A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire

by Ogi Ogas

  Much of the Detective Agency is designed to ferret out a man’s true feelings and determine if he is truly “kind and understanding” or whether his emotional expressions are insincere. “Ultimately, I just want to know that this big, strong guy is safe—that he’s not going to hurt me, that he really listens to me and cares about me,” explains one woman on a romance discussion forum. But sometimes the Detective Agency relies on more direct methods. One young woman describes the things a guy must do to get back together with her: “I needed him to 1. introduce me to his parents. 2. change his facebook relationship status. 3. Give me all his email, Facebook, and phone passwords.”

  Miss Marple’s desire to elicit the latent tenderness of a man is as powerful as Elmer Fudd’s desire to make a woman tremble with sexual pleasure. Men frequently attribute sexual pleasure to a woman based upon shaky evidence. Many porn fans express with certitude that adult actresses Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson, and Cytherea are having real orgasms in their movies. There is a similar kind of certainty in many women’s conviction that their hyper-masculine lover hides a secret tenderness. “My best friend has written to a couple of high-profile inmates, one sadly now executed,” explains JJS811 on the Prison Talk message boards. “She received nice letters in return . . . Even though their names are synonymous with evil, the letters she received showed a human side too.”

  Though “kindness and understanding” are attractive to women by themselves, they are usually most effective at activating the Detective Agency when a man’s sweet interior is packaged together with the tough coconut shell of alpha-hood. This was the final lesson Robert Crumb learned. “When I was a teenager, girls were just utterly out of my reach. They wouldn’t even let me draw them.” Crumb leans back in his chair and laughs. “Yeah. All that changed after I got famous.”

  MATERIAL GIRL

  Though a man can be an alpha without attaining financial success—a sheriff, for example, or a soldier—the possession of enormous amounts of cash is a sure way to seal one’s social dominance. The titles of romance novels demonstrate the high value the Detective Agency places on material wealth. In the romance titles on Amazon, there are 415 millionaires, 286 billionaires, and 263 sheiks, including The Millionaire’s Secretary, The Billionaire’s Virgin Bride, and The Sheik’s Secret Harem Girl.

  Material resources are arousing to females all across the animal kingdom. Female chimpanzees prefer males with the largest quantity of meat. Female pelicans prefer males who give them the most fish. The female wolf spider prefers males who bring them the largest insect. The female bower bird famously prefers the male with the most sumptuous and elaborate bower.

  Until quite recently, a wealthy husband was the only possible way to ensure a woman’s long-term prosperity. In Jane Austen’s novels, such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma, the heroines end up with well-heeled aristocrats as the result of true love—but also to ensure their survival in a world where men control all the purse strings. Things are different in the twenty-first century. In modern romances, the heroine often has a high-powered, high-paying job of her own. Romances feature women who are corporate executives, politicians, and financiers. Since such heroines no longer require a man to provide for their needs, has this cultural transformation led to more romance heroes with limited means?

  Not at all. If a heroine is rich, then the hero is even more rich. In Judith McNaught’s Paradise the heroine is from a wealthy family and meets the hero when she is young. He is poor, but ambitious. Her father doesn’t approve of their relationship and breaks them up. When they meet again years later, he’s made a fortune and is richer than her family. But if the heroine is rich and the hero is poor, a different romantic possibility is to make him an exceptionally macho badass who has to save the heroine from herself, such as this dust jacket description in Lisa Marie Rice’s Midnight Run:Undercover police officer Lieutenant Tyler “Bud” Morrison can’t believe his eyes. What’s a “princess” doing in a dance club known for its rough trade? She needs rescuing, and rescuing women is what Bud does best.

