Arts

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Additional warning:  Today’s post mentions sex during menstruation.

We now come to the absolute only part of this awful, trashy book that I like.

I’m pretty sure E. L. James did this without meaning to.  Well, no.  I mean, she did intend to write this book, and she probably did intend people to like it.  What I mean is that she has at last done one simple thing that has impressed me, and I doubt that it was done for any other reason than for the sake of writing erotica.  She likely wasn’t trying to create something beautifully feminist here, as evidenced by the entire rest of this mess.  I’ll bet you’d like to know what that is, right?  Okay, here you go:

Ana and Christian have sex during her period.

I know, I know.  That should actually be kind of squicky.  Many women do not enjoy sex during their periods for a variety of reasons.  That’s perfectly fine too, so don’t think I’m trying to make it sound like now everyone should just suppress any unpleasant feelings and grin and bear it.  I just think that this is probably one of the best sex scenes I’ve ever read; it’s certainly the best one so far in this book.

The first thing I like about it is that Christian is not all grossed out by Ana’s period.  Talking about menstruation is, for a whole lot of men, an absolute no-no.  On the flip side of that, some men use it as an excuse to trash women for being “emotional” or “irrational,” blaming every feeling a woman has on PMS.  It’s either something so awful it can’t be discussed, or it’s a running joke.  I have so much appreciation for Christian in that moment because he does neither of those things.

I also absolutely love the sensual quality of the beginning of their intimacy here.  He tells her to look at herself, to appreciate her body.  His words to her about how beautiful she is are tender and reverent.  We women are taught from a young age to fear and hate our bodies.  Far too many of us have struggled with self-loathing.  It’s pretty realistic (even if E. L. James hasn’t written it very well) that Ana doesn’t find herself attractive.  For her to not only be told that she’s gorgeous but to have Christian use her own hands to show her is both erotic and achingly lovely.

What follows is slightly more awkward, due to the poor quality of the writing.  I was a bit annoyed by the way Ana’s own stupid brain breaks the magic of their intimacy, just as it often does.  It bothers me less here, however, because I appreciate the overall tone of the scene.  Some people are grossed out by the part where Christian removes Ana’s tampon; that didn’t faze me at all.  I know it’s kind of yucky, really, but once again, what I appreciate is that Christian isn’t disgusted by Ana’s blood. In fact, after they make love and are situated in each other’s arms, he says exactly that:

“I’m bleeding,” I murmur.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he breathes.

“I noticed.” I can’t keep the dryness out of my voice.

He tenses slightly.  “Does it bother you?” he asks softly.

Does it bother me?  Maybe it should…should it?  No, it doesn’t.

In this tender moment, they both affirm the absolute normality of her period.  I see this as a huge step, that a basic part of human biology is treated with such respect.

I need to say a brief word here because I know that one can be a woman without menstruating.  But the fact remains, for the majority of women, this is our experience for approximately forty years of our lives.  To have it dignified in erotic literature is an incredible thing.  I can’t help believing that there is hope we might overcome the stigma of our monthly cycles and that people with much more skill than E. L. James might be willing to take that leap too.

As I mentioned, I’m not sure that was E. L. James’ intent.  It seems to me (though I could be wrong) that she wasn’t trying to do some bold, feminist thing.  She was actually attempting to eroticize menstruation and put period sex in the same category as whips and chains–that is to say, deviant and possibly icky.  What I’d like to see is the same sort of sensuality in the context of a healthy relationship (that is, not one that involves stalking and abuse).  And while I typically wouldn’t care about the BDSM elements, I also think that it would be good if we could see menstruation and sexuality in a context other than something some people might believe is deviant already.  It would remove the link between the two, which are really unrelated.

I suppose this is just proof that even something like Fifty Shades gets it right now and again.  While I still dislike this book–for all the reasons I’ve already stated–I’m glad to know that there is at least one thing I don’t despise.  Don’t get too comfortable with that, though.  I’m sure that next week I’ll be back with more snark.

 

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

My apologies for not posting yesterday.  Better late than never, right?

For those of you who didn’t quite follow the title of this post, it’s a reference to a line in the movie The Graduate.  In case you haven’t seen it, let me sum up: Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) graduates college.  Having nothing better to do with his time, he has an affair with Mrs. Robinson.  He decides he likes her daughter better and they run off together.  The end.

I first saw this movie with my boyfriend (now husband) and a bunch of our college friends on recommendation of one friend’s mother.  She said it was one of the movies we just had to see.  I have never been able to figure out if this was a generational thing or if we just didn’t happen to like the movie, but the general consensus was that it was about an hour and forty-five minutes of our lives we would never have back.  Just about the only thing I remember (other than the general plot) is the line, “I have one word for you: Plastics.”

