If you were to gather all of the leading men from the biggest romance novels of the past few years into a room, you’d quickly notice a striking similarity among them.
Take Xaden Riorson of “Onyx Storm”— the third book in Rebecca Yarros’ romantasy series that began with Fourth Wing — which became the fastest-selling novel for adults in 20 years when it came out in January. Xaden, a moody dragon rider, is six foot four with a “massive chest, wide shoulders and heavily muscled arms,” no doubt from catching all those daggers his love interest Violet throws at him in the “I’m plotting your murder” stage of their enemies-to-lovers arc.
Then there’s surly boat captain Brendan from Tessa Bailey’s “It Happened One Summer”; massive, bearded and plaid shirt-loving, he looks like the love child of Paul Bunyan and Jake Gyllenhaal in the fan-generated AI art on Spicy BookTok. Navy Seal turned bodyguard Rhys Larsen from Ana Huang’s “Twisted” series has a physically imposing form adorned with scars and tattoos. And in Ali Hazelwood’s latest, “Deep End,” swim coach Lukas Blomqvist has the broad shoulders that belie his athletic career; he’s “changing lives, one stroke at a time.”
The common denominator among the men of these smash bestsellers, aside from a burning desire for their heroines and an admirable level of emotional intelligence? A strikingly similar physique: unusually tall and generously muscled, chiseled as if out of rock and slightly intimidating. Let’s call them the “hulking heroes.”
Romance is booming — between 2020 and 2024, Canadian romance fiction sales grew 404 per cent, while library loans were up 640 per cent. And if you crack open almost any novel from the current hot sub-genres (Western romance, hockey romance, the aforementioned romance-fantasy hybrid romantasy) you’ll more than likely find this male archetype, raring to go with an eight pack and somewhat messy backstory.
The dominance (forgive me) of these hulking heroes is surprising on several levels. In many other ways, modern romance is joyfully progressive: fluent in the language of consent, with a “her pleasure first” approach to spicy scenes and increasing diversity in the love stories represented. Heterosexual heroines of today might have bigger bodies, be neurodivergent, be people of colour, or all of the above. But the male studs of romance novels aren’t that far removed from the shirtless Fabios of the bodice-rippers of yore.
By contrast, the current crop of movie star heartthrobs led by “rodent boyfriends” Timothée Chalamet, Jeremy Allen White and Barry Keoghan, whose slight frames and sharp features make Gen Z in particular swoon.
“There is the comment from a lot of readers, like, ‘It’s the same guy,’” said Kayleigh Platz, co-founder of the book club and blog Romance By The Book. She says it’s especially notable among genre superstars Ali Hazelwood and Tessa Bailey. “They’re almost known for that guy. Ali Hazelwood especially, it’s extreme almost.”
The hulking hero is a legacy of the stereotypical hunks you’d find in a Mills and Boon circa late 1980s, early 1990s. “Romance was just becoming a more stabilized genre at that point,” said Platz. “We’d gone from the Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper shock women’s fiction that was about racy fun, and you were looking at women who were starting to explore their sexuality, and their ownership of it.”
As Platz said, “romance is political.” Around the same time, alongside a surge in Second Wave Feminism, romance narratives shifted from morally dubious tropes like kidnappings, forced marriages and non-consensual sex as new genre titans like Nora Roberts and Mary Balogh moved in. “They still had these big, broody men, the dukes, the earls, the pirates, but they started to have a bit more perspective in the books, you started to see their brain,” said Platz. “That leads us to today, where you’ll have a dual point of view, and I think that’s what’s attracting readers. You have these big, giant men who can rescue you with one hand, but he’s also tortured on the inside, he’s aware of feminism.”
She points out that there are a few romantic heroes who don’t fit this type. “They’re our tortured poets, our nerds,” Platz said. “There are authors who will play with the relationship of size and weight; you’ll see maybe a curvier girl, or she’s taller, with a smaller man.” But these are exceptions rather than the rule.
The hulking heroes also tend to be hyper-protective of the heroine. “Tessa Bailey’s characters are the classic ‘Touch her and die.’ They’re obsessed. No one growls ‘good girl’ like a Tessa Bailey hero,” said Platz. “When I’ve talked to people who really resonate with these characters, they’re looking at these strong women who are attracting these strong men who are letting them not always have to be the strong woman.”
