Abstract

This analysis examines whether reading romance novels associates with female sexuality by sexual orientation. Respondents were 7778 female American college students, including 4967 heterosexuals and 218 lesbians, age 17–49. Key indices of sexuality include femininity, degree of sex drive, sex addiction, promiscuity, number of orgasms required for sexual satisfaction, age of first sex thought and first sexual intercourse, and number of sexual partners. Most romance novels endorse consumerism rooted in patriarchal and heterosexual values, reading romance novels molds the sexual attitudes of readers pertaining to this patriarchy. However, these attitudes are not coherent with readers’ sexual behavior. The results indicated that heterosexual readers of romance novels reported greater femininity, sex drive, sexual satisfaction and lower promiscuity than lesbian readers, and non-readers. Nonetheless, heterosexual readers had fewer sexual partners, and were older when they first thought about sex and had their first sexual intercourse than lesbian readers and non-readers. This attitude-behavior inconsistency pattern matches the Harlequin romance representation of female sexuality. That is, female readers imaging an enjoyable sexual life in the setting of unrealistic monogamous devotion, while simultaneously vividly fulfilling such a sexual fantasy through fictitious characters.