  THE LURE OF THE HUNTER

  In the romance, the hero is always competent. Usually, he’s the best at what he does—a corporate CEO, Hollywood movie star, NFL quarterback, army colonel, or a spy with a license to kill. Men who don’t know what to do with their life, who are midlevel bureaucrats, or who sit around the house watching TV are never heroes. The female cue of male competence contrasts with the complete absence of such a cue in men. In pornography and life, men are quite happy pursuing attractive women who are drifting and aimless, who are stuck in minimum-wage jobs, or who seem to botch any task they’re assigned. To the OkCupid survey question “Would you date someone who didn’t know how to drive a car?” most men answered yes. Most women answered no.

  “The hero has to know what he’s doing, and be confident in his ability,” explains Angela Knight. “In fact, it’s often desirable for the hero to be so confident in his talent that he can’t even conceive that the heroine has something to offer.” In many preliterate cultures, including the Hadza, Yanomamo, Ache, and Hopi, women say that hunting or fighting prowess is an essential quality in a man.

  Intelligence is a special kind of competence that is also essential in a romance hero. “Stupidity is never heroic,” assert Wendell and Tan. In a peculiar evolutionary tradeoff, men may owe their intelligence in part to women’s relative chastity. The brain and the testicles both require large amounts of energy. In species where females are promiscuous, males tend to develop large testicles but smaller brains. The silver-tipped myotis bat has gargantuan testicles that make up 8.4 percent of his body mass, compared to 1 percent in men.

  The psychologist Geoffrey Miller believes that a particular kind of evolution known as sexual selection may be responsible for women’s valuation of male creativity and intelligence. Whereas natural selection can be described as “survival of the fittest,” sexual selection is “survival of the hottest.” Sexual selection for male intelligence or creativity may have worked like this: a woman who was attracted to an artist would have children with a good chance of possessing the creative skills of the father—as well as the mother’s attraction to creative men. This would produce a genetic feedback cycle, the same evolutionary process that made the peacock’s tail so extravagant.

  The appeal of competence and dominance could explain why women are far more interested in older partners than men are. Romance heroes are usually older than the heroines, and age gaps of more than ten years are not rare. In The Flame and the Flower, there’s an age gap of twelve years between the Flower and the older Flame. In historical romances, teenage heroines and thirtysomething heroes are quite common, such as Eloisa James’s Pleasure for Pleasure, where Josie Essex is an eighteen-year old who falls in love with the thirty-five-year old Earl of Mayne. In Suzanne Brockmann’s The Admiral’s Bride, Jake and Zoe are twenty-four years apart. However, many modern romance novels reverse the gap. For example, in Family Blessings by LaVyrle Spencer, the heroine is fifteen years older than the hero. But most women prefer their heroes to have greater experience. “I want a mature strong man and I feel I cannot find that with a guy my age or in his 20s,” bemoans one woman. “I like older men but I want one who has his shit together and is compassionate. I just feel like I can communicate with older guys better. I’ve had enough of the boys.”

  A KNIGHT IN SHINING KEVLAR

  The characters populating male fantasies have little in common with those inhabiting female fantasies. In porn, the mind of a woman is usually empty of all thought and feeling—except for an overwhelming urge to have sex with plumbers, pizza boys, and her BFF. Women’s hopes and fears are irrelevant. Their skills are inconsequential, except for the admirable ability to satisfy multiple lovers simultaneously and an impressive capacity for moaning. Their bodies, on the other hand, are depicted in lavish, graphic detail.

  The heroes of romance novels often seem like members of a more evolved species. They are natural leaders, rich, powerful, and well-
connected. Their minds are intelligent and savvy, though they are reticent about their abilities and hide their inner demons. Despite the fact that they are a five-star general or lord of southern England, they hide a troubled and tempestuous soul that can only be healed by the magical balm of a woman’s love. While visuals do matter—heroes are handsome, tall, strong, with beautiful gray eyes and a crooked grin—little attention is paid to the details of male genitalia. While almost every male-written erotic story details the precise length of a man’s penis to the nearest half inch, in romance, length is seldom given. Instead, and quite curiously, there is far greater emphasis on the activity of the blood within a hero’s penis than what his manhood actually looks like.

