7 Essays To Read: Sex Scenes That Are Actually Sexy, Confident Black Men, And Debt

In true crime, women are often portrayed as the victims. What's more puzzling is that studies show women to be the primary consumers of true crime books. For Hazlitt, Casey Johnston looked into why female readers are so drawn to stories about their own destruction. "Women may gravitate toward true crime because it as part of the self-blaming cycle society imposes, and consume true crime as a way to prepare for or cope with the challenges that come with living in a society that hates women," she ruminates. Read Johnston's piece at Hazlitt.

Depending on who you are, "being different" is either an inevitable obligation or a choice. No one explains this better than Korean adoptee and author Matthew Salesses. "I have trouble saying, I am, without remembering all of the times I have been told, You are not," he writes in a piece for The Toast. "To someone who has always had to qualify himself, it can be frustrating to see identification with difference ignore the burden of qualification." Read his essay here.

Growing up, Ruth Tam's home would smell like whatever her family was cooking that day. She wasn't aware of the smell until a high school friend said that her house reeked of "Chinese grossness." Fast forward a few years, and the foods Tam once felt ashamed of have suddenly become "trendy." For The Washington Post, Tam explains why the recent interest in "ethnic food" stings for immigrant kids like her. Read it at The Washington Post.

There's something problematic about the way society describes women attempting to conceive. It's a euphemism for an intimate act between two people, and it invokes "the unforgiving binary of success and failure." For ELLE, Chloe Schama argues we need a better word for getting pregnant — that or we ought to inquire less about other women's personal lives. Read her essay at ELLE.

For as long as she could remember, money has always been a source of contention in Gena-mour Barrett's household. When Barett was six, her father died, leaving behind Barrett and her mother — along with a massive £180,000 debt. For BuzzFeed Ideas, Barett explains what debt taught her about money. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.