50 Shades: The Why and the How

 

Have I mentioned before (I think I have) that I am pretty much incapable of being *chill* about anything? Therefore, it wasn’t enough for me to read Fifty Shades, fixate on it, and write a post. No, I had to get an outside perspective. I had my own theories, but what, pray tell, does google scholar have to say about the meteoric rise of EL James masterpiece? As it turns out, quite a lot. (Picture this; I printed out 10 scholarly articles, un-numbered, and kept them in my bag without stapling them together or even putting them in a folder. Chaos, as you can imagine, ensued.)

This post is going to be some perspectives of the two plaguing questions I had after reading Fifty Shades of Grey; why, and how. Why did this book become so popular? How? There are other ideas in the research I found fascinating but not particularly useful, and I’m saving them for an “extras” post hopefully coming out next week. So, without further ado, let's dive in.

Let’s set the stage. How do we know what behavior is normal? This might seem like a 180 turn, but stick with me. I’m doing something here, promise.Typically, we see other people exhibit that behavior. Take eating for instance. There’s no biological reason for what and how much any one person eats for breakfast. It’s decided culturally, and we learn based on what we see other do. (Shakshuka is a delicious meal, but it makes no sense to me as a breakfast, though that is how it is eaten in the Middle East. Breakfast, for me, is an egg or two, a carb, and some fruit. Cooked eggs on tomatoes is wonderful, but as dinner or lunch! This is an example of a cultural divide.) We see the people around us eat, and that teaches us what is normal. 

And just like eating, sex is a constant, almost intrinsic part of human life. But we don’t see the people around us having sex. We don’t even see them leaving to have sex and then coming back some amount of time later. How long it should last, what it should look like, what kind of people should be involved– we grow up without a roadmap for this. This is especially true in America, where sex education is lacking. 

So, most people in America have no objective view about what their sex lives should look like. The culture has become more liberal, more sex-positive, where people talk to each other about their sex lives, but these are second hand accounts. They are deeply unobjective. Imagine if the only thing your friends knew about what you ate was what you told them. (“Oh no, I only ever eat one slice of pizza, and only after I’ve had salad. I usually skip breakfast too!”) 

To summarize, we don’t see the people around us having sex. We don’t learn about sex in schools. We hear the people around us talk about sex, but they have every incentive not to be truthful. That leaves us with only one main avenue to see and learn about sex firsthand: pornography. 

This is a deeply flawed system. Pornography is not realistic; it is fantasy. Typically, a male fantasy. Women looking at pornography in its various forms will rarely see their body types, or their perspectives on sex portrayed.

As Carey Noland via “Communication and Sexual Self-help: Erotica, Kink, and the Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomenon” explains, many of us learn something called “sexual scripts” from pornography, “Wright’s (2011) sexual script acquisition, activation, application model of sexual media socialization (3AM) explores how viewing pornography can result in the learning of new sexual scripts (sexual script acquisition), the priming of previously acquired sexual scripts (sexual script activation) and make judgements about others’ sexual behaviors (Wright 2011). In sum, pornography provides users with cures regarding sexual norms, desires, and appropriate behaviors by ‘depicting certain sexual relationships and acts at varying frequencies’ (Wright, 2018, 2).” This shows how the line between “fantasy” and “reality” becomes blurred– we learn from pornography as if it was a realistic depiction of a healthy sex life. This has its problems– many young men need to “touch grass” as far as what they expect women to look like and the frequency they expect to find new sexual partners. But many women are against the viewing of visual porn. This can be for their own moral reasons, are because it feels socially unacceptable. Either way, this leaves many women not only without tool of arousal, but without a source of basic information about sex. And so, these women turn to Fifty Shades. 

The main demographic of Fifty Shades is white, straight, partnered women. Some of these women are mothers, earning the series the titles of “mommy porn.” The cultural expectation of the sex life of a woman within this demographic is something close to, but not quite abstinence. She is certainly not seen as a sexual creature. When there is sexual engagement between her and her male partner, it is at his instigation, not particularly kinky, and primarily for his pleasure. Fifty Shades offers another perspective. As Sarah Upstone points out in “Beyond the Bedroom; Motherhood in E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy,” Ana is motherly in every sense, even before she actually has children. She is kind, caring, fixes and nurtures Christians broken inner child, and at the start of the series, completely virginal. She is allowed to retain her goodness and have a fulfilling, non-vanilla sex life focused on her pleasure as well as Christian’s. 

Fifty Shades was at the time the books came out one of the only socially acceptable avenues for pornography for women. There is a market for women's arousal, and Fifty Shades was the only one selling. It offers sexual scripts in which women can be good wives and mothers while also being sexually fulfilled.

