Edited by: Emilie Rose
Disclaimer
What’s the Deal With? is a series focused on informed readership that explores the reasons why people dislike your favorite author. This series is for informational purposes ONLY and authors are nominated for this series by my Patrons.
CONTENT WARNINGS: This post discusses fetishization of wlw relationships, biphobia, and misogyny.
Elle Kennedy’s best-selling Off-Campus series, including the popular novel The Deal, has made her a Booktok darling. This success in publishing has led to further opportunities for the author, including an adaptation of The Deal by Amazon Prime Video. While it isn’t difficult to find readers singing her praises in online book spaces, there has also been significant criticism of the author and her works.
Most notably, fans take issue with her refusal to write F/F romance despite clear lesbian fetishization in her books. Is the criticism warranted? Let’s discuss.
Lesbian Fetishization and Misogyny
“Unfortunately, F/F really isn’t something I’m interested in writing, sorry!”
The root of this criticism stems from a 2019 Twitter interaction, in which Kennedy stated she wasn’t interested in writing F/F relationships. This response led to significant backlash as readers began sharing excerpts from the Off-Campus series in which she wrote scenes that readers dubbed ‘wlw fetishization’.
Scattered throughout the Off-Campus series are a variety of scenes in which the men either watch women make out, have threesomes with them, or discuss fantasizing about women having sex with one another. Some examples include:
The Mistake (2015):
- The main male character, Logan, watches his fraternity brother film two girls making out and thinks to himself that the video will end up on a free porn site.
The Score (2016):
- The main male character, Dean, watches two ‘two very hot, very naked blondes suck each other’s tongues’ in front of him.
- Dean later has a threesome with these women who he describes as ‘two beautiful, bisexual women’. These women, Kelly and Michelle, remain naked as his love interest, Allie, arrives at his house unexpectedly. Previous editions of this book described the women as ‘two beautiful, eager women’ per reviews.
- Later, Michelle suggests a foursome between her, Kelly, Dean, and a friend who is staying with her.
- The love interests make a deal to share their gay and lesbian experiences with one another. Dean explains that he and a buddy made out after being dared to do so by their dates, but only if their dates agreed to do so as well. They had to do it as the girls started ‘making out like porn stars.’
The Goal (2016):
- Tucker thinks about two girls from his town who were ‘friends’, just ones that kissed and ‘felt each other up in the hallway’ which drove him and other boys to fantasizing about what the girls did in private.
- His mother attempts to set him up with a girl who she describes as ‘gorgeous and smart’ only for Tucker to inform her the girl is gay. His mother responds by asking,“Are you sure? Maybe she’s bi. I know they say kids experiment in college.” Previous editions of the book show that the mother’s original response was that the girl is ‘far too beautiful’ to be a lesbian.
It’s clear that Kennedy IS interested in writing F/F relationships, but only if they can be used as a means to sexually satisfy men. This is unsurprising considering the heavy amounts of misogyny contained within her books.
“If this were a movie, she’d be the young, ambitious teacher who shows up at the inner city school and inspires the fuckups, and suddenly everyone’s picking up their pencils, and the end credits scroll up to announce how all the kids got into Harvard or some shit. Instant Oscar for Jennifer Lawrence.”
I read the first installment of the series, The Deal (2015), for this article and the misogyny was clear from the moment the book began. The book opens with one of the main characters, Hannah, sitting in her Philosophical Ethics class thinking about how awful the professor is. Unlike the previous male professor who ‘handed out A’s like mints’, this professor actually expects her students to work. The horror! While this may not seem like much, it is a subtle sign of things to come.
The book focuses on the male love interest, Garrett, wearing Hannah down until she agrees to tutor him. He must raise his grades in order to continue playing hockey, and the only way he can do that is by harassing Hannah and showing up at her place of employment. Eventually, he convinces her that she can gain the interest of the guy she likes if only they fake date. Of course, she has to tutor him for him to agree to the arrangement.
