Enough with the “Mommy Porn” Label – Moms Are Still Women

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relax and read every once in a while

Photo by Carlos Giesemann (click pic for link)

I know we usually talk about our kids on here, but I have a subject near and dear to the kinds of books I write that is kind of driving me crazy. If you haven’t been living under a rock–or even if you have–you’ve probably heard of the book 50 Shades of Grey. It’s the BDSM erotic romance that has broken out into blockbuster status. It’s been on the Today Show, 20/20, and even Dr. Oz talked about it today. It’s everywhere.

BDSM erotic romance is what I write, so obviously I’ve been paying a lot of attention to this hoopla. Mainly because I’m amused that everyone is talking about how scandalous and new this is when BDSM romance has been around for a LONG time and has been a thriving subgenre of romance for at least a decade. But anyway, what’s getting REALLY old is the media’s portrayal of books “like that” being “mommy” porn.

First of all, porn is porn. Romance novels are romance novels. The two are not the same. If a “mommy” wants porn, she can go on the internet or buy pay-per-view like anyone else. If she wants a sexy story with a plot, developed characters, and love story she picks up a romance novel. But here’s the thing–why is it so scandalous that moms are reading sexy books? Once we procreate, are we relegated to being washed up women with used uteri (uteruses?) who are now supposed to focus on nothing but making the perfect lasagnas and singing choruses of Sesame Street songs with our kidlets?

Yes, we do those things (well, I still haven’t gotten the hang of lasagna). We ARE moms. That is a hugely important role in our lives. But it’s just one role. We didn’t lose our woman card in the process. We’re still sexual beings who like a little naughtiness on occasion (or often, lol.) We still like to be swept away by romance. We still want our husbands to give us that how-you-doin’ look. We still want to feel sexy and wanted and feminine. And there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that. Moms shouldn’t be shamed for wanting those things, and calling sexy books “mommy porn” is shaming, plain and simple.

I’ve had enough of it.

So if you like your sexy romances, be proud. Read them in public, pass recommendations to your friends, and never ever apologize for what you like. You’re probably having a lot more fun once the kids go to bed than those who are looking down at it and calling it “mommy porn” are. 🙂

SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD – feel free to look away…

Here’s my book, Crash Into You,  if you want to give a BDSM romance a try. (I even have one coming out next month that’s about *gasp* a married mother.) And if mine’s a little too naughty for you, all the other moms on here have some super fab smexy books too. : )

So how do you feel about the whole “mommy porn” label? Do you feel like you have to hide what you read so you don’t get judged by others?

Roni Loren wrote her first romance novel at age fifteen when she discovered writing about boys was way easier than actually talking to them. Since then, her flirting skills haven’t improved, but she likes to think her storytelling ability has. Though she’ll forever be a New Orleans girl at heart, she now lives in Dallas with her husband and son. If she’s not working on her latest sexy story, you can find her reading, watching reality television, or indulging in her unhealthy addiction to rockstars, er, rock concerts. Yeah, that’s it. Website: www.roniloren.com

32 thoughts on “Enough with the “Mommy Porn” Label – Moms Are Still Women”

  1. I completely agree with you! There are a lot of women who give me dirty looks if they see a romance novel in my hand, and one has actually said to me that I should be ashamed to be reading “smut” in public, and in front of my 3 year old daughter. Waiting for an appt at the doctor while my daughter is playing her game. I’m not snotty by nature, but I didn’t appreciate that, so I felt the need to be a bit of a bitch. With her husband sitting right beside her, I said, “How sad that your man has very little to look forward to in the bedroom, with a wife who has a stick shoved up her butt.” I know, I know. But really, don’t attack me in front of my daughter and suggest I’m being inappropriate in front of her!!

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    • Bwahahaha, that was an awesome response! And you had a total right to be snotty after she drew first blood. 🙂 I mean, please, you should be ashamed for READING in front of your child. Wow, way to set a bad example, mom. 😉

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      • isn’t that the truth! My children are 34 and 25 years old now and I have read romance novels in front of them their whole lives. My hope was that if they saw their mother enjoying reading then maybe they would want to do it.

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  2. I think it’s insulting, but I find the media’s attitude toward the romance genre as a whole insulting. I’m glad that smart, articulate women like you are pointing out what a stupid label “mommy porn” is.

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    • I forgot to answer the hard question. 🙂 I do prefer to read sexy books on my Kindle, but not to hide them from other adults–I just don’t think my kids need to see some of the cover images.

      I did see a guy reading a Penthouse collection in a bookstore cafe last night, and he didn’t seem one bit embarrassed. Someone needs to do a study on reactions to men and women reading the same sexy stuff in public.

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  3. Reblogged this on Trashy's Treasures and commented:
    *applause* Why is it so shocking that moms like sex? How do you think we got to be moms? (Well, I adopted my daughter, but I had a hell of a lot of fun trying to conceive.) The sooner the ‘mommy porn’ critics figure out sex is a beautiful, ‘all-natural’, acceptable thing, the better off we’ll be.

