‘It Ends with Us’ is emotional porn for women— and why that’s dangerous

If you’re a woman who hasn’t heard of the name Colleen Hoover, then you’re one of the few. Hoover is the wildly successful author of “It Ends with Us,” which is a romance novel that’s just made its film debut.

The film stars Blake Lively, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, it has brought in over $15 million in its first week.

Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” also read the book but found herself needing to skip over far too many parts.

“Why? Because the books are so sexually explicit. It is pornography. It is sexual pornography, and it is also emotional pornography,” Stuckey explains. “Just because something is fiction, just because you are reading something, does not mean it is okay to consume.”

It’s not just the sexual nature of Hoover’s books that’s concerning but the feminist message she sends readers.

“If this is what women are consuming, I understand why women have the thoughts that they do,” she continues. “Not just about sex and promiscuity but also about this girlboss god of self world that women occupy, this self-empowerment, this self-savior complex.”

While the story has good elements — like Blake Lively’s character trying to escape an abusive relationship and finding solace in a man who is strong and protective in the right ways — those good elements are tainted by the overt sexuality.

“When you are writing these hot and heavy romantic scenes with a woman and her abuser, you are almost glorifying the abuse, because women unfortunately still get attached to that abusive character, and I think that is very dangerous,” Stuckey explains.

It also feeds an emotional and sexual fantasy that leads women to compare themselves and their relationships to the characters.

“This kind of emotional pornography, in addition to the sexual aspects of it, I think just makes women extremely discontent. Extremely discontent with their own life, extremely discontent with their own marriage in a way that is not even, like, grounded in reality, and also just feeds lust and fantasy,” Stuckey says.

“That does not feed into a person’s contentment and satisfaction,” she adds.

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