Excerpt from the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam

BILLIONAIRES AND BAD BOYS

Here are the ten most common professions of the hero, derived from the titles of more than 15,000 Harlequin romance novels: Doctor Cowboy Boss Prince RancherKnight Surgeon King Bodyguard Sheriff

Conspicuously absent from the list of romance heroes are blue-collar workers (no janitors or welders), bureaucrats (no claims adjusters or associate marketing managers), and traditionally feminine professions (no hairdressers, secretaries, or kindergarten teachers). All of the hero professions are associated with status, confidence, and competence. As Henry Kissinger famously said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Power is a reflection of a man’s rank in the dominance hierarchy, and women are attracted to the men near the top. The man at the very top is known as the alpha male.

“Alphas are natural leaders—that’s pretty much the definition of the alpha—with a strong protective streak and a fierce confidence in their own abilities,” writes EroRom author Angela Knight in her book Passionate Ink: A Guide to Writing Erotic Romance. “They’re who women reach for when the bullets start flying.” Most romances introduce their hero with a very clear indication of his alpha status, as in this passage from Angelle Trieste’s Devil Falls:

Victoria looked up and to her relief saw a man trotting toward her. An umbrella dangled from his hand, and casual but expensive clothes wrapped his long, lean frame. He was gloriously golden, with a face that rivaled Lucifer’s in the moment of his fall from grace.Damien Kirk. A cellist celebrated the world over.The magazine photos didn’t do him justice. They had failed to capture the magnetic vividness of his blue eyes and the electrifying vitality of his presence. She could feel it through the gates, even over the ferocity of the dogs, and she had no doubt he had dominated the vast concert halls, driving the crowds wild. Her heartbeat picked up the pace, and it wasn’t all from relief.

Study after study has demonstrated the erotic appeal of male dominance. Women prefer the voices of dominant men, the scent of dominant men, the movement and gait of dominant men, and the facial features of dominant men. The social organization of most primates features a very clear dominance hierarchy. Chimpanzees and baboons boast alpha males, who obtain that position through a combination of physical strength and political savvy, while alpha gorillas attain their status through brute size and strength. Scientists believe that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex may be responsible for processing cues indicating social status or dominance, and it appears that almost all female brains are susceptible to dominance cues. “I met [Bill Clinton] as part of a governmental panel while he was president. I’m a lesbian, but the powerful attraction I felt toward him for an instant made me question whether I really was!

”Biologists have discovered that the ventromedial region of the prefrontal cortex in female chimpanzees is associated with the determination of other chimps’ position in a dominance hierarchy. The sexual authority of the alpha is also recognized by the Pickup Artist culture made famous by Neil Strauss in his book The Game. This male “seduction community” has developed a set of techniques its practitioners use to seduce women. The techniques are designed to activate women’s psychological cues in the same way that Botox, collagen, and implants are designed to artificially trigger men’s visual cues. One of the central commandments of pickup artists is to “always be an alpha.” As seduction community spokesman Roissy states on his blog, “You don’t have to be an asshole, but if you have no choice, being an inconsiderate asshole beats being a polite beta, every time.”

Though romances are dominated by Navy SEALs, knights, and rock stars, some romance writers have felt that always writing alpha heroes was limiting. They’ve experimented with softer, more deferent protagonists, often called betas. “What makes the beta hero so great: an unshakable core of pure and stalwart good, so constant and abiding it’s damn near alpha in its strength,” explain Wendell and Tan. The most famous beta hero in romance (and perhaps the first) was Freddy Standen, from Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion. Freddy Standen is a slender, “unarresting” man who is oblivious to the events around him. He has a warm and assured place in the hearts of most romance readers. Often, the hero starts out as a beta but then turns into an alpha, such as Avery Thorne in Connie Brockway’s My Dearest Enemy, about an eighteenth-century nerd turned unexpectedly hunky.

But for the vast majority of romance readers, the hero should be a strong, confident, swaggering alpha. “I think this is one of the problems we’re having in romance in general right now: our heroes have gotten a little too PC. We’re portraying men the way feminist ideals say they should be—respectful and consensus-building,” muses Angela Knight. “Yet women like bad boys. I suspect that’s because our inner cavewoman knows Doormat Man would become Sabertooth Tiger Lunch in short order. In fact, this may be one reason why EroRom is gaining popularity so fast—writers feel free to write dominant heroes with more of an edge.”

Though women like alpha heroes, in contemporary novels there are some lines that a hero can never cross, such as excessive physical violence against women or extreme psychological abuse. But in romances written in the 1970s and 80s, the hero was often cruel—or worse. In The Flame and the Flower, the hero actually rapes the virgin heroine in the opening scene—later excusing his behavior by saying he presumed she was a whore. In Catherine Coulter’s 1982 novel Devil’s Embrace, the thirty-four-year-old Earl of Clare kidnaps the eighteen-year-old Cassie Brougham just before her wedding to a nice young man, ties her down, and painfully rapes her; later she falls in love with him.

Can a man be too dominant for the Detective Agency’s alpha cue? What about bona fide bad boys—serial killers, violent offenders, and rapists? It turns out that killing people is an effective way to elicit the attention of many women: virtually every serial killer, including Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and David Berkowitz, have received love letters from large numbers of female fans. A woman named Lysosome was one of them. “I used to write to Richard Ramirez [the “Night Stalker”] when I was 16–20, he was nice, told me to get an education and that I’m sweet and should sort my life out and not end up in prison lol. I really liked him. I told him I wanted to chop his wifes feet off and he was cool about it. he’s a nice guy :-).” Another fan describes her attitude toward Andrei Chikatilo, a Soviet serial killer nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov who killed fifty-three women and children: “My personal favorite is Chikatilo, though. If I could have died by his hands, sigh.” One woman even managed to have sex with the serial killer Ed Abrams in prison, after marrying him and acquiring conjugal visits.

Among the Yanomamo people of the Amazon, men who have killed the most other men have the most wives and the most offspring. Indeed, killers (known as chuchu) are generally regarded by the Yanomamo women as the most desirable. Men from the Ilongots of the Philippines were required to present the shrunken head of a man they had killed to a woman during courtship.

But readers of romance are quick to point out that they certainly don’t want their heroes to be rapists or murderers. They’re willing to tolerate a little misogyny and jerkdom in their heroes at the beginning of a story, as long as they don’t stay that way after they meet the heroine. In fact, being an alpha is only half the full hero package. To truly pass Miss Marple’s scrutiny, the hero must find his inner goo.