Straight women can’t get enough of gay romance stories like ‘Heated Rivalry’ and

When the holiday season rolled around last year, Margaret Hecox knew exactly what her grandmother would love.

The 23-year-old wrote in a card about "Heated Rivalry," the breakout Canadian TV series following a clandestine love story between two male hockey players. Heacox watched several episodes with her grandmother and also encouraged friends and other family members to tune in.

"I knew she would like the show," Hecox said. "Obviously, she did."

The grandmother-granddaughter duo is part of a sizable fan base of women for books, shows and movies centered on love stories between two men.

This type of romance content — long referred to in some Asian cultures as "yaoi" or "boy love" — has been produced for decades. But consumers and experts told CNBC that the buzz around "Heated Rivalry" pushed this corner of LGBTQ+ media further into the mainstream, particularly among straight American women.

On TikTok, more than 900,000 videos have been posted using the hashtag "fujoshi," a slang term in Japanese for the female fans of these stories. Google searches for terms related to the yaoi fandom surged to never-seen-before levels late last year in the U.S., underscoring the subgenre's g

Fuente original: CNBC Top News (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/27/heated-rivalry-red-white-royal-blue-rachel-reid-gay-romance-yaoi-mlm.html)