Bad Feminist: Essays (24 page)

Over three books, Ana and Christian try to have a relationship, but they are impeded by Christian’s abiding interest in BDSM (or at least E.L. James’s fantasy version of BDSM), his unwillingness to engage in a “normal” relationship, and Ana’s desire for a “normal” relationship. There is all kinds of drama, and with each book, that drama becomes increasingly absurd but strangely addictive. A crazy former submissive! An older former lover and mistress who earns the nickname Mrs. Robinson! A sexually harassing boss with a chip on his shoulder! Family drama! Helicopter crashes! Arson! Oh my!

When she meets Christian, Ana is, conveniently, a twenty-one-year-old virgin who has never even masturbated. Of course. Christian gets to show Ana the ropes, so to speak, in a very dramatic scene where he grabs her by the wrist and leads her to his bedroom to properly deflower her. The kinkiness can wait, but her vagina cannot. As he sweeps Ana off her feet, Christian says, “We’re going to rectify the situation right now,” which is surely what every woman wants to hear when she has sex for the first time. In a never-ending scene, Christian makes their first lovemaking encounter all about Ana. He makes her come by stimulating her nipples. They fool around some more, and finally, Christian can no longer control himself. He takes off his boxers and tears open a condom wrapper while Ana stares at his enormous cock, bewildered because she is so innocent and pure. Of course. Christian says, “Don’t worry . . . You expand too.” You haven’t lived until you’ve read such prose. Before long, Christian “rips through” Ana’s virginity, they both come, and her virginity situation is, indeed, rectified, pleasantly for all involved.

The books quickly devolve into passionate(ish) sex scenes interrupted by arguments about their different desires—Christian’s recalcitrance toward normalcy, and the ridiculous drama, both within the relationship and beyond.

Whenever women do something in significant numbers, the media immediately becomes frenzied as they try to understand this new mystery of womanhood. If that
something
involves female desire (as if female desire is entirely uniform), the frenzy takes on a sharper pitch. Nearly every major publication has offered at least one “think piece” about the Fifty Shades series. The books have been labeled with the condescending term “mommy porn” because the trilogy has found a great deal of success among a certain demographic. Once that happens, we have to call it a trend, and then we need to write trend pieces that exhaustively analyze something that probably isn’t very worthy of analysis. Is it really newsworthy that a number of women have
finally
found something that turns them on, or is the response to Fifty Shades a depressing commentary on the state of modern desire?

A great deal of the conversation about these books focuses on the erotic elements—there is so much explicit, highly implausible sex to be found in Fifty Shades, and it always ends in the most amazing orgasms ever. Ana and Christian have sex on an airplane and in an elevator and in a car. They have sex in several different beds and they have sex in Christian’s playroom, which Ana calls the Red Room of Pain—a dungeon so outlandishly equipped that, when she first sees it, Ana thinks, “It feels like I’ve time-traveled back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish inquisition.” Inside, she finds deep burgundy walls, a large wooden cross, an iron grid hanging from the ceiling, lots of ropes and chains and paddles and whips and crops and other toys, as if real BDSM is manifested solely in the extravagant display of toys.

This analogy might help illustrate the difference between BDSM in the real world and BDSM in the world of E.L. James—Fifty Shades : BDSM :: McDonald’s : Food.

I understand why these books are so popular, beyond the underlying fairy tale. There are hot moments. Chances are you will be turned on by
something
in these books. The trilogy tries valiantly to make the reader believe female pleasure is the most important part of a sexual experience despite Christian Grey’s dominant proclivities. In nearly all the sex scenes, Christian is meticulous about pleasuring Ana. He lavishes her body with all manner of sexual attention. The books are generous in detailing lady orgasms that make it clear Christian Grey is the best lover ever. It’s a nice little fantasy.

When you look deeper, though, which is challenging in a trilogy with the depth of a murky wading pool, these books are really about Ana trying to change/save Christian from his demons—she is the virginal good girl who can lead the dark bad boy to salvation, as if, historically, trying to change a man has ever worked out well. At one point during their courtship, Ana thinks, “This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight—or the dark knight as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?” I wanted to take Ana aside and say, “Girl, you cannot lead this man into the light. Let that dream go.”

