BookTok Fever - The Spicy/Clean Debate

Today I wanted a place to talk about something that is appearing a lot in my TikTok feed, since this is now one of the prime places for authors to reach readers now, and that is the debate between the "spicy" and "clean" labelling of books. For those of you that may not know, books that are categorised under extreme romance, erotic, or books that are sexual by any standard, have usually been given the label spicy. I don't really know if this was always the case but I think the tag rose to prominence sometime after the success of 50 Shades (don't quote me on that, though) as the world got the whole genre of erotica forcefully shoved into it's face so that all the conservatives and religious fanatics could be reminded once and for all that sex is a real thing and not something to burn people over. It was a well-needed message for all and the rise of spice continued. Now, I am personally not a huge indulger of erotic novels. They just aren't to my taste and that's okay. I don't mind a bit of sexy, smutty, dirty-damp and deep here and there in a book either and I fully understand those who will only want to read a book if there's sex in it. We all have our tastes.

Of course, there are some in the world who absolutely do not like their books to have sex in them. At all. They just want a sexless, possibly even romance-less novel and that is perfectly fine as well. Books that purposely lacked in this content have usually been tagged as "clean". Is there a problem with this? Well, I don't really think so. Has there ever been a problem with this for the past decade since 50- Shades triggered the spice festival? Not as far as I know. But in the past few weeks, like almost everything that happens on the internet, there is now suddenly a problem.

The general consensus among authors is that using the term "clean" to define books without sex is derogatory as it makes books with sex seem dirty or filthy in the negative sense. I have to be honest, when I came across this I really wasn't sure what to make of it. Haven't we been using the word "dirty" in connotation with sexual acts for decades? "Doing the dirty", "dirty deeds", these are just two examples of the word being used in terms of sex and everyone has been fine with it for years, so why all of a sudden?

Still, it's not my place to tell people what should and shouldn't offend them. Like I always say, offence is subjective. Plus, if you really think about it, taking offense to someone calling your book dirty can be reasonable. So, now the BookTok community is lashing back and forth to try and find a suitable workaround for this and, as expected, nobody can agree on anything. One prime example; I came across a TikToker (linked by one of my favourite TikTokers, amandamant, go follow her) who helped kick off this whole debate. Naturally, I travelled to her profile to take a gander at the whole situation and form my own personal opinion on it. As I was browsing vids, she had one where she reacted to another user saying "I bet they'd be upset if we switched it to spicy and bland". As a person whose first breakout book was lacking in spice I wasn't very impressed with this idea of "we are offended so our solution is offend others back" so I went into the comments and made my own fun suggestion.

Keeping it light, I suggested "exotic" for the spice and "vanilla" for the non-spice. I only said this jokingly, knowing most probably wouldn't use that but I figured it would just be food for thought. To my surprise and honour, she responded to my comment with a video! Eagerly, I watched it and immediately gave it a token like because any TikToker that directly engages with their commenters in this way deserves likes. Her response, I should admit, almost made me take the like back. First off, she thought my vanilla suggestion meant vanilla used in the sexual way. Clear misunderstanding, no harm done. Then she goes on to say that the bland suggestion is much better. So, I decided not to push at all and made my own response stating that I, too, would take offense at a phrasing such as bland since that's quite negative as well so I will use the term "non-spice". My engagement ended there, no arguments and no harm done to anyone.

This is the part that gets my goat though. I saw another video where she openly invited everyone to give her good suggestions. I think to my self, "Good grief, we have a rational person looking to solve a problem and curb any possible conflict, fantastic!". So I looked through the comments at everyone's marvellous suggestions, all of them very reasonable and well justified, and she made video responses to nearly all of them! Responses explaining why they were all wrong. Just... why invite people to help solve a problem when you're going to consistently tell them their solution won't work and only yours does? It's not even a solution. "We don't like the word you're using to describe our books so we are going to get everyone to use a word we know you won't like and now the problem is solved because everyone is unhappy".

Surely you can see the problem, right? And you're wondering why BookTok is still being flooded with angry authors and annoyed readers? It's all just so strange to me and I really needed somewhere to do my inner lecture on this. Here's my five cents though; You don't like people calling non-sex books (that have nothing to do with you by the way, they aren't your books) clean, right? Then call them whatever you want. Here's what you don't do. Don't go on a internet crusade to get everyone to change the language just because it doesn't suit you. If I want to call my book clean, I will do so. If you want to call my book bland, go ahead and do so. Don't complain and whine when I tell you I don't like how you're describing my books and don't want anything to do with you because you're insulting my life's work. Insulting others is not a solution to being insulted, it just leaves everyone feeling bad. I wonder what interesting argument TikTok is going to regurgitate next.