The answer is female lust. Don’t ask me how my husband found this book, but it is called “A billion wicked thoughts: what the world’s largest experiment reveals about human desire.”
Women’s sexual urges are different than men, thus we lust differently. “Whereas men are more aroused by visual cues, women are more aroused by psychological cues. … The romance novel has long been described as “pornography for women.” This is a somewhat unfair and misleading comparison. After all, would we characterize gang bang porn as “romance for men”? However, the comparison is apt in one respect. …] Porn reveals the sexual cues that activate male desire. Similarily, romance reveals the sexual cues that activate female desire.”
As a man will look to over-the-top physical features in a woman he might view, a woman has her own psychological cues. It often gives false expectations and tempts the individuals toward fantasy and away from reality.
The first thing women are attracted to is “Alphas.” "All of the hero professions [in romance novels] associated with status, confidence and competence. … Study after study has demonstrated the erotic appeal of male dominance. women prefer the voices of dominant men, the scent of dominant ment, the movement and gait of dominant men, the facial features of dominant men. … Though women like alpha heros, in contemporary novels there are some lines that a hero can never cross, such as excessive physical violence against women or extreem psychological abuse. But in romances written in the 70’s and 80’s, the hero was often cruel – or worse. In the Flame and the Flower, the hero actually rapes the virgin heroine in the opening scene – later excusing his behavior by saying he presumed she was a whore. In Catherine Coulter’s 1982 novel Devil’s Embrace, the 34 year old Earl of Clare kidnaps the 18 year old Cassie Brougham just before her wedding to a nice young man, ties her down and painfully rapes her; later she falls in love with him.
… It turns out that killing people is an effective way to elicit attention of many women: virtually every serial killer, including Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and David Berkowitz, have received loved letters from large numbers of female fans. …But readers of romance are quick to point out that they certainly don’t want their heroes to be rapists and murderers. They’re willing to tolerate a little misogyny and jerkdom in their heroes at the beginning of the story, as long as they don’t stay that way after they meet the heroine. In fact, being an alpha is only half of the full hero package. To pass her scrutiny, the hero must find his inner goo.
…when it comes to women’s preferences, they don’t just want a nice guy – they want an alpha who learns to be nice to her. In other words, the women want their romance heroes to to be like coconuts: hard and tough on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside. But the heroes secret sweet interior can’t be available to just anyone. … The process of the hero getting in touch with his tender side is one of the greatest pleasures of the romance. Scenes where the alpha male expresses his feelings are always described in rich detail. In the same way that women often find the breathless gasping and moaning of female porn starts to be absurdly inauthentic, male readers of romances might find the emotional confessions of romance heroes to be strangely unfamiliar."
There is then the woman’s desire for emotional sincerity. Much of the novels deal with determining “if he is truly kind and understanding or whether his emotional expressions are insincere. …[the desire] to elicit latent tenderness of a man is as powerful as powerful as [a man’s] desire to make women tremble with sexual pleasure. Men frequently attribute sexual pleasure to a woman based upon shaky evidence. Many porn fans express with certitude that adult [porn] actresses … are having real orgasms in their movies. There is a similiar kind of certainty in many women’s conviction that their hyper-masculine lover hides a secret tenderness.”
The book goes on to say that most women skim the sex scenes in romance novels or skip them all together. The sex scenes are not as detailed as the scenes that involve the alpha male revealing his inner softness to the woman (often discovering it himself for the first time). It is similiar to how a man may only need pictures of women’s body parts or in immodest clothing without actually being engaged in a sexual act.
The other psychological cue is what the book refers to as the “magic hoo hoo.” “The desire of a man is for the woman; the desire of a woman is for the desire of a man.” Women want to feel irresistibile. “Being desired is very arousing to women.” That may be why in romance novels there is more talk about the fact that the man develops an erection than on how large the man’s body part is or what it looks like.
"The magic hoo hoo does it all: it heals all ills, psychic and sexual. It provides unparelled pleasure to the hero, despite the heroine’s reluctance, inexperience, and awkwardness. …One taste of the magic hoo hoo is all it takes: the hero won’t be satisfied with anything else, physically or emotionally. …The gaze of male desires are focused outward, narrowly, and entirely on the woman. Men do not have sexual cues relating to their self. "
As such, the smooth talking man is like the immodest dressing woman. He is playing on the woman’s lusts. As a woman should strive to dress beautifully modest, you should strive to make yourself a strong confident male who doesn’t take advantage of women or abuse people. This avoids the excessiveness of lust which leads to problems.
