November 2, 2012: Blog Hopping Friday

I know most blog hoppers come to my blog via the hosting blogs which link directly to this post. So, I just wanted to bring it up once again that NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo started yesterday and run for the month of November. I'm participating in NaNoWriMo and maybe, possibly NaBloPoMo. If I do, I'll be using the prompts from 30 Days Hath November for most days which is a totally fantastic way of coming up with 30 blog posts for November. I'm also participating in #FMSphotoaday / #novphotoaday on Instagram. I hope that some of you will join in on at least one of these challenges. They're fun and a great way of building an online community. Links to these challenges which will take you to more info can be found on my post from yesterday. If you decide to participate in one or all, leave me a comment somewhere and let me know!!

 Now on to the show.

1. Something I swore I'd never do, but have ended up doing anyway is buy a Coach purse. I've always said that they were the go to purse for military wives and I would never have one but I like them and now I have three. Well, four. Anyway...
2. Something I've always wanted to do is write a novel, travel to Europe, get my degree. Blah blah.
3. Something I have absolutely no desire to do is be on television or radio.
4. The best thing I've ever done was marry my husband.
5. When it comes to trying new things I am usually hesitant. I'm a creature of habit and trying new things intimidates me. I really hate that about me.
6. One thing I've never done is beat other people's kids. No matter how much they've deserved it or how much I've been tempted.
7. My favorite thing to do is read a book.

1. What terrifies you the most? My kids or my husband getting sick or hurt.
2. Favorite fall/winter drink? Hot apple cider. I'm going to try mulled wine this year though. I already have the spices, I just need a bottle of wine.
3. Do you and your spouse have the same political views? For the most part. I'm a left leaning centrist and he's a right leaning centrist so we do have some difference of opinions occasionally. I support PBS, lol. 
4. What was the last book you read? Was it any good? Yesterday, I finished reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. It's the first book in the Heroes of Olympus series. I really enjoyed it. I loved the mythology. I only wish it had more character interaction instead of so much internal dialogue. I also wish I had realized that Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series came first and this next series has a lot of the same characters. Instead of reading book two, I am now reading book one of the Olympians series. :D
5. Do you look forward to the snow each winter? Why or why not? A big gigantic NO! I can't be emphatic enough about how much I hate the snow. I lived in Vermont for 37 months. It snowed for 28 of those months. A lot. The nine months it didn't snow, there was mud everywhere. Unless you've lived in Canada or Alaska or the U.P. of Michigan, or freaking Vermont or someplace similar, you cannot imagine how much snow it snows in Vermont. You just can't.

1. Growing up in Ohio was boring. Although, we did have Cedar Point, Kings Island, The Columbus Zoo, and Seaworld (which is closed now) so that was good. But other than that, it was boring.
2. Wouldn't having a housekeeper be wonderful? 
3. If I hadn't graduated early and moved back to my birth town, then I never would have met and married my husband. If he hadn't been six weeks premature, we also would never have met and gotten married because he would have been a year behind me in high school if he had been born on time. Fate, huh???
4. When I clean house I like to listen to music.

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. ;)