Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months you will have no doubt heard about the 50 Shades trilogy and as seems to be the pattern, you will have heard one of two things. Either, you will have had women gushing about how they couldn’t put the books down and they have told all their friends and they are now all at different stages through the books etc or you will have heard the opposite camp telling you they are sick of hearing about these bloody books, that are badly written, badly edited and completely unrealistic.
So where do I sit when it comes to the 50 Shades divide? As much as I agree with many of the points made by the anti 50 shades brigade I can’t fully get on board, because I can see too many positive possibilities coming from these books and here are just a few of them.
The writing style of this book is not fantastic but by bringing erotica to the mainstream instead of it being a tiny section hidden away on high shelves in bookshops, it will give better opportunities for some of the fantastic writers of erotica. People are finishing the 50 Shades Trilogy and wondering what else there is out there that isn’t some trashy book that has no story line and is just about the graphic details of the sex the characters are having. On Twitter alone I can think of plenty of writers whose capabilities, given the opportunity, will completely outshine E.L.James.
Early on in the trilogy we are introduced to the world of Dom/sub relationships. OK it probably isn’t done as most people in the Dom/sub community would like, I have heard the grumbles about the amount of alcohol consumed etc. However for a lot of the people reading this book I think they have found themselves discovering an interest in an area they didn’t know existed and for those that perhaps already felt drawn to the idea, it may well help them gain the confidence to voice their interest. There are many people in the world that would view these kinds of relationships as taboo but 50 Shades has made it more acceptable. Surely anything that allows people to learn about their sexual desires can’t be all bad can it?
Still slightly on the theme above, I have experienced personally, that women are finding a new sexual freedom having read these books. Women who didn’t like to talk about sex are suddenly opening up, talking about bits mentioned in the books that they would like to try or ideas that have developed from reading the books. More sex for everyone? I don’t think anyone will be complaining about that.
At this point I really could go on and on but I won’t I’ll just say something about the claims that this book is unrealistic, yeah it is unrealistic. A pretty, 21 year old virgin, lacking in confidence falls under the spell of a handsome millionaire battling demons from his past and finding release in his red room of pain. Can’t say it’s ever happened to anyone I know but then again I also don’t know anyone who owns a mansion and ended up shagging the gardener in his cabin, nor for that matter have I ever known anyone who has fallen in love with a vampire and had his baby. There is a reason for this, its fiction! We read books to escape into a world unlike our own where things happen, that we may not ever imagine.
