This summer, I decided to become the ultimate conformist and read the “Fifty Shades of Grey” series…it didn’t live up to expectations. While I am happy that this book broke erotic literature into the mainstream and made women more comfortable with the idea that, yes, we can enjoy reading and imagining steamy hot sex, I was really disappointed with the relationships depicted in the books. As a disclaimer, I have not yet read the third book, “Fifty Shades Freed,” but be warned, this post may contain spoilers about the first two books.
The central relationship (the origin and maintenance of which really offers the only plot) between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey is completely toxic. Let’s just start by taking a look at Miss Steele. When we meet her, she is a college senior (just let that sink in for a couple of seconds – she is within our peer age group) who has a negatively skewed self-perception and is a virgin. She has never even masturbated.
Enter Mr. Christian Grey, who, despite his fairly obvious psychological issues, has managed to become the world’s most successful man by age 27. And by psychological issues, I mean that he is a controlling motherf*cker. Yes, he did undergo some pretty major trauma in his early youth, and it does make sense that he would have some deep-seeded issues stemming from that abuse, but the control-freak he becomes in order to cope does not make for a healthy relationship.
All of the BDSM aspects aside (I’ll get to that in a bit), he tells Ana what to wear, when to exercise, what to eat, when she can work, where she can work, whether she can go home, etc. It’s a really exhaustive list. I can tell you that if any man were ever to give me a list of things I could or could not do, I’d be out the door faster than Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash.
But Ana gives into it! She makes some semblance of an attempt to change his demands, but in the end, she does just as he tells her (with the exception of rolling her eyes – obviously she couldn’t give into his EVERY wish. Please note my sarcasm). Not to mention the fact that he threatens her with physical punishment on a regular basis.
Another aspect of these books that really gets me is the portrayal of Anastasia’s innocence. Part of the reason Christian even likes her so much is because she is entirely inexperienced! He gets to “teach” her everything he knows, and isn’t that just oh so romantic? Come on. Seriously? Can we just stop the worship of abstinence and innocence and acknowledge the fact that most women (92% according to the Kinsey Institute) have had sex by the time they graduate from college? And the obvious dichotomy between what’s okay for women (i.e. not having sex) and men (i.e. having lots of sex) in these books is also extremely frustrating.
Lastly, I would really like to address the depiction of the BDSM community in this series. BDSM is depicted as something in which only creepy pedophiles (such as Elena, a.k.a. “Mrs. Robinson, Christian’s first dominant) or people with obvious psychological issues (such as Christian and one of his ex-subs, Leila) engage. No normal, sweet, innocent girl like Anastasia would ever participate in such a lifestyle, and one of Ana’s main goals through the first couple of books is to break Christian of his BDSM tendencies.
In reality, the BDSM community is a really close-knit, communicative group who utilizes safety words and measures to ensure that no one is ever hurt physically (more than they want, anyway) or emotionally.
Consent and communication are central to the BDSM community, and the depiction of their community as something requiring controlling contracts that take the bedroom rolls into the real world is quite simply fantasy.
To conclude, I just hope that no one reads these books and decides to use the relationships portrayed as a basis for their own lives. It was horrifying seeing the number of women on Pinterest, Facebook and other social networking outlets declaring how “perfect” Christian Grey was, and how they wanted this story to be their lives. This is not a happy love story. It is a story about a controlling, unhealthy relationship. You can do better.
Stay sexy St. Olaf,
H.