“Icebreaker”, “The Love Hypothesis” and countless other romance novels are smut-ridden (shoutout to Chapter 9). While these may be good reads for adults, they should not be marketed to minors. 

Experiencing sexual content through a book – designed to provide entertainment for its readers – is not a healthy way to introduce sex to children. There’s a significant difference between learning about sex and allowing children to read graphic sexual content.  

MaKena Mueller, a first-year pursuing a bachelor of fine arts in acting, said children don’t really understand what sex is, and it’s difficult to gain a real understanding of realistic sexual expectations from books. 

“So it’s like if you sit there, and you know, let’s say you’re 12 or 13 and you have no thought of like, what, like, what sex is, and you read it from a book where those expectations are really high,” Mueller said.  

Sexual expectations usually come from a few places: books, experience or pornography. Children, who cannot legally consent to sex, should not be experiencing it.

Those in the sex industry, among others, worry people see pornography as reality, rather than entertainment, according to NPR. Smut is idealistic and not always representative of actual sex.

Adults can understand the failure of individuals to live up to expectations, but minors cannot. They don’t have a way to compare what they’re reading to a legitimate sexual experience that was healthy, consensual and safe.  

By not realistically presenting sex, romance novels may distort the way children think about sexual acts and intimacy overall. These misunderstandings may change the way future future relationships function for these children.

Additionally, the covers of romance books are becoming increasingly innocent-looking, giving many readers the wrong impression of what the contents will be.

“I do feel like with exactly like “Icebreaker” or just, like, most, like, teen romance novels lately, like, it’s very, like, cartoonish and it’s, you know, has a cute little illustration on it,” Mueller said. “When you see, like, these cartoons on this cover, you know, kids are gonna pick that up.”

Cute illustrations may denote a romance novel; however, they do not make readers anticipate toe-curling smut that some are ashamed to read in public. 

Recent romance novels are more playful and less based in photorealistic and inherently sexual content, according to Electric Literature. These covers mislead readers, especially those who don’t already know the trend of romance novels. 

As kids, we hope for books about hockey and figure skating – not smut-filled books with no plot that have hockey players in them.

While Nate Hawkins and Christian Grey are staples for the smut book community, you wouldn’t want a 12-year-old sister reading them. It’s awkward enough to read them in public; nobody wants to talk about them at the dinner table.