Fifty Shades of Grey

Or as I like to call it… Fifty Spanks a day, oh Yay!

If you haven’t heard of Fifty Shades of Grey yet, you either live under a small rock in Outer Mongolia or are in some kind of parallel universe with no access to television, radio, newspapers or any other media source.

Fifty Shades of grey is the phenomenally successful erotic novel written by E L James, the first of a trilogy. It is the story of virginal college graduate Anastasia, falling for, and being seduced by the devastatingly handsome young billionaire businessman, Christian Grey. Yawn… so another classic boy meets girl chick lit novel yes? Well… cough… no! This is chick lit with a twist. An erotic Mills and Boon if you will. The “twist” is what has caught the publics’ (okay, womens’) eye and has made the book the fastest selling novel of all time! One of the themes is BDSM, probably ones of the most googled acronyms of all time too. BDSM stands for Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, and Sadomasochism. Oooh. Right. Okay. Not quite the average romance novel then.

I had thought I wouldn’t succumb to the hype… that the badly written and cringingly clichéd prose would put me off, but when the book became the dominant topic of conversation at every social event for the last two weeks, I began to waver. The final straw was when several of my more literary friends whispered to me, “Have you read it yet?” as if they couldn’t mention the title out loud. So I indulged… purely for reference you understand.

I remember at school, certain naughty books being passed around, the corners of pages turned down, marking the steamy bits. For a 16 year old, Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper were terribly risqué. I still blush at the thought of one scene in the book Lace, involving an Arab Prince and a goldfish! Fifty Shades of Grey is the same… it’s unbelievable success is simply down to word of mouth.

The evolution of the book is almost as extraordinary as its content. E L James, real name Erika Leanard, is a middle aged, middle class TV executive and mother of two, happily married and living in West London. She was a huge fan of the Twilight series (quite a disturbing fact in itself) and wrote a story called Masters of the Universe and posted it on a Twilight fan-fiction website. She named her characters Bella and Edward after the main characters in the Vampire series but was asked to remove the story after fans complained of the explicit sexual content! So then she decided to publish it on her own website. She reworked it, changed the characters, extended it and re-titled the now 3-part story as Fifty Shades of Grey. A virtual publisher in Australia picked it up and released it as an e-book. Word of mouth and a few blogs later and Fifty Shades of Grey exploded onto the marketplace. Because of its controversial sex scenes, it was the perfect partner for the discreet nature of e-readers and Kindles. I know I know… I was only saying how awful Kindles were a few moths ago and that they were killing the written book but now I see their uses… its perversity in private. It’s sex on the tube at 8am… one way to make your commute to work a little more exciting!

So the book went viral and once something has done that, everyone wants a piece of it. It was picked up by Vintage publishers in April this year and the book was printed… as a book, with pages, made of paper.

That was when I really became aware of it. I was reading a magazine, drinking a cup of tea and half-watching Newsnight on BBC2 on April 19th. I remember the date so vividly because of what I heard the presenter say. I was waiting for the serious news stories of the day to be discussed when he said “now some of this we can’t read out on Newsnight, even at this late hour, but there is mention of anal intercourse, genital clamps and whipping…” . I coughed up my tea, snapped my head up and stared open mouthed at the television screen for the next two minutes. Oh My God. The poor man squirmed like an uncomfortable schoolboy as he interviewed E L James about the book and asked her about some of the more deviant sexual acts. As he read out the list, I cringed in hopeless empathetic embarrassment for the man as E L James tried to hide the smirk on her face. It really was one of the funniest and most uncomfortable moments I’ve ever seen on television.

E L James though, came across as very likable, normal and quite stunned by all the attention. She had no idea as to why it had become so successful. Then she looked the presenter in the eye and said “well, I suppose it’s a love story at the heart of it and the character Grey is rich, good looking and knows what to do in bed.”  She paused, smiled and said, “which all women like”.

But erotic fiction is nothing new…, yes, since the Twilight stories there has been a huge increase in what is called Paranormal Erotica which covers everything from bloodsucking Vampires and deviant Pixies to bonking Trolls (believe me, I did my research!) The scary thing is the statistics. Fifty Shades of Grey has sold almost 30 million copies and is topping the bestseller chart in 37 countries. E L Grey is estimated to be earning 1.3 million dollars a week with current sales. She has already sold the movie right for 5 million dollars and has stars queuing round the block to star in it and amazing writers lining up to write the screenplay. Blimey! No wonder she’s gobsmacked.

So although erotic fiction has been around since writing began, it has never been quite this successful. I was stunned though (again, all in the name of research) at how popular erotica was in history and read by huge numbers. The Kama Sutra was written around 400BC and is still one of the most read or looked at pieces of fiction! Much later, Nobleman Goivanni Boccaccio wrote one of the first erotic short stories in 1353 about lecherous monks and seductive nuns! It was a huge hit. Then came the Tale of Two Lovers in 1444 written by Piccolomini, who later become Pope Pius II. It was the bestselling novel of the 15th Century. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary about the erotic fiction he was reading in 1660. Fanny Hill, written in 1748 by John Cleland, set a new standard in literary smut, the full length novel! And so it goes on… although we can’t forget the man who was so infamous for his depraved writing and cruel sexual exploitations, that the actual word Sadism is named after him. The Marquis de Sade, the French aristocrat with a penchant for deviant behaviour and the man who wrote so lucidly of his exploits that he was imprisoned.

We have always had it but it has never been considered mainstream and that’s where Fifty Shades of Grey breaks the mould. BDSM or any other kind of fetish has always been talked about in hushed tones, practiced in bedrooms, basements or secret London clubs. It is private and considered a sort of sub culture. Many people do it but it’s still a sort of secret society. Everyone loves reading about naughty politicians, photographed in bondage gear. We are titillated by it... giggling like children! But God forbid we do it ourselves… doesn’t that mean we are perverts? E L James has brought the private to the public, the deviant to the normal…. And it seems now, that everyone is willing to give it a go, experiment a little more at home. Husbands are writing to E L James’ website in their droves, thanking her for spicing up their sex lives. Sales of handcuffs and bondage paraphernalia have increased so much that some on-line sex shops sites have crashed.

Of course it’s still secret, ordered anonymously, read quietly on Kindles, or at home after the kids are in bed. Apart from me it seems. I bought the book yesterday morning and started reading it on the tube on my way to work. I felt about 20 pairs of eyes on me. Amused glances from women who have either read it or are about to do so; smirks and knowing looks from men who have either read it or has a wife or girlfriend that has.

They may be the ones with smiles on their faces or they may be simply grimacing with pain at having been strung up overnight in a pair of nipple clamps!