Once upon a time, smut was shorthand for tattered copies of Fabio-fronted, horny and corny romances snuck under the covers, secreted into bedside tables by harlequin housewives. But now, the popularity of Heated Rivalry, salacious fairy books, and OnlyFans has revived and redefined the genre.
Not unlike the “I know it when I see it” definition of obscenity, smut is the difference between a sex scene that cuts from a kiss to the next morning and a scene that builds to real…climax.
The term dates back centuries and originates from the verb smutten, “to soil, smear, or stain with dirt” (a Yiddish word, schmutz, has a similar meaning).
Books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover—D.H. Lawrence’s scandalous 1928 novel about a married upper-class woman who has an affair with her estate’s gamekeeper—helped bring smut to the fore when uncensored versions began to circulate in ’60s Britain. Ever since, smut has long been in the mainstream—from the boom of ’80s and ’90s erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction to Fifty Shades of Grey’s pop culture dominance a decade ago. Our current fetish comes courtesy of TikTok, where the success of dragon-humping book series like Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses has helped make romantasy a top-selling genre. Late last year the world got hot, bothered, and deeply invested in the forbidden-love story of two opposing hockey players in Heated Rivalry; in January, Netflix premiered People We Meet on Vacation, the first of several steamy adaptations based on the work of Emily Henry, the millennial answer to Danielle Steel.
Now, smut is all around us. Heated Rivalry breakouts Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams have parlayed their overnight fame into voiceover work for the audio erotica app Quinn, also home to dirty talk from internet boyfriends like Christopher Briney and Andrew Scott. Rachel Weisz discovers the joy of sex with Leo Woodall in Netflix’s Vladimir. Horned-up Brits ignite a blockbuster new season of Bridgerton. Emerald Fennell’s reimagined Wuthering Heights got audiences hot under the collar; so will Lena Dunham’s Good Sex, in which Natalie Portman plays a couples therapist discovering her own carnal desires. Versace’s and Mugler’s sensual spring-summer fashion shows led The New York Times to declare that “Smutty Dressing Is Back.”
But why now? If you ask transgressive filmmaker John Waters, it has a lot to do with nostalgia. “I think people look back and remember how exciting it was when something was forbidden,” he says. Would Waters consider Heated Rivalry smut? “No, that’s not smut. That’s kind of softcore,” he says. “I’m not against it. I think it’s amazing.”
