Picture the cover of a romance novel. Right now. Fabio or some other shirtless man with a Heroic Build and long hair, with a buxom woman in his arms/wrapped behind him/within torso's reach behind a colorful sunset. These were common for the genre in the past, but the current fashion for romance novels is more stylized. Often (these days, usually) parodied.
Compare Leg Cling.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In the back cover of the trade paperback Mad Love, Harley Quinn sighs wistfully as she reads a romance novel with a cover featuring her and The Joker in this kind of pose (but with a grenade).
- The cover of The Maze Agency #16 - which centres around a series of murders in the publishing industry - features Gabe and Jen as characters on a romance novel cover.
Films — Live-Action
- Dead Mate: This schlock horror movie about an amorous coroner has a dark parody of a classic romance novel pose on its video cover, except the woman is a naked corpse.
- Naked Gun 2½ features a scene of Drebin and his love interest parodying the look of a romance cover.
- Spin Me Round: The poster is an imitation of a romance novel cover. In the actual film, the romance is far less idealized.
- "Wuthering Heights" (2026): A few of the posters for the film are designed to resemble the covers of old-school bodice-ripper romance novels, fitting for the adaptation's Hotter and Sexier approach.
Literature
- A Brother's Price has one of those. It is a lie. Jerin is depicted on the cover with a woman in his arms. While he does carry a woman in the novel, he throws her over his shoulder, and it isn't a romantic scene, he is carrying her because she's unconscious due to a head wound. He does get into a relationship with her much, much later. Well, at least he is allowed to wear a shirt, and the woman is rather faithfully depicted as wearing trousers instead of a flowing dress.
- The inside front cover of the paperback edition of Misery, which featured a romance writer protagonist, is a hilarious parody of a romance paperback cover👁 Image
◊ with a very familiar male model.
Live-Action TV
- An episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? had Ryan Stiles striking these kinds of poses during a game of Party Quirks.
- One America's Next Top Model photoshoot from Cycle 7 had the girls posing for one of these with Fabio himself.
- Supernatural: In "The Monster at the End of This Book" (S04, E18) The Winchesters brothers discover that their hyper-masculine adventures are being chronicled in a series of pulpy novels, and the covers and posters of the books have a shirtless Sam portrayed by Fabio.
Music
- Parodied in the video for Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe".
Video Games
- In The Darkside Detective, McQueen comes across a trashy romance novel with a heroine-and-shirtless-hero cover, except the heroine is Doris the elderly librarian and the shirtless hero is McQueen's sidekick Dooley. An embarrassed Dooley explains that Doris made him pose for it as payment for overdue library books.
- Gaia Online has "The Lusty Scoundrel" in order to make your avatar invoke this trope.
Web Original
- Smart Bitches, Trashy Books👁 Image
calls these "clinch covers" and has fun mocking the more ridiculous ones.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Marge had an Imagine Spot with her as the heroine and Homer as the hunky, flowing-locks guy.