Anyway, the whole point of that story is that in Fifty Shades, Ana keeps referring to the woman who initiated Christian into BDSM as “Mrs. Robinson.”  I have concluded that E. L. James has not ever seen that movie, because if she had, she would not be calling the woman Mrs. Robinson.  First of all, the movie Mrs. Robinson is manipulative, but she isn’t a child molester.  Benjamin is an adult, unlike 15-year-old Christian.  Second, in the movie, Benjamin has a very good idea that Mrs. Robinson is horrible, and he eventually gets a clue–again, unlike Christian, who seems to think it’s perfectly fine and dandy to have an ongoing business relationship with his rapist.  Finally, if E. L. James had had her wits about her, she would have realized that no one under the age of 25 has seen the movie at this point, which makes Ana referencing it and making that connection–and Christian getting it–kind of weird.  It’s this vague sense of having heard of the film without having watched it and having the takeaway be, “Oh, yeah, that movie about an older woman seducing a young, impressionable man.”  Which is not precisely what the movie is about.

Ana (remember, we’re still with her on vacation) gets jealous when she finds out Christian is having dinner with an “old friend.”  Naturally, this turns out to be her worst nightmare–Mrs. Robinson.  To Ana’s credit, she understands that an adult preying on a 15-year-old is wrong, and she points out that if it had been a 15-year-old girl and an adult man, no one would be romanticizing it.  Christian is all lost in the fact that he feels his Mrs. Robinson did him a favor.

There is nothing in me that thinks it is okay for an adult to be sleeping with a teenager.  I do not mean two young people, one of whom happens to be 18 and the other of whom is not.  I mean the kind of situation we’re talking about with Christian and his Mrs. Robinson, where an adult over the age of 30 thinks that it’s a good idea to have sex with a 15-year-old.  Before anyone gets all upset that I’m being judgy, I hold no blame for the younger person in that relationship.  Everything is squarely on the adult’s shoulders.  Why an adult would even have a sexual interest in a teenager is beyond me.  Ana rightly pushes Christian on this, telling him she sees Mrs. Robinson as a pedophile (even if she does spell it the UK way).

That brings us to how the heck Ana and Christian end up having another conversation about this.  Guess where he is right now in the story?  If you said, “Seattle,” you’d be wrong.  He follows Ana to Georgia, because he’s a creepy stalker.  While she’s busy emailing him about how mad she is that he is seeing Mrs. Robinson, he’s busy watching her from across the bar, counting how many drinks she’s had.

So, nah, he’s not messed up at all.  Nope.

I don’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed, but we’re nearing the end.  In a few weeks, we’ll bid goodbye to Fifty Shades of Grey.  I suppose I could continue with the next one, but I haven’t decided if I want to.  I may need to pull an Ana and have a cosmopolitan or five.

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Happy Monday!  I now have enough caffeine in my system to write about Fifty Shades.  (But not nearly enough alcohol; I have no idea how I’m going to finish this series.  Meh–I’ll manage.)

Ana has arrived in Georgia to visit her mom and husband-I’ve-lost-track-of-what-number.  She thinks,

I like this husband, Mom.  You can keep him.

This is yet another example of Ana telling us how much she likes some person or another, even though we readers have no idea why.  With Kate, Ana is constantly in Jealous Mode, yet she assures us Kate is superawesome.  With Christian, he’s intensely creepy, but Ana reminds us on nearly every page how hot he makes her.  Now we have Bob.  Apparently, the thing Ana likes is that Bob has twinkly blue eyes “that gaze at [her] fondly.”

Ana spends several paragraphs complaining about the heat and her “fog of fatigue.”  So it’s only natural that instead of going to her mother’s house to rest and soak up the AC, she asks to go to the beach.  You know what?  I’ve taken late-night flights before.  It’s not pretty.  The last thing I wanted to do was anything other than shower and take a nap.  But hey, who am I to judge?  At least it’s gotten her mind of Christian, right?

Or not.

Here comes the Big Mother-Daughter Talk.  Ana’s mom opens by asking about the relationship, to which Ana replies that Christian is “complicated and mercurial.”  Her mother wisely chooses to focus on those two things, but then she goes on to lose all the respect I was just beginning to have for her.  Somehow she fails to notice when Ana says,

. . . his mood-swings make me dizzy.  He’s had a grim up-bringing, so he’s very closed, difficult to gauge.

