Romance novels. I love romance novels. In university I wrote cheeky, explicit essays and honours dissertations on the politics of romance in film and novels and argued that in fact my essays were Important and Political because social attitudes and sexual mores are encoded and engendered in chick-lit. True story.

And it is true. Romance novels account for 32 per cent of adult mass-market paperback sales and Harlequin, the romantic behemoth of the publishing industry, sells roughly 130 million books a year. This tells us something, and that something is this: the formulas of romance novels – and lawd, they are formulaic – are meeting the needs of women who read them. Otherwise they wouldn’t read them and buy them and subscribe to them. Popular is telling.

Romance novels tell you what straight women want, and it is a short list. Here it is:

1. To be desired.
In romance novels, men think women are beautiful, just as they are, flaws and all, and maybe even because of those flaws.

I should probably ask a man if this holds true in reality, but I’m afraid of the answer. Maybe men love and lust for us just the way we are. Maybe women are projecting our own internalized self-hatred and assuming that men hold our bodies to a mythical standard achieved only by winning the genetic lottery or by medicalized mutilation. Or maybe your man has been irreparably scarred by the Playboy he “read” at twelve and pines for a live-action flesh Barbie. I don’t know. What I do know is that most women have Body Image Issues and so we secretly yearn for our lovers to tell us that all the things we hate about ourselves, and are programmed to hate about ourselves by mainstream media, are in fact beautiful, or endearing, or ordinary, or not a big deal, and please take your clothes off already.

2. To be desired.
In romance novels, men pay attention.

That stoic, seemingly emotionless and inattentive man is actually completely psychically attuned to our heroine and notices every detail of everything she does and memorizes the curve of her nose and the curve of her breasts and the freckles on her shoulders and recites her breakfast menu to himself before he sleeps, if he can sleep, which is unlikely, because he is completely besotted and obsessed and it is borderline stalker-ish except welcome.

Really, really welcome. I’d welcome some of that.

This is miles away from the mundane, overpopulated town called Real Life, where genuinely stoic, emotionless, and inattentive men are studiously ignoring their partners, singing “la la la I can’t hear you” but silently and in their heads, and counting down the minutes until she goes to bed to read romance novels so he can watch YouPorn in peace.

3. To be desired.
In romance novels, men have sex with women, and it is good.