But the 3AM theory gives way to another question: a question of impact. As the theory stands, the “scripts” laid out in the sex scenes in Fifty Shades have a real impact. Whether the reader knows it or not, the book does more than arouse. It teaches what is normal. This is concerning if you remember that the relationship between Ana and Christian is abusive. However, that abuse has to do with the relationship dynamic outside of the bedroom, the fact that Christian never gives up his total control over Ana, and seeks to run every facet of her life despite her protests. This begs the question of what kind of rhetoric the book teaches when actually engaging in sexual activity. 

In “Fifty Shades of Sexual Health and BDSM Identity Messaging: A Thematic Analysis of the Fifty Shades Series” Christine E. Leistner and Kristen P. Mark conduct an in-depth text analysis which analyzes different aspects of sexual engagement and puts percentages to them. This includes sexual scenes from all three books, generalized sexual health messages, and BDSM specific messages. For the purpose of this post, we will focus on sexual scenes.

Through Leistner and Mark’s analysis, we know that consent was explicit 72.7% of the time, implicit 18.2% of the time, blurred 4.5% of the time, and coerced 2.3% of the time. In some ways, around 70% of the sex including spoken consent teaches a positive sexual script. On the other hand, a fantasy sex life including 4.5% blurred consent and 2.3% coerced is very troubling. 

Leistner and Mark track other metrics, such as Ana and Christian’s motivation for having sex. The goals present in Fifty Shades include expressing love, trying something new, intimacy, emotional connection, sexual pleasure, sexual desire, and orgasm. These are all good reasons to consent to sex. However, sometimes consent was given with other motivation in mind, specifically a “sexual avoidance goal.” According to the article, “A sexual avoidance goal occurs when a person engages in sexual activity to prevent a negative consequence such as upsetting or disappointing a partner, feeling guilty, or experiencing relationship conflict. (Muise et al. 2013).” This is a fascinating idea, and relevant in the world of Fifty Shades. We see instances of this from Ana’s perspective, as the books are told from her point of view. She will think to herself “this is it, our relationship hangs in the balance of whether I say yes to this” and she’ll consent, but for a sexual avoidance goal, not based on her own pleasure or desire, or wanting to get closer to Christian. 

I would argue that this idea of a sexual avoidance goal complicates some or all of the readily given consent present in the series, as in some ways the entire relationship from Ana’s side is based on a sexual avoidance goal. Christian is the only man Ana has ever been interested in, and he makes it very clear that the only way they can be together is through BDSM. Though Ana agrees, it is clear she dislikes the idea of being punished, and many times shares her fear/ distaste with the practice, both internally and aloud. She later comes to find enjoyment and pleasure in her sexual relationship with Christian, but the initial “yes” is based not on interest in the sex but in fear of losing Christian. Take this excerpt from the first book as an example:

I blanch. 

“We can work up to that.”

        “Or not do it at all,” I whisper.

“This is part of the deal, baby, but we’ll work up to all of this.

         Anastasia, I won’t push you too far.” 

This is one of the scenes (of many) where Christian and Ana are negotiating the rules for their contract. On one hand, negotiating the terms in a sexual contract is radically consensual. On the other hand, a large majority of the first book is Ana stating her wariness or fear and Christian convincing her. 

But still, the books came out in 2011, not 2025, and they were so popular that some of our conversation around consent may very well come from the sexual scripts the book teaches. This leaves a complicated legacy, which could be summed as the books taking us farther in a popular conversation about consent and women’s pleasure, yet not nearly far enough. Here’s what the article concludes: “Results from the present analysis indicate that the Fifty Shades series includes many sexual health messages that impact sexual relationships in positive ways, however the books also incorporate a variety of negative messages about gender roles, consent, sexual motivation norms, or sexual identity power dynamics and stigma.”

But here, I am moving away from the point. In this post, I am seeking to answer the question of what it is the books offer to women– not the effect the books have. (That will come later). 

One theory as to why the books became so popular is that they function as self help. Noland argues that self help becomes popular in times of global distress, as people turn to fixing themselves to explain a lack of happiness or fulfillment. States Noland, “Self-actualization, clean eating, healthy living, personal productivity, and forming and maintaining loving close relationships as preached in self-help is the insistence that we can achieve a meaningful existence by maintaining a positive outlook, being mindful, communicating successfully, and changing ourselves (via self-help guidance) despite real, existent barriers.” This would certainly explain why, in the midst of a global pandemic and extreme political turbulence, I was so sure I was unhappy because I wasn’t waking up at 5am, and tried (and failed) to replicate so many early morning routines from YouTube. As this theory relates to Fifty Shades, there are many reasons why a white woman in a straight relationship with children could find her relationship lacking or unsatisfying. The expectation of her to give everything to her family, to be motherly and caring to both her children and her partner, to fulfill the duties of a housewife while still maintaining a career, may leave her feeling unfulfilled. On the sexual level, we can again turn to the lack of sexual education and the social expectations we use to guide us– what are the chances her partner (a man) hasn’t been taught to care for her pleasure, and she hasn’t been taught to communicate or advocate for it? Fifty Shades, flawed as it is, offers a perspective in which women talk about what they like, and are listened to instead of judged, even if their taste skews towards the taboo. 

