With almost 2 billion users on TikTok, it was inevitable for niche communities to arise within the platform. One such community was BookTok, a space for those interested in books and literature, including reviews, discussion and recommendations from authors and readers alike.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, BookTok grew immensely popular, resulting in real-world impacts. Authors saw increased sales for their books that were newly rediscovered or promoted heavily on TikTok, and bookstores like Barnes & Noble sprouted designated BookTok sections. Subcommunities for people with similar and specific preferences for a certain genre like fantasy, horror or romance also emerged.
The romance subcommunity has been under particular scrutiny from BookTok users for their preference for and promotion of what they have deemed low-quality material, including books dedicated to sexually explicit material — or “smut” for short. However, to fully understand the context within which the conversation is taking place, it is important to first explore the history and dynamics of the targeted reading community.
Historically, the disapproval for women readers has always been high. Ever since women were allowed to learn to read, men have campaigned against it. Reading was something that could be done independently without the need, support or interference of a man, and any independence a woman could have was equated with madness. Pseudosciences of the 1800s declared that women shouldn’t read because “an overactive brain would divert blood away from her reproductive regions, leading to ‘hysteria.’” The encroachment of women into the male-dominated sphere of reading cheapened the practice. Literature written by or for women was shunned by men for being overly sentimental, too focused on relationships and sexually corruptive — a view that persists today.
There is an ever-pervasive elitist culture — whether online or in the real world — over what is considered serious and intellectual literature. It is worth dissecting which books and authors we consider significant and why.
By and large, intellectual books that are considered classics are usually written by men — Orwell, Dickens, Tolstoy, Twain and Dostoevsky, to name a few — with only a handful of female exceptions, like Brontë and Austen. Look no further than the very existence of the genre “women’s literature,” under which books share no commonality in style nor story, save for the fact that they were written by women. Books written by men are just literature, but books written by women are women’s literature.
One definition of what is considered a classic is a book that is continuously studied by writers and literature academics, standing the test of time for its complexity and depth. But this requires that they be appreciated in their time in the first place; otherwise, they are unfortunately lost.
In an article in The Boar, author Mary Francis explains that most classics give us a view into the average male, middle-class way of life. She notes that “many lost writers may have been amongst the ‘greats’ had they simply had access to publication and readership from elite factions of the society.”
Romances are, and historically have been, broadly written by women, for women and about women. For the aforementioned reasons, they have been consequently deemed by the reading community as lesser than; even as time and literature have progressed, romance continues to be viewed as guilty pleasure reading.
Part of the discourse regarding romance and romantasy — romance fantasy — books are criticisms of readers’ perceived obsessions with “spice,” which is BookTok slang for sexual content. However, that argument is based on purity culture and expectations about how women should engage with sexual content. Female sexual pleasure is seen as taboo and often scandalized, even though men are not held to these same expectations. Sexual content in mainstream literature written by men does not come under the same scrutiny as women’s literature.
For example, the “Game of Thrones” series is highly regarded, despite gratuitous scenes depicting rape and incest. Criticism is waved away, citing that these themes are present in war and that to exclude them would be disingenuous to the setting of the story. Yet, a popular BookTok romantasy, “A Court Of Thorns And Roses,” was extensively criticized online for its sexual content, likening readers to porn addicts and calling for the eradication of BookTok.
Common criticisms regarding some romance books, categorized as dark romances, are critical of their questionable sexually explicit content, claiming that consuming such content would result in people wanting to recreate similar behavior in their lives. However, in an interview with YouTuber FunkyFrogBait, sex historian Dr. Esmé Louise James noted that this is not the case. James says that numerous studies show there is no correlation between fantasies or the kind of sexual content consumed and the behavior people exhibit in real life. What is fundamentally important is how people engage with dark romance books, ensuring that they’re aware that it is purely imaginative and not reality.
This is not to say that there aren’t valid criticisms of popular BookTok books. It is certainly permissible to voice issues with popular books — reviewers of Colleen Hoover’s books have mentioned that her books are formulaic and repetitive with poorly written dialogue. However, there is a distinction between thoughtful, informed critique and using an excuse to bash women’s interests and hobbies.
Regardless, the short-form format of TikTok precludes nuanced discussion. While TikTok allows for videos up to 60 minutes to be uploaded, the average length of a TikTok video is 35 seconds, and comments have a 150-character limit. Defenders of romance books hand-wave criticism because it’s often entrenched with misogyny, but this dismissal shuts down conversations about gray areas or investigations into prejudices people may hold and why.
Due to its nature, short-form content is unlikely to be the vanguard for the perspective shift in how we discuss women’s literature and deconstruct its misogyny. The way romance books — and by extension, women’s interests — are perceived and critiqued requires a broader cultural shift, one that actively challenges the ingrained misogyny that has devalued literature by and for women. Until the larger social structures that dictate what is considered worthy literature change, the devaluation of women’s work will continue. Meaningful progress requires not only recognizing biases but also actively working to dismantle them.
Ananya Kashyap is an Arts and Entertainment Staff Writer. She can be reached at ananyask@uci.edu.
Edited by Alaina Retodo and Jaheem Conley