50 shades of dull

I am not a crowd follower.

I have an inbuilt nausea for anything I’m told I ‘should’ be doing because ‘everyone’ else is doing it. This is why I don’t do – or get – fashion. Why would I want to look the same as everyone else? And spend money doing it? And give a megabrand free advertising on my boobs? Why?

And, how boring to look like an identikit of everyone else. It’s not that I dress outlandishly, or even stylishly. I just don’t buy into being told this is how I should look this season. Because, ‘who’ decides?

Fifteen years ago I was a Harry Potter refusenik. Everywhere I went the whole country was talking about this amazing book about the boy wizard. And the more I heard people rave about it, the more I dug my heels in. Commuting to work I was surrounded by apparent grownups reading a kid’s book. Each time I saw it, it infuriated me more. Like society needs any help being infantilised.

Now this possibly makes me sound a little insane. And more than a little stubborn. But it’s not cutting my nose off to spite my face because I don’t believe I’m missing anything. Even if this were the best kids’ literature ever written, I still wouldn’t have wanted to read it – because I’m not a kid. There is SO much amazing literature out there, literature that I struggle to find the time to read, why would I waste my precious reading time on a kid’s book? Seriously.

And I still haven’t read it. None of them. Until we had kids I hadn’t seen the movies either. Now we have seen the movies and they are mostly pretty good, and I am sure that I will soon sit with my daughter and read the books with her, and great. But in my own time, for my own pleasure, I’ll be reading something a tad more adult.

Now that word ‘adult’ brings us to the latest wet-your-knickers exciting literature trend that 98% of women are apparently falling over themselves to read and feel a little naughty doing it. 50 Shades of fucking Grey. The title doesn’t actually include the ‘F’ word, it’s just that I can’t write about it without voicing my intense irritation that ‘everyone’ is reading it.

And I simply don’t get why. EVERYONE says it’s shit. Really awfully, cringe-inducingly, embarrassingly badly written. Obviously as a writer this is more than a little galling. This woman has sold tens of millions of copies of this book and she can’t write! This does make me want to slam my head into a hard immovable object, frankly, but good luck to her I guess. She won the literary lottery. It gives us all hope.

But actually what annoys me is that almost everyone I know is rushing out to buy it simply because they’re told we’re all doing it. Once again, it could be the best ‘mummy porn’ ever written and I would still run a mile because I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT be a sheep. The more everyone follows the herd, the more I would prefer to rip my teeth out with a pair of pliers.

I don’t really know why I have this apparently visceral hatred for following the crowd, it’s just the way I am.

But there is more to it than my despising of conformity.

It is also this book. I’m not entirely sure why people have found it so interesting. Ok, so it’s a bit saucy, but haven’t they heard of DH Lawrence or Jilly Cooper or Mills & Boon FFS?

People have debated what the interest this book has caused can tell us about modern women, because it deals with a woman – previously a virgin – heading straight into a SM relationship with an older man.

I’m not prudish about the submissive thing. Consenting adults right? Whatever floats your boat. I’m puzzled that reading about it (in such a poor and jaw-achingly repetitive manner) is apparently such a turn on for millions of women, but I’m not sure that it means those women all feel their place in this world is handcuffed to the kitchen sink wearing a thong and high heels. (Although the whole ‘inner goddess’ thing does sound like an advertising euphemism for under-the-rim toilet cleaner.)

And unlike Suzanne Moore I don’t particularly think it’s ‘dangerous’ because it furthers the myth that we should all be looking for ‘the one’.

But I do find it disappointing that of all the books to capture the female population’s imagination it should be this one. Not just because it’s bad, and not just because it features female sexual submission, but because they think it’s a little bit rebellious. Now people are talking about it saving marriages, injecting passion back into relationships, and fuelling a baby boom.

Well great if that’s what you needed to get your love life back on track. Apparently it’s more acceptable to buy this than, say, Penthouse. But don’t kid yourself that there’s any difference between the two. Possibly Penthouse might be better written.

Now I’m really going to drop the ‘F’ word into my rant and watch more than 50% of readers roll their eyes.

More years ago than I care to count, I studied feminist literature at uni. Alongside the other kinds of literature. I wrote a thesis about representations of women in popular culture and I referenced amongst other things l’ecriture feminine and other philosophies that I no longer properly recall or understand.

But all I will say about it is that if this book were truly enlightening, or revolutionary or genuinely exciting in terms of moving women’s literature on and making women’s sexuality more interesting and, well, sexy, it would reverse the roles and speak in terms of envelopment not penetration and of passion found not from the sting and erotic frisson of pain and dominance, but from the sensuality of an inclusive, voluptuous, all-encompassing pleasure where our heroine is as controlling as her devotee.

And there would be nothing grey about it.