Why are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey?

[Bozvotros]

17. "50 Shades" presents a temporary reversal from the prevailing cultural eros

celebrating or at least focusing on narcissistic, histrionic, dominating women and the men who serve or service them. Or maybe it is just the same theme told a different way.

Consider the following television shows: Housewives of Orange County, Atlanta, New York, Miami etc, Mob Wives, NBA wives, the god awful Kardashians (all of them), Jersey Shores, Jerseylicious, Bridezilla, Bad Girls Club, America's Top Model and more all the time. To some degree you can add Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives and half a dozen other mini series with a similar kind of heroine. The female lead is usually a heavily made up, anorexic, surgically-enhanced-cleavage baring woman wielding almost total control over the men in their lives or venting fury because they can't. (For some reason I had this flash of Ann Romney wielding a riding crop on a cringing but excited Mitt Romney). Most of the men featured in these shows are simply foils for these women who seem to feel some entitlement to use and discard them for the privilege of being near them. And their relationship with other women is not much better. Lots of people must be watching a lot of this awful stuff because there is an awful lot of it on TV.

Perhaps this books popularity is because women are feeling this is an impossibly exhausting erotic ideal to achieve or maintain. Or maybe 50 Shades just presents another way to be someone's obsessive object and ultimately control them in the end. (Topping from the bottom). Both extremes seem deeply cynical and demeaning toward women and men.