In this way, Fifty Shades offers a way for women to re-invigorate their sex lives without looking to cultural or systemic causes they may feel unsatisfied. The article points out ways in which the sex scenes in Fifty Shades have a repetitive pattern of communication and follow what one might find in a sex-help manual almost word for word.

Fifty Shades Darker: He sits up again and trails a spoonful of ice cream down the center of my body, across my stomach, and into my navel … He kisses each of my breasts and sucks each of my nipples hard, then follows the line of ice cream down my body, sucking and licking as he goes. (78)

The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: Folks are endlessly creative about what they like to lick off another’s body, you can turn yourself into an icecream sundae…(379). Experiment with sucking, licking, and blowing on the nipples…Women’s breasts are very responsive to stimulation. (377)

This leads Noland to the conclusion that “The sex scenes in FS are meant to both arouse and instruct readers on how to be more effective and creative lovers.” There are two reasons sexual self-help may be enticing to readers. One, it allows women to take control of their love lives-- whether they are the dominant or the submissive, it is them breaching this topic with their male partners, taking on the role of Christian in a sense, as the instigator. This also plays into the idea of women and wives as responsible for the kind of sex they are having-- it places the blame at their door for a lack of sexual fulfillment, not their partners or other societal pressures.

There is one more theory, or possible answer to this question, that I think is worth diving into; erotic ambivalence. I found this idea through a study that surveyed actual readers of the book to see their ideas about various aspects of the series. D. V. Reyes et al. in “White Women and Latina Readers’ Ambivalence Towards Fifty Shades of Grey” surveyed readers of various races and sexualities. The respondents were asked various questions about Fifty Shades, such as why they chose to read it and their judgement of different aspects of the plot. Though the researchers drew conclusions surrounding race, I will be looking at the survey responses without this lens. 

The study identified three main reactions readers had to the series, “categorization of the relationship as abusive, an appreciation for the power of the woman protagonist to change her lover for the “better,” and a focus on the gendered inequities in the romantic relationship yet simultaneously feeling aroused by the sexual content. In theorizing the third reaction, we introduce the concept of erotic ambivalence to explain how even as some women seek to escape into the world of the erotic, they must often balance this desire within the gendered inequalities featured in storylines.” The first reaction, that the relationship is abusive, mirrored mine. The second, I identified in my first post as the “I can fix him no really I can fantasy,” that it is nice to believe, in the context of a book, that you can love a man enough that he will no longer hurt you. The third has to do with the idea that Fifty Shades is, for many women, the only option. So, when they engage with the material, they are doing the emotional labor of feeling bad for Ana and the positions Christian puts her in, while also being aroused. 

One survey responder stated “From an erotic standpoint, it was good to read. From a character standpoint, I got annoyed by Anastasia’s willingness to be continually helpless.” This is one of multiple examples of responders who enjoyed the sex while disliking almost every other aspect of the book. The authors of the article pointed out, “Even while consuming a novel created for the pleasure of women, some women vacillated between being appalled or disturbed by the abuse depicted, disenchanted with the characters’ interactions, unimpressed by the quality of writing, while simultaneously seeking arousal.” This is an important distinction because so much of the media around the book and its readers treats the women who engage with the material as stupid. The books are poorly written, that is a fact. But it is incorrect to assume that the women who read the books are uncritical of them, are unaware of the fact that the books aren’t well written, or that the relationship portrayed is deeply problematic. When looking at a book like Fifty Shades and being so baffled by its popularity, it is important to look deeper. So my conclusion, as always, is that women are not stupid. 

TLDR? Why and how is Fifty Shades so popular?

-It acts as education, teaching sexual scripts

-It functions as sexual self-help

-Some women engage with it while also being aware of its deficits (erotic ambivalence)

-There is an overall lack of other socially acceptable options for the target demographic

I hope this was as clarifying for you as it was for me!

Pure

Citations:

Leistner, C. E., & Mark, K. P. (2016). Fifty shades of sexual health and BDSM identity messaging: A thematic analysis of the Fifty shades series. Sexuality & Culture, 20(3), 464–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9337-2

Noland, C. (2020). Communication and sexual self-help: Erotica, Kink and the fifty shades of grey phenomenon. Sexuality & Culture, 24(5), 1457–1479. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09701-z

Reyes, D. V., Speer, A. C., & Denes, A. (2021). White women and latina readers’ ambivalence toward fifty shades of Grey. Sexuality & Culture, 25(3), 852–870. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09797-3

Upstone, S. (2016). Beyond the bedroom: Motherhood in E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of grey trilogy. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 37(2), 138–164. https://doi.org/10.1353/fro.2016.a625087