The story of Fifty Shades of Grey is about an American college student, Ana, who falls in love with the young millionaire, Christian Grey, who turns out to enjoy such sexual practices as sadism/masochism, bondage and domination in his Red Room of Pain. The extremely over-hyped trilogy caused a boom of 400% in the sex toy market. However, that wasn’t the only thing that rose. The expectations in a man grew along with it, causing a lot of things to go limp too.
Written by Erika Leonard James, the erotic Twilight Fan Fiction turn Number One Best Seller was all the rage in 2012 where women of all ages were reading it, including me. It encouraged us women to get out our floggers and allow our partners to tie us up so that we too could be like Ana and Christian Grey. The shame of reading an erotic book on the train was no longer there and soon it became an accessory that every woman should have. The question is, what’s the difference between a man looking at a pornographic magazine in the seat across from you, to a woman reading Fifty Shades of Grey? They’re both thinking the same thing….
What irritates me the most, being a writer myself, is there appear to be no original ideas in the story at all. Bestselling authors such as J.K Rowling and Terry Pratchett, although of a completely different genre, created their books from scratch, with a few influences here and there, and deserve to be at the top. E.L James, on the other hand, does not. I don’t understand how a work of Fan Fiction, which a lot of people are unaware of, became such a success. It has nothing do with her talent as a writer as I found her writing of a poor standard and her character development is non-existent as they’re not even her own! The entire first book has been taken right from the pages of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, with a few dibs and dabs of change when it came to character names and a bit of tweaking to suit the over-the-top erotic undertone, the only thing that carries the book. It’s a disgrace to literature and to any author who has made it or is still working extremely hard to make it. In waltzes E.L James with her Fan Fiction where every other page is a sex scene and suddenly, she’s Number One Best Seller, all because it’s controversial. It’s a smack in the face to any writer who has worked hard to get where they are.
The story itself sounds as if it’s been taken straight out of a teenager girl’s diary in its unrealistic fashion and the repetitiveness is too much to ignore. It’s boring drivel that has made girls and women alike become infatuated in a fantasy. I understand fiction tends to exaggerate on reality because otherwise it’s boring – but this has gone too far. It’s hit the point where it has begun to distort the female mind of what a relationship is. Is it letting your partner hit you with stuff? Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t got a problem with people who practice BDSM but what I do have an issue with is when it begins to seep into the day to day life of a young teenage girl. Let’s simply change a few facts of the books for this example (it will still apply in the end). Ana is still a virgin but instead of 21, she’s 16. She meets an older man who has no money, doesn’t have smouldering good looks but all the characteristics of a deranged traumatised manipulative psychopath, like Christian Grey. Is this still okay? Is it alright for this man to make her sign a contract saying that she’s now his submissive and he has full control over her? Because it is the same, only that Ana’s older and Mr Grey is rich and attractive in the book. So what does that say about our mind frame? It’s okay to let a hot millionaire whip us with all manner of things and stalk us, but it’s creepy and inappropriate when an average Joe does?
I feel sorry for men at this point. I listen to many women talking about their sexual relations with men now that Fifty Shades of Grey has infiltrated our lives and it’s a very different conversation. Whatever happened to romance? Some men can barely handle that, let alone all the new requirements that some women now expect from them. Fortunately, I still know some men who don’t want to beat their partners black and blue.
What’s more disturbing to me is how the younger population of females are seeing sex and relationships. It’s blurred the lines between what is right and wrong in a relationship. With all the campaigns at the moment related to Rape and Domestic Violence, has Fifty Shades of Grey distorted their young minds? Is it now okay for your partner to hit you in sex if Christian Grey does it to Ana? Is it now alright for him to stalk you, check up on and beat up your male friends if Mr Grey does it? I’m not trying to say this applies to all young girls but for the easily influenced and naïve ones this could be seen as dangerous. I for one do not want to see young girls allowing their boyfriends to beat them and force them into sex because they think that after reading Fifty Shades of Grey it’s okay to do so. It’s Not. I fear that too many girls are afraid to speak up, even after countless campaigning, talks in schools and adverts showing them it’s not right!
However, the distorted view of relationships didn’t begin with E.L. James. There have been many shades of this previous to her raunchy Fan Fiction. The Notebook for one is a prime example of unrealistic romance that has been changing the minds of young girls (and some boys) since 1996 when the book was first published, written by Nicholas Sparks. He has continued to write similar romance stories and has had his books made into films for girls everywhere to dream and set their expectations stupidly high. You can go into any bookstore and pick up a book in the romance section and find that the relationships in the majority of these books are tremendously exaggerated and unrealistic. Now, they don’t all contain BDSM and manipulative millionaires (thank god) but they do contain twisted reality and false hope for any young girl (or boy).
We women are always complaining about what our partners haven’t done and what they could do better, but maybe we should sit back and wonder why we think that? So what if they didn’t light a million candles and run us a bubbly bath after a fight or cook us a romantic meal when we get home from work. So what if they’re not buying you fancy clothes or reading your mind; we should be thinking about what they are doing…like not hitting us with stuff.
