I made and ate barbecue chicken for supper. As I write this, several hours have passed since supper. Yet, I am not a chicken, barbecue or otherwise.
It's been cooking show reality TV night at my house which is a family event. We all watch Hell's Kitchen and my kids and I watch Master Chef. Yeah, verily, chefs aplenty have paraded across my TV screen. I've watched them and enjoyed all of Gordon Ramsay's antics. Yet, anyone who has ever eaten my cooking will tell you that I'm no chef, certainly not of the master variety.
Presently I'm reading Brenda Novak's historical romance boxed set. It contains 2 books: "Of Noble Birth" and "Honor Bound." I'm reading the 1st One - "Of Noble Birth." It's about a son who should be heir to a dukedom who was rejected at birth because he was born with a birth defect - a deformed arm. The son becomes a pirate and he's just abducted a seamstress whom he believes to be his half-sister. (She's not of course.) Yes, I'm reading it and I'm enjoying it but you know what? I'm not a seamstress, heir to a dukedom or a pirate. Go figure.
What's even more amazing is that the book I finished right before I started Brenda's excellent boxed set was "Fifty Shades of Grey" - the whole trilogy. Despite that, my hubby is not in the back building a red room of pain. I haven't turned into a submissive who wants to be beaten. Maybe there's something wrong with me? I mean, I read the book and I enjoyed the book so by some theories recently espoused by arch-feminists - I should be picking out handcuffs and matching riding crops by now.
That's the theme of a recent piece I read in the UK Independent, entitled "Do Women Really Want To Be So Submissive" by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. The publication is from the home country of Erika Leonard a/k/a EL James, the author of "Fifty Shades." Ms. Brown thinks that in creating the book Ms. Leonard "has cannily exploited "post-feminist" confusion and sexual restiveness in a period of plenty."
Ms. Brown calls the "Fifty Shades" narrative "so corny you couldn't caricature it" and she describes the S&M parts as "grubby and foul." She doesn't describe the "vanilla" sex that occurred more often than the S&M stuff, mainly, I suppose, because it wouldn't support her condemnation of the work. And boy, howdy, does Ms. Brown condemn the work. She says:
James has sheathed hard porn in a soft summer wrap, sold fantasies of sexual subjugation to vacuous yummie mummies and middle-class female singletons who are clueless about its implications. Living comfortable lives, they must pursue vicarious excitement by reading about pain, and playing at it in their bedrooms. Sales of bondage equipment have shot up since the book came out.
Ms. Brown says consideration of the book's impact is justified because "the phenomenal spread of this bonk-buster takes it out of that intimate space and should make us think about the social and political landscape, the victories and failures of feminism, and the dissonance between female equality achieved and equality willingly surrendered by females."
Brown compares the success and impact of "Fifty Shades" with that of "The Story of O," an S&M book published in 1954. Brown thinks that "O" helped push back post-war feminists, motivating women to be happy to go back home full time to serve their men and suffer for love. But she argues that today is a very different era. Today, Brown says, women want "the same chances and successes" as men. But, she worries that "internal traumas and guilt, low self-esteem and inchoate fears still deny females real confidence and ease."
Brown quotes Katie Roiphe who "wonders why free will is such a burden for 21st-century women, why in some spheres they so readily surrender to macho power. Could it be that equality is too much responsibility, or even that its imperatives can be boring? Maybe."
Brown sees more troubling reasons for the success of "Fifty Shades of Grey." She says:
There are, I think, darker reasons. When young women become instinctively assertive and free of gender constrictions, their liberty threatens the "natural" order. So they have to be reminded of their place, taught they can never be good enough and must relearn submission.
I told y'all earlier that I read and enjoyed "Fifty Shades." I guess that makes me one of those middle-class females who is clueless about the vast implications of this book. Then again, unlike Ms. Brown, I actually read the entire trilogy. She's crying like Chicken Little based upon her reading of the first book.
Does Ms. Brown even know that (SPOILER ALERT) in Fifty Shades Ana never signed on to become Christian's submissive? It surely doesn't sound like she knows that it was Christian who signed onto Ana's sort of contract by marrying her. The whole trilogy was about Christian's need to control & hurt women and how his love for and committed marriage with Ana freed him from his old ways. For the love of all ducks, Christian is Fifty Shades and the last book is titled "Fifty Shades Freed."
The trilogy didn't catch the world's fancy because it was about S&M. It wasn't about S&M. It was about a sadist freed by love. That theme doesn't make Ms. Brown's point though, does it?
All the high-flying feminist rhetoric from Ms. Brown does is make women less likely to identify with feminism. Women have grown beyond their need for an "ism." And women today know that we can eat without becoming our food; we can watch TV without becoming our shows; and yes, we can read without becoming what we read. Our entertainment need not be measured by anyone's yardstick but our own.
Ladies who read "Fifty Shades" don't want to sign up to become anyone's submissive. In the end, the heroine of the trilogy changed the hero. The heroine didn't become a submissive - the hero became a man who didn't need to dominate anymore.
The biggest problem with Ms. Brown taking a politically correct feminist position about Fifty Shades, is that the women she's trying to convince know much more about the book than she does. Even if Ms. Brown had been right and the book tearing up all existing sales records was about S&M, women today are strong enough and smart enough to know that we don't get limited or defined by anything unless we allow it.
Fifty Shades fans aren't planning to become submissives who want others to plot our courses, define our limits or control our lives. Most of us just enjoyed reading a sexy story about the power of love. And just like we don't need our own "ism," we don't need anyone or any organization inane enough to think it can look down its haughty nose at "vacuous" middle class women.
Like "Fifty," we've been freed from the need for anyone's approval.