Stop telling me what not to read

EL James is a fucking genius. Don't like her writing? Don't read it. But give her the credit for producing a vastly popular money making product and turning self-published fanfic that would otherwise sit in obscurity in some corner of the interwebs, next to Buffy sequels and Sulu/Kirk slashfic. They're in the early stages of planning a film that will probably also make a lot of money. She took Twilight and produced something for the early Twilight fans who grew up. Genius!

Fifty Shades is criticized for being nothing more than a romance novel with slightly kinkier sex. Guess what? Romantic fiction is a billion-dollar industry. It outsells every other category.

People don't like the characters. Ana is naive and Christian is abusive. Blah blah blah. Sometimes, in books, there are characters we don't like. Somewhere in junior high I learned the basic rules of writing fiction. The characters need to develop and change. These characters do. The kinky sex? Actually manages to advance character development (most of the time) and drive the plot forward (more on plot later). It actually takes a pretty decent writer to use a sex scene to advance plot and character, and James does it multiple times.

What I actually think is happening when certain critics put down the books and the characters is some pretty judgmental bullying tactics. Yes, bullying. I've read some rather virulent anti-Fifty Shades reviews. They claims the books are misogynistic and anti-feminist. They usually rail on and on about Ana and how she's a terrible example of a woman in an abusive, co-dependent relationship. Mostly they complain that she is naive and stupid. Here's what's wrong with that:

Ana is 21. The books are written in the first person present tense. We are reading them from the point of view if a chick in her early 20s who was an English major who focused on classic British lit. Guess what! I was an English major. At 21, I was pretty fucking naive. It was a different kind of naive than Ana, but still pretty naive. I knew Anas. I still know some. I know some who are older than me now. They don't deserve hatred and derision for their naïveté. Usually they're quite content in their naïveté. And there's nothing wrong with that. My favourite really stupid Ana mistake? I probably would have made the same mistake at her age. Brand new on the job, she sends a bunch of deeply personal emails to her boyfriend on her work email. That's just dumb. You don't do that. She is warned not to and she keeps doing it. Then she gets caught. Duh.

Look, I was bullied in school. Girl bullying. What was I made fun of for? Lots of things, but my choice in books, movies and music were targets. So I am the last person to rail against someone for her choice in reading material, or rail against a character for her life choices. Tease? Sure. I will tease Dr. Who fan geeks because ther enthusiasm is cute and endearing. I've tried Dr. Who. I don't like it. I don't really "get" it. But I don't dismiss the entire scifi genre because I don't like it. I also don't like (most) fantasy. That's also securely in the realm of geeks and nerds and their ilk. All those imaginary creatures and invented languages and an entire mythology... that's a lot of creativity and passion there. I just don't like it. I don't dismiss fantasy fans as unrealistic heathens unable to connect with the real world, or some crap like that. So why is it okay to dismiss romance fans, and thus fans of Fifty Shades, as weak, misogynistic anti-feminists because their version of a fantasy escape is different from someone else's? This has happened my entire life. Hell, my mother dismissed my enjoyment of Little House on the Prairie as a child because it depicted, apparently, unrealistic idealized family life and would give me unrealistic expectations of my future spouse. That's fucked up thinking, and I knew it was fucked up thinking at the time. Guess what? I still love Little House, and I've long since given up on my husband ever being as handy as Charles Ingalls. I still love him, too.

I'm sick of being told what I should and shouldn't read/watch/listen to. It's one of my insecurities now, telling people what sort of entertainment I should enjoy. Because you can say "I like scifi" or "I like comic books" and no one bats an eye. Try telling a group of your peers you like romance novels. Go ahead. So you can tell me not to read Fifty Shades because it alters and lowers God's standards of marriage and sex (and 49 other reasons Christian women shouldn't read it, my favorite being #8). Or I shouldn't read it because "It’s dangerous because it tells women, possibly young, innocent women who are just like Ana, that it’s okay for a man to treat you like garbage." I shouldn't read it because it's considered nothing more than "mommy porn" (how fucking patronizing is that?) and it sets feminism back decades. Half the time it's the audience - "housewives and mommies" - being attacked, not the content. Seriously?

What's wrong with the book? Plenty! Horribly repetitive phrasing and vocabulary. I don't care about all the "oh mys" and "holy craps" and "whoas". That's the character's internal dialogue and that's her voice. I did get sick of Fifty, hair ties, subconscious and inner goddess. The sex got old by the third book and I skipped most of the scenes.

And the plot! The first book was my favourite partly because it had the most realistic plot. The story was character driven and the conflict was internal. In the second book, there was a lot of internal conflict, but the climax involved an external force. That external force still drove character development, though, so it was bearable. The third book? The plot was contrived, boring, predictable, and really, really old. The villain was one-note and predictable. The ending was predictable.

There are tons of red Sharpie moments you can attribute to a bad (or lazy) editor. EL James is British. There are a whole bunch of Britishisms spattered through the book that any decent editor could have easily changed, a well as a basic error of geography (you don't go to Seattle from Vancouver WA by first going through Portland!).  And let's talk about a basic error of human anatomy repeated by many MANY romance novelists, or really any author depicting a girl's cherry getting popped. Your hymen is located at the entrance of your vagina, not deep inside. The level of pain a girl can feel on its breakage can depend on a great many things, like whether or not she's used tampons, ridden a bike, or ridden a horse. I'm pretty sure I broke mine falling on the seat of my bike in grade 6.

Then there was just some inappropriate grossness that didn't belong, like suggesting a fetus liked sex already because it moved during intercourse (it moved because its safe little nest was jostled, and because an orgasm is basically a contraction). I was also disturbed by a scene at the end involving a small child eating a Popsicle, when it had previously been used as a sexual safe word and, prior to that, referenced as a euphemism for a penis during oral sex. Another red Sharpie moment - my iPhone autocorrect knows that Popsicle is a brand name and should thus be capitalized, but apparently neither EL James nor her editor were aware of that. They need only refer to the fine print at the bottom of the Popsicle website: "POPSICLE® is a registered trademark of Unilever and is NOT a name for just any frozen pop on a stick"!

So dislike Fifty Shades because you dislike the romance genre. Dislike it for bad editing, repetitive phrasing, and contrived plots. Dislike it because you prefer a different depiction of relationships. But don't dislike it because it's not the book you expected or wanted it be. Certainly don't dislike it because you have rather elitist and presumptuous opinions against the sort of people who read and enjoy it. Because really? Get over yourself. I like that. I was an English major with a pretty damn decent gpa who also took a bunch of Women's Studies and Women's History courses who wrote for the campus feminist newspaper. I. Still. Like. It.