  “Blood surged to his cock, heated, unexpected, inappropriate,” writes Christine Feehan in her novel Burning Wild. Then, when the heroine kisses the hero, it “makes the blood pound in his shaft.” In Shiloh Walker’s Touch of Gypsy Fire, “His cock throbbed, blood pounding heavily within it” and later “Aryn’s blood pounded heavily in his cock.” In Ellen Sable’s Days of Flame, she writes how “blood coursed through his cock” until eventually “it pulsed and throbbed with hot blood.” Apparently, female vampires would be well advised to ignore a man’s neck in favor of a more nutritious part of his anatomy.

  This strange clash of busty, giggling airheads and tall, brooding dukes produces mutual dismay. Where men see sexy, women often see misogyny. Where women see sexy, men often see arrogant jerks with split personalities. Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons imagine what a movie might look like that simultaneously appeals to Miss Marple and Elmer Fudd: “A film genre that combined a number of the ingredients of romantopia, pornotopia, and mainstream commercial cinema, such as romantic comedies and romantic adventures with compelling plots, intelligent and witty dialogue, fully developed characters, first-rate acting, physically attractive stars, happily-ever-after endings, and hard-core sex scenes.”

  They observe that even if such a movie were produced, it would be a commercial failure, because some of the essential ingredients of romance and porn are incompatible. Impersonal, anonymous sex is a core feature of pornography, but is anathema to romance, in which the careful elaboration of the hidden and special character of both hero and heroine is essential.

  In the world of male fantasy—and male desire—the goal is orgasm. The story ends with a man’s climax, what masseuses call a “happy ending.” In romance, the happy ending (known as an HEA or Happily-Ever-After) is always a long-term monogamous relationship, usually marriage. (“In erotic romance, the reader is satisfied with a Happy For Now ending,” explains erotic romance author Susanna Carr.) Orgasm is important in modern romances, but it’s never the final scene. The moments in bed after the orgasm are just as important as the feelings experienced during the orgasm itself. When marriage is depicted in porn, the bride has sex with the best man as often as with the groom, and the wedding ceremony may be followed by an orgy between all the bridesmaids and groomsmen. What are the two most common searches on Dogpile that end in “-ing”? “Wedding” and “fucking.”

  Romance novels rarely have a sequel—once the hero and heroine are joined in love or matrimony, they get their Happily-Ever-After, presumably with a bevy of children and domestic bliss. Further adventures would violate the female fantasy of true, committed, eternal love. Though there are many series of modern romance novels, once a couple gets their Happily-Ever-After in one book, they only resurface as beloved supporting characters in future books, with each subsequent book’s focus on a new hero and heroine. In contrast, porn has more sequels than James Bond, such as Cotton Panties 11, Gang Bang Girl 32, and Barely Legal 107. Even male-targeted adventure stories, such as Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin Master and Commander twenty-book series or Warren Murphy’s 145-books-and-still-counting The Destroyer, go on and on after marriage, since there’s always another macho adventure just over the horizon.

  It’s also revealing to reverse the roles and consider the men in porn and women in romance. In porn, the male is reduced to a single object: an erect penis. The face of a male porn star is shown far less frequently than close-ups of his sweaty rear end as he pounds away. His personality consists exclusively of the desire to elicit female pleasure through the paradoxical process of attaining his own orgasm.

  And the romance heroine?

  CHAPTER 6

  The Sisterhood of the Magic Hoo Hoo

  Female Psychological Cues II: The Heroine

  I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.

  —Julia Roberts, Notting Hill

  Skin whitening creams are a big deal in India. They generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales each year in a country where the average monthly income is $250. In one TV ad for Fair and Lovely (India’s best-selling cream) a father and daughter in traditional Hindu garb are looking for the temple. They accidentally walk through a modeling agency’s high-glass doors into a vaulted lobby. The duo asks the Western-suited, pale-skinned receptionist for directions to the place of prayer. The receptionist rolls her eyes and informs them they are actually in the hallowed portals of a modern beauty company. She smirks and cattily adds that this wasn’t the place for women of her sort who belonged in the time of the Vedas. What exactly was her sort? Dark-skinned.

