50 Shades of Grey

Hello everyone!  Hope you are enjoying your week!

Recently, I have completed reading the controversial, highly sexual and extremely popular #1 New York Times Bestseller, 50 Shades of Grey, by E.L James.  This novel, in my opinion, is a great topic for my first EVER blog post.  This Millennium page focuses on pop-culture, which is defined by dictionary.com as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”; all books/authors have a goal to appeal to as many people as possible.  50 Shades of Grey is the newest phenomenon, reminding me of Twilight, as it does a great job of targeting women in particular. 

I found E.L James to have a captivating and unique writing style, which is why I completed the book in a mere three days, much to my mother’s disapproval.  My mother felt the book was too sexual for such a young girl to read, she said it was “smut”.  When I looked up smut on dictionary.com, I found it to mean indecent.  In a way, she was right.  Certain aspects of the novel were horrific and unbelievable, to someone who lives in 2012, where women are supposed to be equal to men, therefore given the same level of respect.  

To those of you who have not yet read 50 Shades of Grey, you should.  It really forces you to take a look at your perspective on what is acceptable in a relationship and what is not acceptable.  50 Shades of Grey is about a physical relationship (some may argue that it’s also an intimate romance) between main characters Ana Steele and Christian Grey.  Christian Grey is not your ordinary man.  He had an extremely troubled/traumatic childhood, due to the fact that an older woman took advantage of him.  As a result of this, he is addicted to being in control at all times.  Before he has sex with Ana (where role play/BDSM are going to be involved), he wants her to sign a contract with him.  In this contract, he establishes that he is the “dominant” and Ana is the “submissive.”  The contract he draws up (which by the way, he has given to fifteen women in the past) is absolutely horrible and disgusting in my opinion.  

Here are some of the guidelines in Christian’s contract, from the novel:  

• “The Submissive will obey any instructions given by the Dominant immediately without hesitation or reservation and in an expeditious manner.  The Submissive will agree to any sexual activity deemed fit and pleasurable by the Dominant … She will do so eagerly and without hesitation.” (Pg. 105). 
• He has the right to punish her whenever he feels it is acceptable.
• Note that he also tries to control her eating, sleeping and exercise habits, what she is allowed to wear and who she is allowed to speak to. 

Does any of this sound okay to you?  I don’t know how any young girl or woman could look at this novel and see Christian Grey as anything but a manipulative, angry, controlling, scary, dangerous, troubled and jealous person.  In the novel though, Ana is easily seduced by Christian.  I attribute this to the fact that she is an inexperienced, shy, easily impressionable young girl.  Ana also feels sorry for his troubled past and excuses many of his actions because of this.  This is not acceptable though; just because someone has a troubled past does not mean that they should be held less responsible for their actions then someone with a “perfect past.”

Reading this book, I felt like Christian was taking advantage of Ana, and I am not alone in my opinion.  A fellow blogger, Katherine O'Clare also frown’s upon the message and storyline of 50 Shades of Grey.  Katherine’s blog post inspired mine.  It was extremely interesting reading the 44 comments that her post received.  

I completely understand why she venomously hates the novel, seeing as how she was raped and felt that in the novel Ana was being used for her body.  On the flip side though, it is apparent from the posts that some see the novel as some sort of fantasy.  To me the novel isn’t a fantasy, it’s a nightmare.  In one or two of the posted comments, they seemed to think that it was romantic how much Christian and Ana need each other – I disagree. It is not romantic; Christian has abusive personality traits.   The novel gives the idea that you can change a troubled/emotionally damaged person, but through my experience this is not true AT ALL.  This should be left to a professional psychologist, not a young girl.  It is not her job to change this man. Frankly, I’m concerned about the impact this novel will have on society, and its members view on the acceptable treatment of women!

References:

James, E. L. (2011). 50 Shades of Grey. (1st ed., p. 105).  United States: Vintage Books, a division of  Random House.