Guide: Quickest Way to Finding Intimate Content in a Book
It is impossible for both me and you to read everything your child reads, so I’ve come with a guide to help you find if a book has explicit sexual content with a simple search on the internet. But first, let’s look at some important terms:
Smut/Smutty: Written sexual content which is generally targeted towards women and is very graphic and detailed.
Spice/Spicy: A term used to describe the levels of sexual content in a book. Spice can range from light kisses to intercourse.
Steamy: A term used to describe the levels of sexual content in a book.
MLM/mlm: Acronym that stands for Man-Loving-Man
FMF/flf: Acronym that stands for Female-Loving-Female
Sapphic: Relating to sexual attraction between women
Achillean: Relating to sexual attraction between men
The most important terms you must know are “smut” and the more covert “spice”. There are whole accounts on Instagram that dedicate their page on the two. When reading reviews that use these words be sure to take it all with a grain of salt as everyone has their own opinion on “spice”.
So how do you use these terms to know if the book your child is reading has sexual content? All you have to do is use one of these two formulas in your search bar:
“Is [book title] spicy?”
“Does [book title] have spice?”
You may also swap the words spicy and spice for smutty and smut. All the reviews of people talking about the sexual content of that book will pop up and you will be able to make a decision from there. To some “minor spice” might be a quick kiss and to others that will be some types of intercourse. While there isn’t a whole chart defining what is considered “minor spice” or “major spice” if a book is described as “very spicy” then count on there being detailed smutty scenes. This technique isn’t foolproof but is great for books targeted towards middle school and high school.