The fact that these guys shoulder their fair share of the relationship’s emotional and physical labour is just as much a fantasy as their physiques. “They’re not asking her what they should get their mother for Christmas; they’re not asking you how to call the doctor. They’re being a partner,” said Platz. “That’s the sexiest part for women. They’ve got these men who can let them put down these walls that we’ve built over the years because we’re supposed to have it all.”
They’re also respectful. “Women do still want to feel attractive and have an intimate time with a partner but they also want someone who is man enough to respect a boundary,” said Platz. “The sexiest conversations that are happening in romance are about consent. And not just about sex, it’s about women having their own say in relationships.”
The hulking heroes are often paired with petite women who, despite their strong personalities delight in how delicate and small they feel when held between the rippling pecs of the man they almost certainly loathed four chapters earlier. (Though, statistically, female readers are more likely to be a size 16 and 5”5’, the average dimensions of a Canadian woman.)
“Small women are still just always treated more preferentially, as cuter, prettier,” Platz pointed out. “That’s why I think people commented so much when the heroine of Ali Hazelwood’s ‘Deep End’ was a taller woman. She was 5”10 or 5”11. It came up quite a bit that, as a professional athlete, she was his physical equal. Just as strong, just as limber, just as in control.”
For men, this fixation on hulking heroes represents “a double-bind” of our post-MeToo world, said Catherine Roach, a professor of gender, sexuality and popular culture at the University of Alabama and author of “Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture.”
“Despite the culture’s critique of toxic masculinity and new options for more inclusive masculinity, guys can still face expectations to be tough and strong and traditionally manly,” she says. “So their double bind, like women who have to be pure and sexy at the same time, is that they have to be sensitive yet ‘hulking’ at the same time.”
It’s also evidence that our society is still very focused on physical appearance. “I worry, for example, about bigorexia and gym addiction among our Gen Z male students,” said Roach.
Uzma Jalaluddin spends a lot of time thinking about the way men are portrayed on the pages, as both an author and a reader of romance novels. “There’s an almost uniform formula for the male leads when we’re talking about cis-het romance novels. The man is alpha, he is built, over six feet, he has all of his hair, he has the most beautiful features and the most tantalizing package,” said Jalaluddin. “I have often questioned that because it’s a very unrealistic portrayal of masculinity and of beauty standards”
On the flip side, romance is a safe space for women to indulge in fantasy, like the one that says “any girl, every girl can have this type of man, who on the surface would be completely out of reach for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl or the petite nerd,” she said.
While her own leading men don’t really fit the Hulking Hero archetype, Jalaluddin is aware of the physical standard that seems to be required in the genre. “I have to remind myself, ‘Don’t forget to make him hot. Women readers are fantasizing about this male character,’” she said. “I write Muslim romances, and I’ve had so many people, Muslim and not, say to me that Khalid in “Ayesha At Last” is so hot.”
The people want a dreamboat hero. “He doesn’t just have to be an incredibly supportive, romantic, sweet man, he also has to be the perfect physical specimen. I’ve leaned into it more as I get into my career, because it’s what readers want.” Still, she’s very aware of the ecosystem she’s a part of. “Why are all the male heroes completely gorgeous? For instance, my husband is bald. I think he’s cute! It doesn’t make him any less attractive to me.”
Jalaluddin has thought about writing a romance novel with a lead who looks more average. “A man who’s shorter, or has a regular body, maybe he’s too skinny or he’s got a dad bod,” she said. “I just don’t see a lot of that representation.”
But what would happen if she did turn in a novel with a male lead who was 5’7″ with thinning hair and a soft jawline? “My editors are fantastic, so I think they would trust me — but it would be the kind of book where they say, ‘This is a non-traditional hero, and yet it works.’ It would be one of the headlines of the book,” she said. “I think it’s driven by audience expectations of the romance novel.”
Just maybe, though, the fact that leading men don’t display the same diversity and complexity as the female leads often do is the point. “The point is the woman’s experience,” Jalaluddin said. “The woman needs to be the most interesting thing on the page. The man is kind of the empty vessel.”
An empty vessel who’s six-five, built like a brick wall, and completely obsessed with you.