After all the trials this couple faces, and after all the
hot
sex, we’re supposed to think this trilogy is about a young woman and her happily-ever-after. It’s not. Ana’s sexual awakening is a convenient vehicle for the awakening of Christian’s humanity. Fifty Shades is about a man finding peace and happiness because he finally finds a woman willing to tolerate his bullshit for long enough.

Fifty Shades is engaging in that simplistic, formulaic manner of romance novels or fairy tales, but the books are terribly written in really delightful ways. I embraced the absurdity with open arms and laughed and laughed.

Ana has no gag reflex, which is so very convenient. On those rare occasions she goes down on Christian, Ana has no problem orally accommodating Christian’s girth. She even swallows, so she’s obviously a keeper.

Christian is one of those chatty lovers who, throughout all three books, spends a great deal of time narrating what he is doing, wants to do, and/or will do to Ana, adding at least an extra ten thousand words to each book.

In one of the books, Ana asks for a glass of “white Pinot Grigio.” Whenever I reconsider that phrase, I die laughing because it is the laziest mistake possible. There is product placement by Audi—Christian drives an Audi, gives his favorite submissives Audis, and gives Ana, over the course of their relationship, two Audis. His generosity truly knows no bounds. Christian gives Ana expensive clothes, La Perla lingerie, a MacBook, an iPad, a BlackBerry, expensive rare books, a honeymoon on a yacht, and on and on. If you have a materialistic fantasy, this book will curb that edge.

Swaths of the story are told via reproduced e-mail exchanges. That is, we literally see the e-mails Ana and Christian exchange, with all the annoying banter you might expect from a couple falling in love and much more. These e-mails, alone, are worth the price of admission.

In the first book, when Christian is trying to introduce Ana to his
lifestyle
, James reproduces Christian’s Dominant/submissive contract three or four times, as if we couldn’t get the gist the first time. The contract is clearly something James found hanging around the Internet. It dictates all manner of supposedly submissive behaviors including: personal grooming, sleep hygiene, wardrobe, diet, comportment, and sexual activity. An exhaustive amount of the first book is given over to Ana and Christian negotiating this contract, what they each will or won’t do, only Ana never signs the contract so mostly this is a device to repeatedly show us how different the lovers are.

Ana says or thinks “Jeez” more times than I can count. There are so many repetitive tics, this trilogy would be ideal for a drinking game where the aim is to destroy someone’s liver. Drink every time Ana thinks “Jeez.” Drink every time Ana bites her lower lip, which, by the way, makes Christian want to ravish her. Drink every time the palm of Christian’s hand twitches because he wants to spank Ana. Drink every time Ana thinks of Christian as “enigmatic” or “mercurial.” Drink every time Ana reflects on his extraordinary good looks. Drink every time Ana gets possessive of Christian because every single human woman in the world eyes him lustily and becomes instantly tongue-tied. Drink every time the narrative continuity goes wildly off track. The game goes on and on.

To hold all this nonsense together, Ana has two little friends—her subconscious and her inner goddess, each personified. These ladies glare at Ana. They peer at her over their glasses. They twirl and swoon and sigh and grin and nod and otherwise reflect Ana’s state of mind. For example, toward the end of the first book, Christian and Ana are about to get freaky and there’s this gift: “My subconscious is frantically fanning herself, and my inner goddess is swaying and writhing to some primal carnal rhythm. She’s so ready.”

Like Ana’s inner goddess, I was so ready for these books, and that’s an uncomfortable realization, that I can take pleasure in something so terrible. Like most people, I am a mass of contradictions.

There are times when Fifty Shades is amusing because the writing is terrible and fun, and then there are times when the book is terrible and infuriating in its irresponsibility.

