An Argument Older Than Time

:::WARNING! This blog post contains adult content, themes, and language. Do not read it if you're a minor or easily offended. Consider yourself warned.:::
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I've been bouncing this topic around in my head for a good month now. At least. I don't know why I hesitate to put my thoughts into words. I enjoy a good argument. I enjoy instigating arguments. I'm generally an argumentative person. Unfortunately, arguments don't happen on my blog. I'm beginning to question the future of my blogging but that's not the point of this at all. But I think more it's that the subject is a bit difficult to write about to a general audience and it can be construed as TMI.

50 Shades of Grey. Know it? Heard of it? Read it? Loathe it?

I first heard of the 50 Shades trilogy on the Today Show (which I no longer watch since they ditched Ann Curry, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Idiots.) They had a bunch of so-called "house wives" and other "every day" women talking about reading these books. How hot they were. How steamy. How much reading them improved their sex lives. How much their husbands loved them reading the books. Blah blah blah. Still, I was intrigued and downloaded them all to my Nook.

My First Impressions - I'll admit that I read all three straight through in about two days. They were superficially compelling.

To put it briefly, these novels are about a somewhat naive college girl who meets a man who is into S&M and the romance that ensues. Supposedly, and according to the women interviewed on the Today Show, the relationship that plays out in the trilogy is one that all women fantasize about. Hmm. Maybe some women fantasize about a more...adventurous love life, but I don't think that necessarily equates to all women dreaming of being in a relationship where they are dominated by a man who can only relate to a woman when he ties her up for sex. But I can only speak for myself.

After my initial impressions of the books settled into a more distanced perspective, I had a hard time getting past the plethora of typos and grammatical errors. Didn't the author have an editor? I also thought the author's repeated descriptive words were trite and well...repetitive. Very reminiscent of Stephenie Meyer's novels. I'm surprised Mr. Grey didn't sparkle. ;)

In the end, if women used these books as inspiration to spice up their love lives, then more power to them. But what I really think is that for some odd reason, the 50 Shades books brought erotica for women to the mainstream and made it okay for women to read these types of books and admit it out loud. It's an extreme double standard in our society that pornography geared towards men is ubiquitous and even expected and accepted but when a woman picks up a novel in the same vein as 50 Shades, she has to read it in the dark and hide it under her mattress. Which brings me to point #2...

I saw a comment on Facebook recently where someone said that if there had been a movie made about strippers that men got all excited about that they'd be perverts but when a movie like Magic Mike comes out, it's okay for women to want to see it. Hello!!! How many movies have been produced for men having to do with strippers, hookers, gratuitous sex, etc. etc.?? Do women have an equivalent to Hooters or The Tilted Kilt?? How many strip clubs geared specifically to women exist compared to strip clubs for men? And I'm willing to bet that if women had a restaurant called Buns or Banana Hammock and we said that we like to go there for the wings (ha ha), very few of our husbands or boyfriends would eat there with us. We can be expected to eat a meal while some 19 year old coed flaunts her perky boobs in the faces of our men, but I doubt very seriously if men would have a meal with their women while looking at the washboard abs of a well-endowed 19 year old man. Am I wrong?

To conclude...The double standard irritates me. The success and popularity of 50 Shades irritates me. Going by quality of the writing alone, it's like shouting out that women read books without really reading them. It also irritates me that everyone constantly says, "Read them. Your husband will thank you." Psh. Lastly, someone really needs to open up a restaurant where I can ogle some guy's six-pack while I eat my dinner. ;)