365 Days
One Year.
84 books.
One question.
What does smut have to teach me?
It's funny. When I first started this adventure I had no idea how much it would change my life. I was just a girl who had hit rock bottom a few months earlier and was looking to find joy in the pages of her books. I escaped to the only world that I knew…stories.
I have always been drawn to stories. When I was a little girl, I struggled with dyslexia and ADHD and could not sit still in class. I felt like a complete and utter failure in school. So, I discovered movies, theater and acting, and this was something I could do. I could make people feel something. I could tell a story. So I grabbed on with both hands. I went to college for acting, cinema, and ultimately storytelling. I took my “people-person” skills and sharpened them. I studied, analyzed, critiqued, and consumed stories. I dug all the way down into the human experience and brought a flashlight with me.
In the four years of college something shifted in me. I think it was years of support from amazing Special Ed teachers, time, practice, patience, and ultimately self love, that allowed me to take another look at the one story-telling technique I was fucking terrified of…books!
It didn’t happen overnight. Some may say it was the magic of Bridgerton that made me a reader, while others may argue it was the first book I ever read on my own during Covid at 19. However, I think it was the little girl who told a story to her friends and saw how they waited patiently for her next word. People and their reactions. That's why I read. I didn’t feel like a failure when I got to connect with people through a story, and talking about books was just another way to do that.
But what does this have to do with Smut??? I have a point, I promise!
See, people are special to me. They have hopes, dearms, fears, and desires. They need to feel heard. My friends always say, “to be loved is to be seen.” And they're right! That's why art has prevailed for so long; it captures the human experience and reflects it back to the viewers in hopes of making them feel a little bit less alone.
When I set out to do SMUNTH, it was just a silly idea; to have a fun, sexy time reading slutty books that would make me smile. And it did. But in the end, I realized that sex and pleasure were a fundamental part of the human experience that I had been missing from my education. It had always been there so why had I never been encouraged to research this part of humanity in my story-telling studies??
Because no one is. This is not a unique experience. In fact, I realized everyone around me, my friends and family all agreed, whether they grew up in a very progressive, sex-positive household like I did or not. Everyone agreed that no authority figure ever handed them a book about sex and said, “you should learn about this to better understand yourself and humanity”. We were expected to be bold enough to do it all on our own. And that just leaves people feeling alone in the questions, fears and curiosities.
So, I sat there after SMUNTH and thought, I can do this. I can keep reading about smut and look at desire and pleasure unabashedly and post about it. So that others don't have to feel alone.
Everyday, for the past 12 months, I have decided to look at this corner of art that people deem to be too salacious or inappropriate. Is it fun? Absolutely! And I get that from an outside perspective what I am doing looks like the easiest, silliest thing in the world. Some days it is. But some days it's not. Sex is vulnerable, it's real, and it's not always a positive thing. Humans are not simple. And neither is art. But that's what I love about smut. It’s just another expression of art. It can be raw, difficult, harsh but it can also be beautiful, poetic, aspirational and tender.
From Smulympics to Smutory, I found new corners of humanity tucked in the pages of my books. I learned about the rules and cultures of different sports. I was swept off to life on a ranch. I was immersed in hilarious plots about porn film crews having to shoot Hallmark Christmas movies and I experienced dragon-riding war colleges. Some of these characters reflected my own life back to me and some showed me completely new perspectives on life. The authors took their time to share their stories and poured their hearts and souls into their work. I am left eternally grateful for every moment that the deepest, darkest, most painful, or must lustful parts of life were inked onto a page.
I am grateful and oh, so happy, that I spent the last year reading smut. I think it made me a better person because it inspired me to ask questions every day.
What does it mean to have desires?
What does it look like to embrace desire?
What does it say about us when we are scared to feel? To want?
What does it look like when we are not afraid?
And after 365 days I have decided I am going to keep asking questions. I am going to keep looking at sex in art. I am going to keep searching to understand more and more. Because SMUNTH is not just about me. It's about everyone who has reached out to say “thank you” or “I needed this”. Because when I do this research I think it helps you feel seen.
So if you are up to the challenge, join me. It's April! It's spring. It's a new year. Here is what I will be reading this month for SMUNTH! <3
SMUNTH ‘25
First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Wild Love by Elsie Silver
Wild Eyes by Elsie Silver
Wild Side by Elsie Silver
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood
Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage
Loved and Lassoed by Lyla Sage
Warped and Wrangled by Lyla Sage
Jump Start by Kyla James
(This list will probably change but this is my plan as of today :) )
