It’s June 2021, you’re scrolling through the Amazon bestsellers lists when you see it, snuggled in between the likes of John Grisham and Andy Weir: Ice Planet Barbarians. On the cover is a young woman in the arms of a large and muscular blue man, her head thrown back in pleasure framed by a galaxy backdrop.
The first in author Ruby Dixon’s enduring Ice Planet series, Ice Planet Barbarians tells the tale of a group of human women who, after being abducted by a different set of aliens, crash land on the planet of Not-Hoth where fated mates, ribbed schlongs and big blue anthropomorphic aliens are the norm.
No, you’re not reading that wrong: ribbed schlongs.
A once-obscure series originally published in 2015, Ice Planet Barbarians became an immediate success after its feature on social media platform TikTok. Its popularity was fuelled by content creators on the ‘BookTok’ side of the app who adored the combination of cute, fated-mate romance and frequent raunchy sex scenes.
BookTok is one of the frontrunners of the TikTok content market with videos using the hashtag #BookTok racking up 25 billion views. However, it’s the slightly steamier offshoot #SmutTok that is currently booming.. As of November 2021 content using the hashtag #SmutTok has accrued over 800 million views, while the more simple tag of #Smut has 1.3 billion thus exemplifying the popularity of so-called ‘spicy’ reading.
But why the sudden boom? And exactly who is fuelling the erotica market?
Erotica and ‘smutty’ literature are not new to the literary world, with works such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) and Fanny Hill (1748) having sparked debate, outrage and fascination over time with their explicit depictions of female sexuality and exploits. The interest in sexualised writing has not waned in recent years, with publishers noting an increase in their sales of romance/erotica novels over the past decade, most notably after the success of E.L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey series which brought contemporary erotica into the mainstream. The success of Fifty Shades saw an explosion in copy-cat erotica, branded sex toys and, most importantly: a discussion around female sexuality.
A survey by Ofcom in September 2020 found that half of all adults in the UK watch porn, but, even on the most popular porn site Pornhub, only 16% of those accessing the content are women.
Most porn is predominantly directed for the male gaze and, while female written and directed porn is becoming increasingly more common, the standard for sexual exploration and depictions both in adult and mainstream media is still woefully inadequate for the female viewer. Mainstream porn often posits the woman as a submissive object, a notion that is emulated in media such as TV and film with sardonic tropes such as the ‘damsel in distress' or ‘trophy wife’ that position women as vacuous objects as opposed to the heroic male figure.
Erotica takes this notion and spins it on its head with the woman driving the narrative, eschewing the sexual repression so common within our society and media and depicting more accurate representations of female sexuality and sexual exploration.
While Fifty Shades is controversial for its inaccurate and borderline abusive depictions of BDSM culture, the popularity of the series thrust BDSM and other more ‘kinky’ sex practices into the mainstream, making female-led sexual liberation less taboo. Ultimately, erotica and smut are an avenue for female sexual exploration in a safe, non-judgemental space with common themes and tropes including:
Reverse harem (multiple sexual partners at one time)
Age-gap
Enemies to Lovers
Sex clubs/dungeons
Dark Romance (this includes romances involving stalkers, serial killers etc.)
Public sex
These tropes or themes are rarely featured in porn or mainstream media, and if they are, they lack the anonymity that reading erotica and smut can provide; under a seemingly cute cartoon cover can lie an extremely raunchy fantasy- think: It Happened One Summer or The Kiss Quotient. What smut can also provide is depth to a sexual fantasy. Where porn often sprinkles in very loose attempts at ‘plot’, there are a myriad of smutty book series that cross genres such as fantasy, (à la the Blood and Ash or The Bargainer series) providing complex plots with the addition of fully developed relationships, motives and context to sexual encounters. Erotica allows women to explore their sexuality with freedom and with no consequences, with the ability to set and explore their limits or fantasies in an imaginative and safe way sans a sexual partner.
TikTok has created a delightfully smutty vacuum in which women can readily recommend the novels that push their buttons with little reproach. The mainstay of the SmutTok hashtag are videos requesting book recommendations that include such topics as age-gap relationships, multiple partners, or enthusiastic foreplay. So open and accepting is the #SmutTok community that even those with more specific tastes are catered to, with adjacent communities or accounts increasingly popping up within #SmutTok. One such diversion is the popular ‘Monster-Lovers’ hashtag. Due to said hashtag, the human-Minotaur romance Morning Glory Milking Farm reached Amazon’s Romance best sellers list on its publication in August 2021; it still ranks at #95.
It is no wonder then that the enigma that is #SmutTok is such an unerring force, with the most highly regarded recommendations instantly becoming worldwide bestsellers, (I’m looking at you The Love Hypothesis). The escapist nature of TikTok that helped millions endure the global lockdown now performs a greater purpose: providing a supportive, proactive community that positively frames female sexuality and exploration via smut and erotica.
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