I have been stewing over this for quite a while. Ever since I first saw that the big studios were in talks about making the "hot new bestseller" into a movie and I realized exactly what they were talking about. I've ranted, I've raved, I've warned people not to go any where near this book; predictably, none of it has worked. It's still out there, selling a disgusting number of copies, and invariably raising my blood pressure every time I hear about it.
Most people around me don't understand. Sometimes I don't understand why I'm getting so upset myself. Scores of badly written books have topped the bestseller lists, and I couldn't have cared less. Hell, there are books I don't even like that do amazingly well, and while I might not understand why, I just shrug it off. Crappy books are made into crappy movies almost every day, and my world goes on turning. I have no problem with fan fiction being published, even when it does well. (Hello,
Wicked and
Scarlett are both, essentially, fic, and I loved both dearly.) Hell, when I first heard about
Fifty, I thought it was a different piece of fic, and I was all but dancing in the streets I was so pleased. So what is my issue?
I'm sure much of it is my frustration with people not being able to see how terrible this book really is. Everything else aside, it's poorly written. That could be overlooked when it was being posted as fan fiction (hell, it's pretty much expected from fic), but once you send something out to a publisher, and that publisher sends it out into the world, a higher quality is expected. And the fact that it was picked up by
Vintage, a publisher known for putting out literature (a word which makes me think of a higher quality of work than, say
Fifty) just boggles my mind.
Honestly, I can't remember exactly what was wrong with it, as the last I read it it was still being written and posted on
Twilighted. I just remember being distracted by all the editing I was having to do in my head. Which is probably part of why I kept reading as long as I did; I wasn't really doing much more than proof reading. I also remember spending a lot of my time reading with an arched eyebrow, trying to figure out why it was so popular. After the engagement, I just gave up, realizing that obviously there was something going on that everyone else saw but I didn't.
This would probably be a good time to mention that I have not read
Fifty Shades of Grey, or any of the following installments. I only read it while it was still "Master of the Universe," but that was enough for me. I am basing my opinions of
Fifty on MotU. Normally I would think of this as unfair, but I have heard from enough people who have read both that she changed little but the character's names. I've also seen some
evidence supporting these claims, so I'm satisfied on that front.
But I'm upset over more than just some poorly written book selling millions of copies. I'm more than slightly miffed that it's
outselling Potter, but whatever. I think what is getting me really upset is what this phenomenon is saying not only about the women of the world today, but what world our daughters are going to face.
This is what the women who love
Fifty don't seem to understand: it's not some spicy, naughty tale about two people involved in a
BDSM relationship. It's a story about a man who needs serious help (of the three sessions a week for several years with a licensed therapist variety) and the naive young woman he preys upon. It's not a romance; it's a tragedy. And the fact that women everywhere are emulating this book makes it even more so.
It seems like every week I read something new. Hardware stores are selling out of clothesline. Women's magazines are publishing tricks based on
Fifty. People are sharing stories of their often funny, sometimes scary forays into the taboo. And I have to wonder if this is it, if this is the draw of the book that pushes people past the weak characters and poorly written sex scenes. People tend to look at BDSM as wrong and taboo, mostly because they don't understand it. All I can guess is that experiencing it, whether through experimentation or vicariously through a book, gives one the sense of being naughty. A little thrill to spice up an otherwise ordinary life.
But if you enter into something like BDSM without doing the research first, things can go very wrong very quickly. Sure, handcuffs and a gag might sound like fun, but how are you supposed to tell your partner if something's wrong? Might not sound like something you'd need to worry about, but I read a blog entry where something similar happened to a guy, and whether he was playing it up for comedic value or not, there was, at least for a moment,
some fear he might asphyxiate.
Let me say here that I have no problem with BDSM. I'll admit, I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that when done safely, it's a form of sexual expression that many people rely upon. However, from what I've gathered during my nosing around the subject, there's plenty of discussion about likes and limits, and both parties are okay with what goes down. More "Let's talk about why you might be uncomfortable with x and how I can help to change that," and less "You'll learn to like it." (Can you guess which one is
Fifty?)
What people decide to experiment with aside, if women are trying out things from the book in their bedrooms, what other areas of their lives is
Fifty going to slip into? How many women who are already staying with a bad/abusive boyfriend for all the wrong reasons (he's attractive, he can support her, he's sometimes nice, the excuses are endless, and almost all of them are covered in
Fifty), will now see another reason to stay: maybe he's just a hurt soul who can be healed if she just tries harder. Women who are already talking themselves into staying in this kind of situation are going to read this book and just see more validation for not only their partner's actions, but for their lack of it. And women who are finding (or will one day find) themselves in a similar situation will look back on
Fifty and wonder.
We don't need any more books out there where the man overpowers the woman because he knows better. There were too many written during the era of bodice rippers (where men frequently raped women because they couldn't control their passion...and the women ended up enjoying it before the end). Being feminine doesn't mean letting a man walk all over you. You can give a man control in the bedroom without giving him control over your life; just remember, you're
giving control, it can be yanked right back whenever needed. And a woman can have more than book smarts, she can have common sense too. Any man who doesn't realize, accept, and appreciate all this, is better off kicked to the curb. No matter what else he has going for him.
