The Christian Grey Phenomenon

Alert--For those of you who have the ear of teenagers who are about to enter their senior year of high school and plan to attend college: the acceptance of college applications begins on August 1 for most schools. It has become a big deal because in a lot of desirable schools, the application process is no longer just something that reflects the student's abilities, but a race. Texas Christian University had enough applications to fill their class on August 31, 2010, only 31 days into the process. I highly recommend that if the teenager you know is not clear about where they want to go, they need to get onto collegeboard.org to start their search. Apply to no less than six schools and go visit the campuses as soon as possible.

Warning: this piece is not appropriate for a Sunday morning, anyone under the age of 21...or my dad

          A very good friend asked if I had read the Fifty Shades of Grey series. Honestly, because I was now seeing it in the middle of the grocery store aisle, I had purchased the first one, but had not made it very far into the story. 

            “You HAVE to read it.  It made me absolutely crazy,” she confessed. “I had extremely vivid dreams all night long. I couldn’t sleep!” she gushed. She was one of about ten friends who were raving about it.

            “Why would you lie wriggling in your bed when you have a perfectly good husband lying right there beside you?” I asked her.

            “I can’t do that! He’d think I was nuts! Plus, he can’t do what Christian Grey can do. I'd rather just dream about a kitchen pass for him.”

            The one relationship where love is supposed to encourage and allow all truth and you are not going to share with him? The fantasy is always better than reality, however, we too often let the fantasy hinder movement forward.

                        I apologize, but I must to do this first. In my mind, there are two kinds of fiction, authentic and manipulative. Authentic fiction builds a moving story around a moral and illustrates a clear theme—I would highly recommend the fabulous examples of The Elegance of the Hedgehog or The Poisionwood Bible. Manipulative fiction has little depth, but manipulatively plays on the psychology of the reader—examples are any “chick lit” or romance novel.

The story of Christian Grey and Ana Steel is the exploitation of any teenage girl’s daydream that she is so special and so beautiful and so desirable that she inspires the unattainable bad boy to become husband material. Do not get me wrong, the book is being marketed to thirty-somethings, but the author is writing to the sixteen-year-old in all of us. The idea of being dominated releases the societal binding of “appropriate good girl behavior” to awaken the subdued carnality in us all. The manipulative brilliance of the author in using the name Christian  and making Ana a virgin invites the normally pious to read on. This series is Beauty and the Beast, Twilight, The Thorn Birds, and Gone With the Wind, only with graphic sex. The fact that the author made the main female character an English major and used a thesaurus sporadically does not make it well-written.

However…women, especially tired mamas after a long day, can have the tendency toward being slow to warm up to their husbands. Could it be that it is not the exhaustion of the day, but the years of stifling her own desire to adhere to the wifely image that curbs her enthusiasm? Did I say that nicely? For generations, society dictated its Victorian era view of sex onto the impressionable minds of its teenage girls, suppressing their innate desires by making them think that sexual desire is “bad”. What?  They are all having sex! The STD rate is skyrocketing! True, but that has everything to do with the way we were raised and the way we are raising our girls to think about sexual desire. The discomfort of the subject for the mamas casts it into the shadows, allowing us and our girls to remain silent with each other about the topic. Without understanding or knowledge, young girls in search of understanding to the awakenings in their bodies, respond to the boys’ lead, in hopes that they know what they are doing. Perhaps our girls would wait to experience sex in a healthier environment if they were encouraged to be the one to lead their partner in what is enjoyable for them. Clearly, males are not as complex as females. Most likely, they would appreciate the direction.

Perhaps the first step in changing the taboo of discussing female desire is for mamas to embrace their own. As noted, I cannot recommend the Grey books on their literary merit, but if a mama desires certain aspects of the sexual relationship Christian Grey provides, she should not wonder who will be cast as the character for the movie and keep her daydreams to herself.  A good place to start would be reading enticing sections of the book aloud to her husband. After his jaw hits the floor, it may be just the key he has been searching for all along.

          I hope you are enjoying reading the Mama Bubble pieces as much as I am enjoying writing them.  I am headed off to the wonderful world of minimal Internet access until August 6.