Why We Love “50 Shades of Grey”

You know the book. The one you can’t put down, the one you ignore your husband and neglect your kids for. You can’t get enough, you’ve read it more than once, and you could read it again and again. Well, for millions of Americans, right now that book is “50 Shades of Grey” by the author E.L James. The book centers around Anastasia Steele, an innocent, if naive young woman, and her budding relationship with millionaire entrepreneur Christian Grey. The first book starts out inconspicuously enough, following Anastasia as she does her roommate a favor by interviewing Christian for their student newspaper. The interview goes horribly wrong, and, in most cases, they would never see each other again. But, we can tell, Mr. Grey is intrigued by young Ms. Steele, and it is not, in fact, the last time they see each other. That’s when the story takes an inevitable, steamy turn.

Mr. Grey shows up at Ms. Steele’s work to see her, and it’s all over. She’s in love. As are us readers. After a little while we find out that Mr. Grey has some serious issues (putting it mildly), but we can’t get enough of him. What is it? He describes himself as 50 shaded of messed up, he doesn’t want her to touch him, and he’s controlling and protective at the same time. He’s pretty much every woman’s dream come true, isn’t he? Don’t we all want someone we can “save”? Someone who will change their entire lifestyle around in a week just for us? He’s attractive, rich, and a little bit older. I mean, come on, it’s almost textbook. I myself am reading these books for the second time now, and I will read them again in the future. The sex scenes are steamy, and satisfying, the book being dubbed “mommy porn”. But, I think the part that is the mommy porn is the love story. It is an intense love, something most of us are missing in our every day lives. A love that goes down in history. The one we all want for ourselves, when life gets monotonous, driving the kids around, coming home to cook dinner, do laundry, get the kids to bed, try to be a wife, we get to lose ourselves in the fantasy of being swept off our feet by this horribly attractive, wanting to be saved by us man. In real life it would never work. The deep psychological issues of this man would never go away after a few weeks of hot sex and falling in love. But, for those of us that have gotten caught up in this fantasy, we can dream, can’t we?