Good Boys Go To Heaven But Bad Boys Bring Heaven To You

We’ve all heard about him. We’ve watched him smolder and lie and still get away unscathed. He’s been with us for years. The one who is a little bit damaged, a dash lost, but on the crest of being saved. He’s two steps from the ledge and three steps from your arms. The bad boy from the pages of my and many other readers’ guilty pleasure: contemporary romance books. This literary trope is very common and adored by many, but what if the lines between escapism and reality are blurring? The reality of the “bad boy” is much more dangerous than art has led us to believe. What if the archetypes from smutty, bedside reads are seeping into our own love lives?

I fell back in love with reading during the pandemic, stuck at home and tired of spending my days watching Tiger King and Outer Banks. So, driven by my love for One Direction, I decided to read Anna Todd’s infamous After series. I finished the glorified Harry Styles fan fiction in a day and a half. There was something so captivating about the beautiful British boy Hardin Scott, who had absolutely no respect for women and the idea of monogamy, yet after meeting the beautiful, innocent Tessa Young, changed his ways. There were so many things about their story that drew me in: their inseparability and obsession with each other, his grand gestures for her, and of course, the steamy sex scenes. Obviously there were steamy sex scenes, it was fan fiction. I remember thinking about how their love was so pure and they overcame so much to be together. I wanted a love so intense, so deep and passionate like theirs in my life. Blinded by my infatuation, I refused to see just how unhealthy of a depiction Hardin and Tessa’s relationship was.

Hardin Scott is extremely toxic and does unspeakable things to the people around him with almost no remorse. To list the biggest example—and the entire plot of the first book—he pursues Tessa because of a bet with his friends. He claimed he could make her fall in love with him and then leave her. He pursues her, knowing she’s in a relationship with someone else, takes her virginity, and even shows her bloody sheets as proof of his conquest to his friends, but in the end, he can't leave her because he falls in love with her. Chivalry isn't dead, guys. It comes in the form of brooding British boys with a damaging past. At the end of the first book, his bet is revealed to her and she leaves him—only to immediately get back together with him in the second book.

Throughout the series, Hardin upholds his reputation as a walking red flag, screaming when he doesn’t get his way and drinking himself into a stupor. Perhaps worst of all, it’s revealed that before he met Tessa, he taped himself having sex with a girl without her consent and showed it to everyone. Even after hearing all of this, Tessa always finds a way to forgive him, claiming that he just needs to be shown compassion, believing that her love can fix him. This series, like so many other “bad boy falls for good girl'' books, perpetuates the notion that every bad guy is worthy of redemption. We need to realize that this trend of tropes where good girls “fall in love” with bad boys just to end up fixing them is not what a real relationship should look like. Excusing a toxic relationship like this as a consequence of “life is messy” justifies abuse, which is unacceptable on so many levels.

Yet, my 17-year-old self desperately idolized their relationship, and I’m not the only one who wanted to find my own Hardin. Toxic tropes like these are an injustice done to young women who know nothing of sex and love. Three and a half years ago I was completely inexperienced and longed to have my first boyfriend, glorifying the bad boy trope and trying to model a real-life relationship off it. Maybe that’s why I handed my first kiss and three minutes later, my virginity to the boy who told me that he didn't want a relationship but still wanted to “hang out.” I thought I would be the one to fix him. I thought I could be the one to change his mind, just like in all the books I read. He never called me again, by the way.

Now looking back at what my 17-year-old self wanted just four years later, I realize how disturbing my mindset was. While four years doesn't seem like a great amount of time, so much has happened. I’ve experienced a happy, healthy relationship where I felt safe, loved, and respected. I learned that a healthy relationship and true love isn’t achieved by couples like Tessa and Hardin, it’s shared by people who listen, communicate, and trust each other.

While books are works of fiction with no moral or ethical boundaries, they still influence society’s culture. This trope, while admittedly entertaining, sets unrealistic expectations on what a real healthy love is really like. If Hardin was supposed to be Tessa’s heaven, I don’t even want to know what hell is. In order to avoid a dangerously blurred line between fantasy and reality, it may be time to renovate the trope slightly, as well as write more stories about healthier, more positive couples.

Yuli HachmonMay 1, 2024