“...Without taking his eyes off me, he gets up from the bed and gathers both sets of handcuffs. He grasps my left leg and snaps one cuff around my ankle. Oh! … ‘Now hug your knees.’ My left hand is tied to my left ankle, my right hand to my right leg. ‘Now, I’m going to...’"
Sex, rough and raw, is back on – for now, on paper. Women across the globe are devouring the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy by British author EL James (Erika Leonard is the writer's real name). The plot features an unworldly recent college grad falling in love with a dashing Seattle billionaire, who has a troubled emotional past and a strong predilection for spanking, tying up, whipping, handcuffing, stalking and other ways of sexual and psychological domination.
What started as “Twilight” saga-type Internet fan fiction has turned into the fastest-selling adult novel of all time, with over 31 million copies already sold worldwide (forget adult novels – in Britain, it's now doing even better than “Harry Potter!”) In the United States, “Fifty Shades of Grey” topped the New York Times bestselling list before it even hit the bookstores. Publishers worldwide are talking about erotic fiction as the newest trend in literature, and Universal Pictures immediately bought movie rights to “Fifty Shades,” spurring gossip about which stars are going to play the steamy novel's main characters. In Russia, the book is due to come out next week, but quite a few women I know have already managed to read it.
The reviews, however, are very mixed. Most critics question EL James' writing, which abounds with clichéd dialogues, repetitions and contrived or simply improbable plot lines. I read all the three parts, struggling a bit with the last one. At some point I actually started skipping the sex scenes, finding them, despite their being exuberantly explicit, quite predictable.
Still, the book is undoubtedly a page-turner, and I am by far not the only skeptic to admit it. Initially dubbed "mommy porn," the erotic trilogy is incredibly popular, as astonished publishers report, not only with jaded suburban housewives, but also with yuppie girls in their 20s and 30s, both in Europe and America.
So why do these educated and busy women get so hooked on this dubiously written and trivially plotted novel with a very niche sexual theme? Why did Time magazine put the book's previously unknown author on its “100 People of the Year” list, and Newsweek recently devoted an entire section to “Fifty Shades of Grey” mania?
Not only does the book's male protagonist eagerly chain his virginal love interest to an "ornately carved rococo four-poster bed" in his Spanish inquisition-inspired "Red Room of Pain," but he also showers her with lavish gifts, including a wardrobe full of designer outfits, not to mention diamonds, convertibles, mansions and even... a publishing company. He takes charge of literally all aspects of this young lady's life, and she, reluctant at first, gleefully embraces it all.
Perhaps it's this good old, even archetypal, sex, power and money cocktail that we still can't help finding so irresistibly enticing? Actually, "still" might not be a relevant word here. It might be that today's women, especially the more accomplished and emancipated ones, crave this kind of domination more than ever.
"We may then be especially drawn to this particular romanticized, erotically charged, semi-pornographic idea of female submission at a moment in history when male dominance is shakier than it has ever been," Katie Roiphe, assistant professor and assistant director of the Cultural Criticism and Reporting program at New York University mused in Newsweek on the “Fifty Shades” trilogy phenomenon.
"Women in the West are tired of being everything – a worker, a child bearer, a supermodel, a CEO. They want a break. They want a strong man to take over them, sexually, financially, emotionally. Perhaps it’s a false desire, somewhat of an escapist utopia, but since it seems that feminism has failed them, they grasp at anything," one girl wrote to me last week when I started discussing the book on Facebook.
This novel's overwhelming success might indeed signal feminism's decadence, with females getting increasingly tired of all the numerous options and responsibilities imposed on them in the past few decades. But it could also indicate the beginning of a new era of sexual emancipation, when women are no longer afraid to reveal their genuine desires, where submission fantasies, ancient as the world itself, could very well run the show. Curiously, experts on submission/domination relationships state that psychologically, it's the former, not the latter, who are really in control.
Anyhow, I don’t see any harm in the fact that, despite the poor writing quality, “Fifty Shades” could inspire us to explore our primal needs and possibly unchain some of our latent desires. In fact, there has been much talk in the Western press lately of the next major baby boom about to come. And guess what? It's attributed directly to that bondage love story!
The views expressed in this column are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
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Russia has always been referred to as feminine and Russian women have been one of the most popular stereotypes of this nation, both positive and negative. But is this an all-male fantasy? Here is a hip, modern, professional and increasingly globalized Russian woman looking at the trends around her, both about her gender and the society at large. She talks and lets other women talk.
Svetlana Kolchik, 33, is deputy editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of Marie Claire magazine. She holds degrees from the Moscow State University Journalism Department and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has worked for Argumenty i Fakty weekly in Moscow and USA Today in Washington, D.C., and contributed to RussiaProfile.org, Russian editions of Vogue, Forbes and other publications.
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