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  4. *stands up and applauds* Couldn’t have put it better myself. The media coverage of 50 Shades as made my skin crawl. We aren’t in the Victorian era or even in the 1950s. Women have many facets. We are not paper dolls. Deal with it!

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    • It’s like we’re supposed to be sexy and perfect when we’re single but then when we get married and have kids, we’re supposed to be asexual? It’s ridiculous.

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  5. It seems like even with the popularity of 50 Shades, women are supposed to be madonna or whore. Ridiculous that we still have to deal with this double-standard. (I also find it interesting that no one derides men for reading such ‘formulaic’ literature as detective/crime fiction, or that sort of thing, but yet they feel free to deride women for romance novels.)

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  6. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It’s like they’ve suddenly forgotten they’ve been scandalized by our “regular” romances for decades. I’m not sure why this is so shocking to people. But the media get so much of the world wrong, I guess it’s foolish of us to think they’d get this right. I for one like to read books with sexy scenes and I *gasp* really enjoy writing sexy scenes and mine are fairly traditional (though I think they’re pretty hot). I haven’t written any spanking scenes, but maybe I will……

    You go, Roni!

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    • Lol, thanks, Robyn. And I’m disappointed if a book doesn’t have the smexy stuff in it. You historical writers are some of the best at it–all that societal pressure, that sneaking around, that tension. Whew!

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  9. Great post, Roni, and I completely agree! The media response has been very junior high in its coverage of Fifty Shades – let’s all snicker and giggle behind our hands, and then go rush out and get the book and see for ourselves! Really??

    I had to chuckle a little bit at the doctor office situation, love the response! I was reading a Julia Quinn novel in a doctor office and the doctor commented on it. I sort of took a deep breath, expecting the usual put down, and then was told her husband worked at the same hospital! It was really fun to have so many people around me, be excited that I was reading a romance novel. 🙂

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  10. I started reading romance novels at 12 and at 49 still going strong. I have never had a problem reading romance novels in public. If someone doesn’t like what I am reading then they can look some where else. My kids who are 34 and 25 have watched me read these books and now my grandchildren are. I wouldn’t dream of hiding my books from them, because there isn’t anything wrong with it and if I were to hide them I would have been showing them that it is wrong. I hoped if they saw there mother enjoying reading then they would want to read.

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    • That’s awesome, Mary. I agree with you on not hiding it from the kids. I want my house to be a reading-positive household. I want my son to see that I enjoy books. 🙂

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  11. While I dislike the terms out there, I grew up with my gma calling her reading material “smut books” and to this day I love my “smut books”. I don’t hide them (well, not since I didn’t have to hide them from my parents at the preteen age). I enjoy them, I post about them on my FB and talk about them to my friends and family and anyone who asks. I will typically use Romance Novels when asked what I read but when I get that blank look I’ll use “smut” with a proud grin and mention how great my historicals are that are full of research and obvious hard work to get such a great STORY into my hands! I don’t really care what terms they use, it’s the way they talk about them that bothers me! They shouldn’t deride my joy and thereby put themselves on a pedestal…What irks me the most is that these terms don’t even come close to denoting how much WORK goes into creating these stories! It’s like they think because it has sex scenes in them (of any type) that this makes it easier because that is all we are reading…HAHAHAHAHAHA…okay, I’m ranting now, I need to stop. While I’m not a BDSM reader, I appreciate your abilities to write such stories for those readers who demand it! It takes talent to be any kind of author and kudos to you for doing that hard work!

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    • I don’t mind the smut label when we’re self-labeling. I always use the term smexy (smut + sexy) with pride. I guess it’s kind of like your friends calling you hooker or something in jest. It’s okay when they do it, but if some random person called you that, it’d be on. 🙂

      And what gets me about the mommy porn label is the connotation. It’s that’s demeaning–oh look at the washed-up, silly moms getting their kicks from a dirty book–thing. Like “Oh, aren’t they so pitiful?” That makes me teeth gnash.

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      • Very true! The connotations and the context are everything when using terms for anything. Too bad I read my historicals as a preteen and all the way through HS and college and am now a mommy to a two year old…Mommy Porn isn’t very accurate considering I read these much more outside of mommy-dom 😉 Silly people speaking around feet should just sit back down and keep quiet. 50 Shades I’m sure is a good book (series?) or it wouldn’t have gotten popular enough to draw this attention. Clearly no porno has ever stirred things up THIS much so they just need to acknowledge the talent that writing these novels takes and the work that goes into them all and from there realize they are not simply sexual but emotional as any other good book is! grrr…getting worked up again…I’m gonna have to walk away from the computer at this rate! lol

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  12. But here’s the thing – why is it so scandalous that moms are reading sexy books? Once we procreate, are we relegated to being washed up women with used uteri (uteruses?) who are now supposed to focus on nothing but making the perfect lasagnas and singing choruses of Sesame Street songs with our kidlets?

    There’s two parts to this:

    1) The Media exists to sell copies, and by making a fuss about something they sell more copies. That’s why things like the British Phone Hacking Scandal happen. So they write articles in salacious and eye catching ways.