As Prince Charming, Christian fits the bill. He is ridiculously wealthy and handsome but utterly lacking in imagination. E.L. James decides to complicate her Prince Charming. She gives the reader a little something more than the average dullard we generally have to yearn for in fairy tales: Christian has a tormented past. His mother is a crackhead, you see, which he casually discloses after a night of kinky passion. Ana is falling asleep next to him, and he says, “The woman who brought me into this world was a crack whore, Anastasia. Go to sleep.” He seems to expect his confession will satisfy Ana’s curiosity, but eventually he begins to disclose his
dark
past—abuse by his mother’s boyfriends, neglect, hunger. There’s a lot of trauma there and he wears it openly. As you might expect, Christian’s past shapes his present in significant ways and provides a great deal of the incessant drama throughout the books. Forgive my indelicacy, but Christian Grey is a man who loves to run the fuck and he’s not afraid to show it. His need to be a Dominant rises out of his need for control.

In the second book we learn Christian Grey enjoys dominating women, always beautiful brunettes, because they remind him of his mother. He’s working on it with his therapist, Dr. Flynn, who makes the occasional appearance in ways that contradict the tenets of modern psychotherapy. There are any number of reasons why people engage in BDSM, but for James to so flagrantly pathologize the BDSM lifestyle as strictly a way for fucked-up people to work out their emotional issues is beyond the pale. It is not an accurate portrayal of the community. It sends a wrong and unfair message about kink.

The Fifty Shades books have also opened the door for pundits, including Ellen DeGeneres, to treat the BDSM lifestyle with derision, mockery, and outright ignorance. Whips and chains are so very funny, or they are freaky and weird. For those who don’t understand different expressions of sexuality, humor seems to be the easiest coping mechanism—unless, of course, you are critic Katie Roiphe, who concludes that the popularity of Fifty Shades merely proves that independent women today secretly yearn to be dominated by men but are afraid to admit their submissive desires. Roiphe takes her typical anti-feminist stance by supporting her argument with an odd range of vaguely related texts. Take
Secretary
and
The Story of O
and a few other cultural artifacts,
et voilà
: irrefutable proof that women want to surrender sexually. At no time does Roiphe actually speak to submissive women about their desires. At no time does she try to understand the complexity of submissive sexual desire, instead making a tenuous connection between a popular, highly fictional series of books and the state of modern female sexuality.

Very little of the conversation about Fifty Shades has included people who actually participate in the BDSM lifestyle and can speak intelligently and ethically on the subject, even though these people exist and are easy to find. Instead, people who know not of what they speak have made wild, lazy, insulting, or inaccurate conjectures about BDSM all because a writer who is not terribly familiar with the lifestyle (she did a lot of online research, don’t you know) thought kink would be a nice hook to hang her Twilight fan fiction on.

My amusement with the Fifty Shades series only goes so far. The books are, essentially, a detailed primer for how to successfully engage in a controlling, abusive relationship. The trilogy represents the darkest kind of fairy tale, one where controlling, obsessive, and borderline abusive tendencies are made to seem intensely desirable by offering the reader big heaping spoonfuls of sweet, sweet sex sugar to make the medicine go down.

We can certainly credit the source material. Twilight offers similar instruction. Edward goes to absurd lengths to control Bella, all in the name of
love
. In Fifty Shades, there are no limits to Christian’s need to control Ana’s life, her decisions, and their relationship. Even before they date, he conducts a background check. He tracks her movements via her cell phone in a way that is never quite explained but that we’re supposed to go along with because he is wealthy and stalking people electronically is simply what wealthy people do. He tries to control when and how much Ana eats, the kind of alcohol she drinks, how she behaves around him, whom she allows in her life, how she travels, and we’re supposed to believe this is all fine because he has
issues
, because he
loves her
.

In addition to the highly restrictive contract Christian wants Ana to sign, he also makes all his submissives sign a nondisclosure agreement limiting what Ana is even legally allowed to share with her friends and loved ones about her life with Christian. Ana inexplicably signs this agreement because, as she tells Christian, she wouldn’t have said anything anyway. She’s a good girl. That’s a common tactic of abusers—isolating their victims—but we’re supposed to think the way Christian isolates Ana in luxury is romantic. A prison is still a prison even when the sheets are 1200 thread count, but the premise, in my weaker moments, is seductive enough to make that prison seem tolerable.