I’ve read a lot of books in my lifetime, and in my teen years those books started to become more about relationships and less about magical adventures. At around 12 I think I read my first book with a sex scene and it really intrigued me. Years later and being a much more developed human and now adult, I want to look at how sex scenes are used in literature, specifically YA, and whether they are welcome or not.
In my opinion, a sex scene done well is a decent addition to a book, but I know that to some sex is a very taboo subject. I personally feel we should all be able to talk about sex and our bodies without shame or embarrassment and including it more in literature could help normalise it for those who do put it in the taboo box.
I ran a poll on Twitter (back in 2017) asking if people liked to read sex scenes in YA or not, the results remained fairly split within the first hour, with lots of people commenting that they only liked them if they were relevant and done well. So let’s talk about the relevance of a sex scene and what we mean by it being ‘done well’.
Someone who does a lot of sex scenes in her later books is Sarah J Maas, and personally I enjoy these scenes, such as A Court of Wings and Ruin. She doesn’t mess about in getting to where she needs to go, she is direct and doesn’t dance about in too many metaphors. Let’s take this into comparison with something like 50 Shades of Grey, which yes I know isn’t YA but is probably the most known erotica book out there. 50 Shades is metaphor central and whilst yes it does describe the scenes too, it more or less repeats the description and kind of takes the passion away from the moment.
The writing and the description of a sex scene are key to making or breaking the moment, as many of you on twitter seem to agree. But what is too much and what is not enough? Personally, my filter for sex is fairly non-existent, I am happy to talk about it in any detail so I’m the same when reading, nothing bothers me. But I am aware not every reader thinks like that and it’s the worst thing to be reading a book by your favourite author and then to have it ruined by a too graphic sex scene.
Maas and many other authors in YA are tasked with writing a sex scene that is interesting and appropriate for the audience, as unlike 50 Shades, these books are young adult and the audience is varied in age. In an interview with Cosmopolitan Mass says
“I tried to make the sex tied to the plot and the characters, and make it feel like it is a real result of what’s happening in the world and these characters’ lives.”
She talks about wanting to encourage a positive portrayal of sex and speaks about how she learnt a lot about sex from books when she was younger. I love that authors are portraying sex as something that happens, not something that should be frowned upon. It happens, most people will have sex and that is totally okay and we should be able to talk about it.
Praise to those books that teach us about sex at a time when we are too embarrassed to raise our hands in a sex-ed class. Whether fiction or non-fiction, it is important to know that we have an education in these books. The book I referenced myself reading at age 12 was Before I Die, a very emotional book about a girl with cancer who wants to tick things off her list before she dies. One of those things is having sex. The scene wasn’t very long, a page or two, but I remember rereading it a couple of times to get this secret insight into this mysterious thing. From reading this I got a realistic description of how sex can be messy and of sexual protection. This book definitely shaped my interest of sex in literature and I wanted to find more as a way of educating my young mind on what exactly sex was. Around this time I was also hitting the puberty stage of life and I had a book that was my companion to all things hormonal, sexual and general puberty related issues. Again I reread pages of this book to try to understand the big secret of SEX.
Let’s jump forward ten years again to a woman who has a much better knowledge of these things, but still enjoys to read and learn more. I recently picked up Hannah Witton’s Doing It and have been finding pages really interesting. I’m glad to see this topic becoming less taboo and being involved more widely in mainstream literature. I do think it should be made clear if a book contains sex to warn younger readers of YA, but generally, I am all for it being included, it is real, it is life and we should stop hiding it as a taboo or embarrassing topic.
