This week, Hayley Krischer makes the case for the muted sex scene and explains why subtlety is sexy. Read that and other essays from ELLE, The Toast, Pitchfork, and more.
"The Sex in Romance Novels Isn’t Sexy, But Here’s What Is" — BuzzFeed Ideas
Unusual for most romance novels, the sex in Girl on the Train is dark, gritty, and it's barely there. For Hayley Krischer, the subtlety of the book's sex scenes makes them some of the best she's ever read. "A successful sex scene, for me, has very little to do with penetration or the girth of a lover’s cock," she writes in a piece for BuzzFeed Ideas. "I want the sex to touch on the character’s relationship. I want the sex scene to act as subtext. I want complexity. I like less amplification." Read it here.
Ben King / BuzzFeed
"The Good Girl’s Guide to Staying Alive" — Hazlitt
In true crime, women are often portrayed as the victims. What's more puzzling is that studies show women to be the primary consumers of true crime books. For Hazlitt, Casey Johnston looked into why female readers are so drawn to stories about their own destruction. "Women may gravitate toward true crime because it as part of the self-blaming cycle society imposes, and consume true crime as a way to prepare for or cope with the challenges that come with living in a society that hates women," she ruminates. Read Johnston's piece at Hazlitt.
"Dare To Be Different" — The Toast
Depending on who you are, "being different" is either an inevitable obligation or a choice. No one explains this better than Korean adoptee and author Matthew Salesses. "I have trouble saying, I am, without remembering all of the times I have been told, You are not," he writes in a piece for The Toast. "To someone who has always had to qualify himself, it can be frustrating to see identification with difference ignore the burden of qualification." Read his essay here.
Matthew Salesses / Via the-toast.net