“A part of me is genuinely shocked that I managed to wear her down. I’ve been badgering her for what feels like an eternity, and now that I’ve won, it’s almost like experiencing a sense of loss.”
Reading The Deal was akin to pulling teeth, as Garrett seemed unable to interact with or think of women without sexualizing or belittling them. Some examples include:
- Upon meeting Hannah, Garrett instantly notices her ass and ‘impressive rack’ before attempting to convince her to help him. When she rejects him, he responds with the following, “I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.”
- When Garrett tries to convince Hannah to spend the night, he insists she sleep in his bed with the following reasoning, “I’m not saying it’ll happen, but there’s a chance one of them might stumble into the living room drunk off their asses and grope you or something if they find you on the couch. I, on the other hand, have no interest in groping you.”
- “I’ve noticed she doesn’t wear designer clothing or preppy getups like most of the females at this school, or the trashy party clothes you see on Greek Row and at the campus bars on weekends.”
Per reviews and reader discussions, Garrett is the ‘best’ male love interest of the series.
Him and Biphobia
First published in 2015, Him is a collaboration between author Sarina Bowen and Kennedy. The book follows hockey players Wes and Jamie as they both coach at a summer camp. While this book boasts a 4.22 rating on Goodreads, it has been criticized by gay readers for fetishizing M/M relationships and biphobia.
Creator Carter Kalchik explored the issues in depth in this video, stating that the book is ‘deeply misogynistic’ and ‘deeply biphobic’. Carter explains that Wes, who is gay, constantly expresses that he believes that Jamie will leave him for a woman as he is bisexual. Examples of this include:
- At one point, Jamie spends time with a friend of his who happens to be a woman. After explaining that they went shopping and out to eat, Wes replies, “Bet that was fun. Did you eat some pussy for dessert?”
- When Jamie pushes back against this question, Wes counters, “What, for daring to call you out on the fact that you’re still into women?”
- When Jamie announces he has a potential coaching opportunity in Toronto, Wes thinks to himself, “This beautiful man is probably more straight than not.” When he tells Jamie he can’t be with him in Toronto, Jamie leaves and Wes thinks to himself that some cute girl will catch his eye.
While it’s clear that Wes is insecure in his relationship with Jamie, it is not based on Jamie’s actions. His focus isn’t that Jamie will leave him for another person, only that he will leave him for a woman. At one point, he even tells Jamie that he feels their relationship is an experiment and he will go back to girls, completely invalidating Jamie’s sexuality.
The issues with Him are not limited to biphobia and similar to Kennedy’s other works, readers cite fetishization of sapphic relationships. At one point, Jamie begins watching porn to ‘figure out what his kinks are’ and begins with gay porn. He then switches to lesbian porn.
“I’m not done, though. That was just the first part of the experiment. I pick up the laptop again and click on a new category. Good ol’ fashioned lesbian porn.”
Further, there is the issue of a racial slur being used casually at the beginning of the book. While Wes is coaching, two of the campers get into an argument while on the ice. One of the campers is knocked over and responds by calling the other a ‘fucking ch**k’. That character responds by calling the other camper the f-slur and both receive penalties from Wes for this exchange.
However, on followup, Wes only focuses on the camper who used the f-slur stating, “By the way—science has proven the correlation between calling someone a f****t and having a really small penis. You do not want to advertise that. Think about it.”
There is no follow up with the camper who used the racial slur.
Where does this leave readers?
For some, this may have been an enlightening read that highlighted things they may not have caught while reading Kennedy’s books. Some attempts to improve these issues have been made, but those attempts do not erase the extreme misogyny and fetishization featured throughout Kennedy’s books. In order to rectify these issues, the books would need an entire rewrite that I do not feel Kennedy is capable of.
It’s clear to me that Kennedy views queer identities as purely sexual, meant to gratify her readers. While some of her fans clearly wish she would attempt a sapphic romance, it is unlikely she would handle it with the care and consideration it deserves.
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