“What’re you reading?” I asked Niyati as she flipped through the pages of her book.
“It Ends With Us”, she replied, swatting me away as though I were a fly disturbing her from enjoying her meal.
I got the message and left her alone, telling myself I would look it up when I got home.

I began to read Colleen Hoover’s books towards the end of Grade 7 when I was 12 years old. I enjoyed them, particularly the twists within the story: ‘Oh a rich boy who lives in a mansion but surprise surprise doesn’t actually own it and is a wanted thief/arsonist who is just occupying the house soooo hot!!’ ‘Oh my god, a girl who has a messed up family living in an old church who tries to commit suicide but is stopped by the love interest soooo cool!!’

I, too, was swept away by her narratives.

But soon enough, I began to question her one-dimensional plot lines and paper-thin characters, where the male leads are jealous insecure dastardly knaves who do not seem to have a personality besides the aforementioned traits, accompanied by their infatuation with our female lead who at first, appears headstrong but underneath the false persona is truly a plot device meant to make the audience feel empathy for the male lead who just sits and broods all day until the female lead confronts him, and then is all like ‘Oh yeah whatever I don’t care, go away I have a sad backstory which justifies my behaviour!’

Needless to say, that was the end of my Colleen Hoover phase.

For my 13th birthday, I was gifted the entire Ana Huang’s Twisted series by an incredibly well-meaning friend who had read the books and was obsessed.

Though, after being completely blindsided by Colleen Hoover, I had learnt my lesson and done my homework. I already knew what the series entailed, once again, broody rich men who were dominant ‘alpha’ males who, obviously, without a doubt, had six packs.

I did end up reading the series, though, because I was curious.

All of the male leads are vile men who display no boundaries or respect for their love interest; they do, however, display jealousy, and when I say jealousy, I mean the whole shebang, eyes green with envy, sending their ‘men’ to trail them and see where they’re going and who they’re meeting, threatening to kill men they interact with and making them end friendships with their male friends. Later on it’s revealed that these male friends were scheming against the female lead anyway, so the male lead really saved the female lead which leads to her being eternally grateful and forgetting the invasion of privacy.

But in reality, the male lead never respected her enough, never trusted her enough, never believed in her enough and never took her seriously. Even her talking to other men elicits a growl from these men, and it’s all supposed to be okay because they’re billionaires and 6’5 feet tall or something, oh and did I mention the abs?

Now, how is this relevant to me at this point in my life?

I see those Twisted books everywhere I go; it’s almost as though they follow me around, haunting my very existence. Every corner I turn within my school, I see the plain covers with their dull pearls, and butterflies, or whatever they’re supposed to have, illustrated on them.

Most girls in my school, above grade 7, have read these books at least once or at least know of them, and have been shown the sex scenes by their friends.

The relationships within these books are far from healthy; if anything, they are unhealthy personified. However, these books normalise these relationships.

And so, in these books, it’s normal for your boyfriend to get jealous of the boys you are friends with and the boys you talk to.
It’s normal for your boyfriend to have access to your Instagram account and go through your chats with your friends.
It’s normal for your boyfriend to get mad at his best friend because the teacher put you next to him.
It’s normal for your boyfriend to try to make a move without your consent.

We believe this because this is what is fed to us, teaspoon after teaspoon, until it morphs into a ladle that is being shoved into your mouth and you realise that you’ve been consuming toxic masculinity this whole time, and that it’s so concentrated that it’s stuck to the inner lining of your stomach, and even your liver has been unable to cleanse it.

You then realise that it’s an epidemic that has been quietly spreading all across the world, silently killing, destroying confidences and fostering bonds not built on respect and love, but built on sexist jokes, forced gender norms and a culture that promotes violence and possessiveness, objectifying women and treating them as though they are property.

You realise that even your friends are infected and that half of them aren’t even aware that they’re being persuaded perversely.

You realise that these books further enforce and spread this malady, and like me, begin to notice all of the girls carrying these books with dull covers with the dull pearls on them, truly believing and buying into the idea of stalking being sexy, and romanticising abuse.

Cover image by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash