Ladies. Ladies. Ladies.
Can we have a chat for a minute?
I'm a bit concerned about the declarations I keep hearing about "mommy porn" (a.k.a. the
Fifty Shades series) and how much the female collective is drooling over Mr. Christian Grey.
Let's go ahead and get the obvious out of the way for a moment....
The writing in these books is utterly atrocious. Did you know in the second book alone, the author used the word "murmur" 277 times. TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY SEVEN TIMES. As a writer who has done a little dabbling in the erotic fiction area herself, that was a word that never came up in the thesaurus let alone using any other word that many times. The continued over use of phrases and words is better outlined in this review on Amazon:
Bestseller? Really??? That aside, these books (confession: I did not read Fifty Shades of Freed. I just couldn't do that to myself) read as if they were written by someone who did their research via late night soft core porn movies on Cinemax. Although, many of those late night offerings were far more titillating than the characters in the books.
The characters are just downright laughable. Ana has the emotional maturity of a gnat. And apparently lived under a rock her entire life. Her back story doesn't make--no laptop through her entire college career, is downright shocked that she has her own email address and for someone who supposedly graduated with a degree in literature, one can only assume based on her lack of vocabulary prowess hat her degree was grated out pity and not academic merit. If someone can please enlighten me how someone can go from a full on virgin in every sense of the word to a sex-addicted, well sex-kitten after meeting the unimaginable Christian Grey, I am all ears. By the end of the second book, I was ready to strangle my own "inner goddess" and send a sympathy card to Stephanie Meyer that Ms. James had decided to base her woeful characters on Bella and Edward.
Then of course there is the beloved Christian . Even I must confess that this damaged beyond repair leading man has quite the sex appeal. Honestly, how can we forget how statuesque this man is when we are reminded on nearly EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. His chiseled features. Perfectly quaffed, just fucked tousled hair. And those pants that he wears that hang from his scandalous hip bones "in the way that they do". None of that is to be overshadowed though by how truly broken and damaged this man is. How his mere presence tugs at the heart strings while simultaneously sending every female within a 1 mile radius of his presence onto the verge of orgasm. What's not to love about that! Well, there is that pesky side of him that is controlling, full on stalker, emotionally abusive but that's o.k. because he is dangerous and
very exciting in the bedroom. And
that as we know, trumps everything.
Ah yes, the sex. That is the one thing these book have going for them. There is a lot of sex. They do it in the bathroom. Her bedroom. His bedroom. Her apartment. His apartment. His parents house. A boathouse. On a boat! But sadly not in the fully equipped and tricked out "red room of pain". The locations are endless and he just can't get enough. Well, neither can she for that matter. I'm actually not sure how they get anything else done because they are fucking ALL. THE. TIME. And for those of you who are nervous about the BDSM aspect of the series, it happens three, maybe four times. And you barely dip your big town int o the wonderful world of bondage. It's like the cliff notes version of the subject and misses all the juicy (no pun intended), dirty bits.
Truth be told, I could move passed the terrible writing and the lack of character development. I can get over the fact that EL James didn't really do her job as an author in the research department. I can get over the fact that these really do read like books that were penned by a bored woman drinking too much Merlot and trying to add a little spice into her own life. But what I can't get over, what I can't move passed is that based on conversations with friends (when they don't turn away giggling after turning fifty shades of red because these books are so scandalous and dirty) is that this series seems to be the standard by which we are holding all "girl porn" or "mommy" porn to and this saddens me greatly.
Ladies. We deserve so much more! We should not accept this as the standard for anything except for how we can raise the bar even higher.
Porn, not "girl porn" or "mommy porn", but
porn is supposed to be hot, sticky, gross and just plain raunchy. It's not supposed to be cute or frilly. You should squirm and feel uncomfortable and think "my alter ego could totally do
that move", not giggle your way through it in embarrassment. You should want to take a long
cold hot shower (preferably with your significant other) when you are done watching or reading it. At best, Fifty Shades should only require a tissue or a wetnap.
