s beneficial to women. According to Dr. Somi Javaid, a sexual heath specialist and board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, erotic stories have been proved to have a “profound and positive impact on women’s sexuality.”
“In a survey study of Rosy, a mobile app designed to enhance women’s sexual health, researchers found that over 600 women who regularly used the app to review erotic short stories reported an improvement in sexual desire, arousal, lubrication, and orgasm,” Javaid said. The results of the study, authored in part by Rosy’s CEO, were published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Tishni S. Weerasinghe, a “book-Tok” content creator that goes by the handle @thebookthief28, told HuffPost that there would be no Christian Grey without an ’80s-era, bare-chested Fabio emblazoned on the covers of paperback novels. In other words, “smut” is nothing new — however, the way female readers have begun to embrace the genre and harness it as a tool, is.
“As someone who grew up in a household where sexuality is not talked about, this form of literature was a way of education,” Weerasinghe said. “The influence is simple: It’s OK to explore your fantasies, it’s OK to embrace your sexuality, it’s OK to open up to a book and relate to the characters and their kinks.”