    2) There’s a lot of people still living in the 19th Century. Some day they might realize that we are really living in the 21st Century, but I’m not optimistic.

    Of course #1 tends to feed back on #2… Remember all the big fusses about how Video Games make kids more violent? The Media pushed something that they were told was a non-issue, which got the people still living in the 19th Century all upset and bothered.

    Which makes me wonder if the 19th Century types aren’t pushing this to try and stop people from buying/selling this sort of work. Visa/MasterCard/PayPal didn’t decide to come down on SmashWords for nothing…

    Wayne

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  13. Two words: Amen, sister. Okay, and a few more. =) First of all, I admit that I read romance novels in front of my daughters, and some of them have “clinch” covers, aka the hero and heroine embracing with perhaps some of the clothes coming off. And you know what? It doesn’t bother me one bit, and the reason for that is because the stories are NOT about random, casual sexual encounters (as opposed to what so many TV shows, movies, and popular music portray), but about two people meeting, falling in love, and committing to a HEA relationship. (Of course, note that I’m not talking about erotica, but erotic romance would still fit this.) And when the time comes for having a discussion with my daughters about romance novels, I will make this clear.

    Secondly, I agree that the media titillates people who’ve never read a romance by making it seem all about sex, but even if it WERE, as you said, women are sexual beings, too. Society seems to be okay with objectifying women as sexual beings when someone’s trying to sell something to men and is also okay with women being independent in their jobs and dressing as sexily as they want, but you’re right–it seems that after we become moms, we regress right back to the Victorian era.

    As a society we’re always talking about what to teach our children, especially our daughters. They should love their bodies, be confident in their abilities, be strong, independent women who can Kick a**, but when it comes to sex they’re only supposed to see the media’s portrayals of girls wanting to dress in a way that perpetuates female objectification so they can get a boyfriend and feel worthy of love? *steam coming out of ears*

    I’m not even going to start on society’s expectations (or rather, lack of expectations) for men as sexual beings. I’ll save that for another post. =)

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  15. As a wife, mother, aspiring author, and avid reader I must say that I detest the term “mommy porn”. Should we then start calling crime novels that portray grisly scenes of murder victims “handbooks for criminals” or “Murder 101”? Should paranormal romances become “guides to bestiality”? Men can sit down with a Playboy or Hustler in a public location and it’s his right (unless you are a foreign soccer player having your photo taken with a three year old fan and have one showing through the plastic bag in the photo) but if a woman should sit down in a public location with an even remotely sexy book and it’s scandalous!

    I, myself, have written some scenes in my own work that made my hubby’s eyeballs sweat (his term, NOT mine) and I would probably smack the heck out of someone who coined my work “mommy porn” because it was written with the intent to pull the reader into the story and leave them wanting more, not be used as an alternative to a REAL, healthy sex life. That to me, is the rub I think, the term “mommy porn” indicates to me that women are using books labeled thus to allow fantasy to take the place of a true sexual experience like actual “porn” does.

    I have never seen anyone use real pornography in a healthy manner to enhance someone’s sex life, I have only seen destruction, pain, and deviance come from the use of actual pornography. The last time I checked, women were not actually comparing their spouses, boyfriends, or lovers to fictional characters or expecting them to be able to look, act, or portray someone on film, paper, or internet and become disappointed, annoyed, and angry that they aren’t able to “measure up”.

    While women may actually get a turn on from these books, it is her male counterpart that is going to reap the rewards of her increased libido WITHOUT her making the comparison to the characters she has read about. Men actually make the comparison to what they have seen and it only serves to make women feel like they are not worthy.

    That is why I dislike the term “mommy porn” because it is as far from an accurate description as it can be. Yes, the media hypes it up as scandalous because women are supposed to be “dead from the neck down” after they settle down or reach a particular age. The next thing you know they will be taking away our voting privileges and making us go around covered from head to toe in fabric in public with a male escorting us for our “safety”.

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  16. I stumbled on this article when googling the term “mommy porn” – Everyone is talking about it and II thought it sounded weird. Too specific almost. My imagery was all ofver the place, Is it moms having sex with each other ?Naked men doing chores? thanks for the insight. maybe it’s time I get swept away with a naughty book…

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  17. I’m like 2.5 years late to this party so the marzipan is well and truly … er … ok … but for the sake of auld lang syne I’ll pen it anyway. Society has some really screwed up attitudes about sex, and not only towards mummies either. Disabled people, people in authority, I mean, how do we think that little princes and princesses are born, eh? Their right royal mummy and daddy got jiggy with it on sheets bearing the royal crest is how. I’ve known people who are wheelchair bound and blind who can tell the style and thickness of rubber just by hearing it rustle … and it excites them. I mean, these people have hearts and minds and feelings and desires like the rest of us. Sometimes, those self righteous people need a good slapping in to reality. We’re human. Hello? That thing in the chest doing the thump, thump thing … it’s called a heart … oh, no, you wouldn’t know, Mrs Prude because it doesn’t seem that you have one.

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