My wife is an avid fiction reader. I like to come with her to the library and pick out a non-fiction book that I’ll struggle to finish for months while she picks up another ten novels to devour in the same amount of time.
On our trips, I’ve noticed the proliferation of straight romance novels over the past few years. Books with titles like “Kiss Me, Maybe” and “The Smooch Experiment.” Have you seen these? They usually have a guy and a girl on the front, in a simplistic, illustrative style.
These stories seem to be getting wildly popular, but in my little lesbian bubble, I’ve barely heard anything about them.
Enter Nadine Santoro and Lena Wilson of the Thinking Straight podcast. Nadine and Lena are lesbians, and feminists, too, but Nadine works in publishing and Lena is a journalist, so they’re more willing to investigate this phenomenon. They’re also engaged to each other, which is super cute.
I have to admit that I’m not a big podcast listener. I have space in my heart and my schedule for about one at a time. So while my recommendation doesn’t come from a place of having listened to thousands of podcasts, you know this one has to be really good because I keep going back to it.
In their podcast, Lena and Nadine read one contemporary heterosexual romance novel per episode, then review it in this format:
- Reason they chose to read the book
- Plot summary
- The good
- The bad (which they call PLC – Predictable Lesbian Criticisms)
- Anthropology corner
I love hearing about crazy shit. That’s why I’m so into reality TV. And there’s a lot of crazy shit in straight romance novels, apparently. From the bizarrely popular trope of what Nadine and Lena call “Polly Pocket pussy” – giant guy, tiny woman – to a full range of monster-fucking, our straight friends have been reading some nasty shit and we’ve had no idea as they post these cute-seeming books to their Goodreads and Storygraphs.
A word of warning – be careful talking about this podcast with women who like guys. These books are legitimately popular, and their fans could be your friends. One time, I started to describe the episode about Opal Reyne’s, A Soul To Keep to my friend and got as far as the premise before she went, “Oh, you’re talking about the Duskwalker Brides series! They’re really good!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the part I remembered was the protagonist belittling her husband’s ex–a woman he scared so much that she ran out on him. It sounded incredibly unsettling, but apparently my friend thought it was hot.
Lena and Nadine dig into this in the Anthropology Corner of each episode. The hosts read positive and negative reviews of the book, and discuss what these books might indicate about the state of the heterosexual dating world. What’s drawing our guy-loving friends to the off-putting and creepy men in these books?
NADINE: “He wants it to be a serious relationship. She’s the one who’s trying to just hook up and make it a fling, and he is the one who wants something serious and long-term with her, and pursues that from the start. And I imagine that that is a huge fantasy of straight women out there.”
The hosts discuss how the real-life straight dating scene seems to be flooded with men who aren’t into commitment, or who seem lukewarm about the women they’re supposedly interested in. These guys are so flaky and indifferent that, in the realm of fantasy, an overprotective, obsessed, and (sometimes literally) monstrous man sounds like a breath of fresh air.
Lena and Nadine also name-drop The Ultimatum: Queer Love as an example of some of the worst parts of our (gay women’s) dating culture, which I love. It makes me wonder what our wish-fulfillment romance novels look like, and what they say about us. I ask you – yes, you, reading this – what romance tropes do you like in your lesbian fiction? What do you think they say about you? What do you think the ultimate lesbian wish-fulfillment scenario is?
The last thing I have to mention is a bonus for my fellow dog lesbians. The hosts have two small dogs – Neil and Knives – and you can hear them in the background of some of the episodes. Seriously, go listen.
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