I wonder how many female college students have these twerp experiences?

I don’t know, but I agree it seems pretty common!

willaful wrote:

I find it quite plausible in a real life relationship. Not sure I would want to read about it in a romance, however.
Am also really turned of by that cover, which for some odd reason keeps looking to me like an Edwardian guy with a handlebar mustache.

I agree, both on the plausibility in RL and the cover, LOL!

Am also really turned of by that cover, which for some odd reason keeps looking to me like an Edwardian guy with a handlebar mustache.

The hero liked her exhibiting herself for HIM alone. As for doing it for others, he accepted it, but didn’t like it.

I agree that if the gender roles were reversed we would be saying this is one pervy guy. Also, if she were fat or ugly, she wouldn’t get away with it.

jillsorenson wrote:

Um. Sounds hot to me!
Does she get off on a strange man’s response, or is the act of exposing herself the real turn-on? A threesome is an exhibition, I think. If erotic romance readers can accept that, why not this?

Actually, the scenes between the h/h were pretty hot. But there was a budding relationship, consent. the scenes where she did it just randomly were not hot to this reader.

I might look at a hot man at the gym, but if he pretended to drop a towel and showed me his bait and tackle (this is what the heroine did) and proceeded to get aroused, I would call the police.

As for what aspect turned this heroine on, I think both the exhibiting of herself and the reaction. Studies I looked at suggest that exhibitionists actually do hope for some kind of positive response, and do not want to instill fear or shock in general.

Does she get off on a strange man’s response, or is the act of exposing herself the real turn-on? A threesome is an exhibition, I think. If erotic romance readers can accept that, why not this?

Part of the thing with exhibitionism for me is the consent issue–some people will be okay with it, for others it is a violation of their personal boundaries. It’s completely different when both the people doing and the people watching have consented a priori. Without explicit consent, it bothers me. A lot.

If that was a guy doing that, he would be hauled off to jail for indecency.

It makes me think of this Maltesers advert in which a woman flashes her breasts at a man. I think the audience is supposed to think that this kind of sexual harassment in the workplace is funny, and presumably that’s because it’s directed at a man.

I wonder if the heroine’s exhibitionism is perhaps presented as being OK because (a) she’s female and the people she shows herself to are male and (b) she’s got a body which fits social norms about what’s sexually attractive in a woman. I could be wrong, of course, since I haven’t read the book.

As for the hero’s attitude, it reminds me of a comment made by a lapdancer called Stephanie:

She looks over to the bar, where her fiance is waiting to take her home. How does he feel about her job? “He doesn’t mind, so long as I am going home with good money. It makes him feel good. Other men want what he has got.” (Cooke, Guardian)

It seems not dissimilar to the idea of having a “trophy” wife.

Like Gemma, I had some E in college, at the Boston Public Library, courtesy of a drunk man in a trench coat with a beer belly and a flaccid penis which he excitedly waved at me as if it, rather than the copy of Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles I was reading, would reveal the secrets of the universe. It was an experience I never want to repeat in this or any future life.

Yuck. That happened to me in college too, except the weird guy was under thirty and I was in front of the TV in the student rec center in summertime, when the campus was relatively empty. I’m not sure if he was drunk, but his penis was flaccid!

A fellow college student friend of mine had something even worse happen to her — a guy she sat next to on the bus put his jacket on his lap and started um, pleasuring himself under it.

I wonder how many female college students have these twerp experiences?

I think I may have sent the wrong message about the sexual content in this review. While sex is a key theme in this book, given the heroine’s job and the fact that the author is using Gemma’s gradual acceptance of her fetish as a sign of her personal growth, this book doesn’t have more than the usual explicit sex scenes for a Blaze. Actually, the h/h don’t have sex until well past the halfway point, which is quite late for a Blaze.

Actually, I was thinking it would have made a good women’s fiction book.

For me, to work as a romance, it needed to have a sequel when the h/h start dating and getting to know each other. I think falling fast and hard can be written convincingly, but not for these two characters.

Phyl wrote:

Oh, and I really, really like the quilty icons with the comments. I want.

I hadn’t thought of them that way. Of course, a quilter would!

Do you mean “An unusual Blaze”?

Oh, and I really, really like the quilty icons with the comments. I want.