Instead of going with the giant red flag about the mood swings, Ana’s mother asks Ana if she likes him.  Yeah, that would not be my first response to that.  What follows is a really strange bit of dialogue.  Her mother decides to characterize men somewhat oddly, going with tired stereotypes of men as hardly more deep than a kiddie pool:

Men aren’t really complicated . . . They are very simple, literal creatures.  They usually mean what they say.  And we spend hours trying to analyze what they’ve said–when really it’s obvious. . . I’d take him literally.

In a sense, I guess I agree with her advice.  If Ana were to take Christian at his word, she might recognize him for the abusive, creepy person he is.  On the other hand, I don’t think that Ana’s mother is a good source of advice on this.  Besides making it sound like all men are shallow and kind of stupid, she’s also on her fourth (ah, yes, that’s it) husband.  Ana doesn’t seem to realize this, though.

She is on her fourth marriage.  Maybe she does know something about men after all.

Did it occur to you, Ana, that she’s on husband number four precisely because she doesn’t know crap about men at all?  I’m going with “like mother, like daughter” here.

Her mother proceeds to tell her that most men are moody.  Apparently her mother can’t make up her mind.  Are men simple and literal, or are they complicated and moody?  I don’t even know what to do with this one:

I used to think your father was moody.  But now . . . I just think he was too caught up in his job and trying to make a life for us.

Dear Ana’s mother: You would know if you’d ever bothered to, I don’t know, have a real conversation with him about it.  It’s a myth that men don’t like to talk about what’s on their minds.  There isn’t some secret to approaching men about their feelings.  I mean, you can’t just open with, “Hi, honey.  You’ve been super moody lately.  Want to tell me why?”  Women generally do not like that approach either.  Who wants to be grilled like that?  But good, old-fashioned communication works pretty well, I find.

Eventually, the conversation ends somewhat abruptly and Ana’s mom disappears to “mold some candles or whatever she does with them.”  Off-topic, but I seem to recall a YA book where the mom’s best friend is into candle-making.  Anyone remember reading such a book back in the ’80s?  If you remember the title, let me know.  It’s really bothering me now.

Christian has finally replied to Ana’s email.  He’s all mad that she communicates openly when there’s distance between them, but not in person.  Well, yes, because you scare her, you ass.  He threatens to make an appointment for her with his psychiatrist.  Is it wrong of me to think that’s not a bad idea?

He goes on to explain to her that in a D/s relationship, she has all the power as his sub.  Except that is never how he behaves with her.  Not only that, he tells her that if she says no, he can’t touch her and reminds her that she said no in his parents’ boathouse.  He seems to have forgotten that in the boathouse, he didn’t respect her no.  Remember the time when he raped her?  Yeah.

See, if he hadn’t come across as a creepy stalker, a rapist, and an all-around horrible person/boyfriend, this email is actually decent at the start.  It’s just wrong in the context of everything else that’s happened.  His assurance that she has the power here is only true in regard to what they do in the bedroom (or the Red Room of Pain).  The rest of the time, he is the one controlling every last thing between them.

He goes on to tell her that she’s not properly allowing him to have control over her anywhere but the “playroom.”  Wait…didn’t he just say that she is the one really in control?  He ends by saying that he will “try” to do things her way.  It seems to me that there is a huge gap in their understanding of each other, not to mention that he’s still creepy as hell–evidenced by his closing line:

. . . enjoy yourself.  But not too much.

What the actual, Christian.  Not too much?  She is with her mother and stepfather number three.  What constitutes “too much fun”?  Learning how to make candles?  Lying on the beach?  Dinner at the golf club?

Ana’s reaction reminds me so much of a line from the movie Roxanne.  Steve Martin’s character says to Daryl Hannah’s,

A few frilly words and you’re counting ceiling tiles!

That’s a pretty accurate description of Ana here.  Christian sends her an email she describes as being like a high school essay (“and most of it good!”), and all of a sudden she’s giddy with the desire to make things work between them.  This story would be a thousand times more interesting if Christian had had someone else write his emails and if Ana figured out she was really in love with that other person.  Alas, we’re stuck with Ana *hearts* Christian Forever.

I’m going to spare everyone a discussion on the rest of their email exchange, which quickly devolves into something no one wants to read.  If it weren’t for the fact that Ana’s not allowed to touch herself, and the interruption from her mother that it’s time for dinner, I would expect the two of them to start having email sex.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) they don’t.

I will leave it there for now.  Up next week, I ask the question, “How can this possibly get more convoluted while Ana is on vacation?” because somehow, it does.  That shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, though.