  The incensed father and his chagrined daughter head back home. He whips out an old parchment and recites an angry Vedic incantation. Through his ancient Ayurvedic sorcery, he concocts a jar of Fair and Lovely. His daughter rubs it on her skin, which quickly lightens to resemble the pale tone of the receptionist.

  Obviously, if this advertisement ever aired in the United States, the NAACP would quite reasonably accuse Fair and Lovely of over-the-top racism. But the ad uses a very revealing incentive to motivate women to buy the cream, one that activates a powerful sexual cue in women.

  In the ad, the newly whitened daughter reenters the modeling agency. This time, her appearance produces awestruck reactions from all the men, including the young and handsome director. The curtain drops, revealing that she has become the new face of the agency. She exits an airplane to a crowd of flashing cameras and clamoring men. The message is clear: the enchanted cream has made her irresistible.

  “The desire of the man is for the woman,” Swiss author Madame de Staël famously penned; “The desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.” One of the most fundamental and influential psychological cues for women is irresistibility: the feeling that you are sexually desirable. “Being desired is very arousing to women,” agrees Marta Meana.

  The Fair and Lovely ad could have promised women that lighter skin would lead to greater economic achievement, better health, or greater popularity with other women. In fact, the identical product for men, Fair and Handsome, is sometimes marketed with the promise that it will help its male customers rise the corporate ladder. Perhaps these gender-specific incentives are ultimately the result of Indian culture. But the female desire to be irresistible is also a staple of romance novels, where it’s often represented as a hero’s overwhelming sexual desire for the heroine. In fact, it’s so common that Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have given it a name: the Magic Hoo Hoo.

  “The Magic Hoo Hoo does it all: it heals all ills, psychic and sexual. It provides unparalleled pleasure to the hero, despite the heroine’s reluctance, inexperience, and awkwardness. It’s capable of experiencing (and inducing) earth-shattering multiple orgasms on its first outing. It also creates an instant emotional bond that’s even more irrational and persistent than a newly hatched chick imprinting on the first living thing it sees. 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 desire is focused outward, narrowly, and entirely on the woman. Men do not have sexual cues relating to their self. This unidirectional desire is reflected in the typical porn scene, where the woman is the focus. Male performers are optional, and when they are present, their mai
n contribution is their upright organ. The male viewer of porn doesn’t waste any cognitive energy considering how the actor might feel—and he certainly doesn’t consider his own emotions as he absorbs the visual cues on display. The wabbit hunter only has eyes for his quarry.

  Women have a more panoramic range of considerations. Clues about the character and qualities of the romantic hero are important, of course, as are the hero’s looks. But unlike men, Miss Marple also looks inward when deciding whether to release sexual desire. “An increasing body of data is indicating that the way women feel about themselves may be very important to their experience of sexual desire and subjective arousal,” observes Marta Meana. “Possibly even outweighing the impact of their partners’ view of them.”

  This gender difference in psychological cues pertaining to self is reflected in a common linguistic distinction. When referring to the self-confidence of a woman, we usually describe it as female self-esteem. When referring to the self-confidence of a man, we say male ego. “Self-esteem” has a connotation of being something subject to fluctuation, something that must be nurtured and supported. “Ego” has the slightly negative connotation of aggression and conceit, a sense that the ego might get angry or attack. In romance novels, the hero almost always has a strong ego—even to the point of rakish overconfidence and smugness. A lack of confidence, especially at the start of a romance, is a frequent characteristic of the heroine. But after the hero discovers her Magic Hoo Hoo, the heroine’s self-esteem is sure to soar.

  In Lisa Kleypas’s Only with Your Love, Celia Vallerand is “rescued” from a gang of pirates by another pirate named Griffin. But her rescue turns dangerous when Griffin is overwhelmed with lust for her Magic Hoo Hoo.