You've all heard of it. You've all scoffed at it. You're all sick
of hearing about it. And you're all tired of the questions from your
menfolk about whether it's really that hot, what your gag reflect is
like, and if girls really do orgasm that easily.
But the one thing you can't deny about 50 Shades of Grey? It's put the female sexual appetite firmly in the mainstream.
It's
screaming at us from shop windows, the Twitter trending list and the
sides of buses, side by side with the posters for Ice Age 4 and the
latest Samsung smartphone. Women's libidos, smacking us in the face
before we've even had our coffee.
Loathe it or not (and if you have any respect for the publishing
industry's reputation, the written word and the rainforest, you'll probably be
appalled by it), there's no doubt that middle-shelf bonkbuster 50 Shades
of Grey has done what hasn't been seen on this scale since Kinsey was
getting busy. While the top shelf is dominated by the big boob bonazas
of Zoo and Nuts, this woman-friendly sex fest is right at eye level.
In the words of Caitlin Moran, I wouldn't wank to 50 Shades (for it
is a highly clinical examination of sex by numbers that manages to make
S&M prudish by never actually referring to the protagonist's
anatomy as anything more vulgar than 'down there.') However, sub-par masturbatory material though it is, I'm absolutely in favour of the wider implications that come with having a female-centric wank-fest
on the bestseller list (for all three of the trilogy remain there) and,
with the news that the producers behind The Social Network are on board
with the film adaptation, soon to be in a multiplex near you.
The
trolling menfolk of the internet are riled - all of a sudden, they're faced with the knowledge that, while
they loudly scoff over porn and lads' mags in the pub with their mates,
the girls at the next table will be discussing that sex scene on Page 27 (you know, the one where he pulls her tampon out and fucks her against the hotel sink. Is it hot in here?) Or comparing it with the works of Jilly Cooper. Or talking in an
animated Samantha Jones-like manner about Anastasia Steele's ability to orgasm on command. No wonder some men are so
threatened by the new phenomenon and talking point that is the newly acceptable female
libido that they
take drastic measures to keep their women away from saucy tales of debauchery.
Because that's what has been kicked off here with some badly
written prose inspired by Twilight. Where previously women were
clutching a tissue and reading Eat, Pray, Love and One Day on the tube,
now they're grinning laviciously on their way to work as Christian Grey
teaches Ana Steele to stop using the word 'nice' using some very
inventive methods, all in the neatly packaged guise of a bestselling
book fast enroute to cult status. Next to said woman, the man leering
tiredly over his copy of The Sun looks both puerile and seriously dated. Likewise, a bunch of
schoolboys sniggering at the adverts inside phonebooths are nothing
compared to the gaggles of women cheering the bus-side posters of new
film Magic Mike: a film about male strippers, whose main selling point
is Channing Tatum's chest. By comparison, menfolk are counting down the
days until the release of buddy comedy Ted, about a man and his teddy
bear. There's a strip show for horny ladies on at the multiplexes. Given that the male
equivalent is still forcing its patrons to pay through the nose and be
judged as seedy when they go to Spearmint Rhino, no wonder they're
pissed.
So while I won't be cramming the 50 Shades series into my holiday
suitcase, I wouldn't be ashamed to be seen reading it on the tube. It's
about time that women were allowed to flaunt their sex drives as openly
as men do, to perv gleefully over objectified men's bodies in the way
that men have done to women for years and to read softcore pornography
on the bus to work. Is it the solution to years of oppression? Perhaps not. Is it mature? Doubtful. But right now, it's damn good payback.
I wouldn't give E L James a Pulitzer, but I'd shake
the hand of the publisher who, while shallowly cashing in on the market
for a good fan fiction, had the balls to sell sex to the fairer sex.
We're more than willing to buy - and trust us to be smart enough to get
heterosexual female fantasies into the highbrow mainstream. While the
male-dominated porn industry simmers in the back alleys of the internet,
ours is on the Richard and Judy sofa and in the bestseller lists.
So
keep your lads' mags and your amateur footage on the latest wank fodder website. We'll be picking our vice of
choice, proudly and publicly, up at the airport - from where it
inevitably lies next to Henry James.
