Chelsea Fagan

A lot of women can't even get past that first step in terms of.

how would I leave this relationship?

And I think what's really tragic about that, about not having your own cash on hand, is that it makes it, to me, there can really never be any meaningful love or consent to which there's no alternative, right?

To me, love isn't that meaningful when you can't opt out or say no.

And so I think that when women deprive themselves of their own financial freedom

freedom and their own financial safety net they've sort of created a situation where even if they love their husbands well they better because they don't have a choice otherwise where are they going you know

I personally, myself, would not be comfortable with 100% of my financial future being in the hands of a man, any man.

You may feel differently, but the reality is you've taken, when you agree to do that, and especially when you don't protect yourself additionally, you have just taken an enormous gamble on this one person.

And quite frankly, I just don't think most men have the range.

One of my least favorite phrases that I hear people sort of glibly say on social media, reading is inherently political.

I think that that is true, but I don't think that that requires us to dig into what the politics are of what we're reading.

I think that that sort of, it's that statement to me implies that reading is inherently progressively political and

And I actually think that a lot of contemporary fiction and particularly contemporary fiction in the romance genre geared toward women, et cetera, is quite inherently conservative in terms of the representation of, as you said, the class fantasy of it, the sort of the norms around it.

virginity around experience, around who has the money and power, around what it means to give that power up, around often the age differentials.

It's not a coincidence.

And I want to say there are many books, even in the genre of romance, that subvert this, that are totally outside of that framework.

But if you look at, if you look at, if you scan some of the most popular titles at any given time, what are you going to see for the men?

There are huge themes, right?

They're CEOs, they're bosses, they're billionaires.

They're princes.