By Jaime Woo

In time for Valentine’s Day, Toronto-based Harlequin has released the results of a national online survey on romance and love. Did you know that most men tell white lies to women to keep them happy? According to the survey:

“The majority of Canadian men (68%) have done the right thing and lied when their significant other asked the dreaded “Do I look fat in this?” According to 67% of Canadians, white lies are an acceptable and even welcome part of any relationship, despite the fact that trust and honesty were ranked as the values that mattered most to both men (31%) and women (42%) in relationships.”

Duh. The worst thing is that three in ten men didn’t know the right answer. (Perhaps the same three that ranked trust and honesty as what mattered most in a relationship?) Let’s simplify this, boys and girls: the answer is always “no.” (“Do I look fat in this?” No. “Does size matter?” No. “Were you faking it?” No.) Instead of regurgitating the results from the romance survey, Torontoist presents five fun facts you may or may not have known about the romance juggernaut that is Harlequin.

• We Spread Easily. Harlequin sold 131 million books in over 100 markets last year. Burning question: why pay to read about romance, when you can get torrid passion, unbridled lust, and the all-consuming search for true love in Missed Connections for free?
• Shut Up And Drive. In November 2005, Harlequin entered into a surprise wedding with NASCAR, although it may have been more of the shotgun variety since Harlequin gave birth to Into The Groove just three months after. Their latest, Speed Dating, features a meek actuary named Kendall who is paid to pretend to be the girlfriend of a NASCAR Driver named Dylan—uh-huh, and then on page 127, Kendall meets Jakob, Dylan’s “roommate” of seven years.
• Real Men Don’t Have Beer Bellies. The company is trying to atone for foisting Fabio on the general public by finding more “real men” for their covers—if your real man is tanned, tall, muscular, chiselled, and has good bone structure. Hello, body image problems!
• You Be Sugar, I’ll Be Spice. The company releases a line of women’s erotica, “Spice.” (Not to be confused with Spice, of course.) Titles appear every two months. For January, the author of Dirty and Broken unveiled her latest novel, Tempted, which featured a threesome on its cover. Let’s hope for an Entourage reference about swords crossing.
• Weird Bedmates. Harlequin is a division of Torstar, publisher of Toronto Star. Yes, Torstar acquired Harlequin in 1981. Read “Toronto Star” again. Go back to the picture of the woman sandwiched by two men. Now back to “Toronto Star.”
  Isn’t learning fun?

Book covers assembled from the eHarlequin website.