Seven Reasons Everyone Wants To See Lindsay Lohan As Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey

Over the last six or eight months, the ballyhoo over "Fifty Shades of Grey" the book has mostly quieted down. It's been replaced by ballyhoo over casting for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. In fact, the ballyhoo started off full steam last summer and has hardly lost a beat all the way the present.

I have studiously, perhaps stupidly, ignored these stories (except for my April Fools post) since it was all baseless speculation. You can tell it's baseless speculation because practically every actor and actress in the United States and Europe has been put forth as a likely lead for the movie.

But I have finally encountered a speculation I can't resist: this report that Lindsay Lohan may be, or perhaps should be, interested in being the female lead for Fifty Shades of Grey. And the reason I can't resist it is there are SO many reasons for wanting Lindsay Lohan to be the lead.

Seven Reasons Everyone Wants To See Lindsay Lohan As Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey

1) From the viewpoint of the producers, actors, etc., involved in the movie, if it's a bomb, they can just blame it on Lindsay. At this point, who wouldn't believe it?

2) With all the drugs she's done and all she's gone through, she's probably be willing to do ANY kind of scene, we're talking right up to and including a full double-dildo Savage Fold with flaming dachshunds and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

3) She's probably ENJOY doing such scenes, and her enjoyment would probably show through and make the role work for her.

4) Even if you don't think she's hot and you hate her for all the weird stuff she's done, you STILL might want to see her in handcuffs and a ballgag with a butt plug up her ass.

5) If you DO think she's hot, you ALSO might want to see her in handcuffs and a ballgag with a butt plug up her ass.

6) If you hated the book and hate the very IDEA of the movie, you might just want her in the lead in the hopes that she'd fuck the movie up royally with some stupid new antic. The insurance premiums alone ...

7) Americans love comeback stories, and dammit, a comeback story with Lindsay Lohan triumphing in a role that has her tied up and fucked senseless is JUST what this country needs, dammit!

Fifty Shades of Yoga

There's a fascinating Facebook page called 50 Shades of Yoga which makes an interesting connection between sexual bondage and yoga. Now let me start by making this very clear: I know very little about yoga, I'm not speaking as an expert on yoga.

Still, there's a certain superficial visual similarity between yoga and some of the more extreme bondage poses. The 50 Shades of Yoga page seeks to establish some greater similarity, but I'm not informed enough on the subject to make any judgements along those lines. Read the page and decide for yourself.

I found the 50 Shades of Yoga through a post on a the Elephant Journal blog that completely condemned it. The Elephant Journal post is by someone who teaches and practices yoga, and she's cheesed about it because she feels it's wrong to conflate bondage and yoga, or most forms of sexiness and yoga. She says, "This is the shit that makes men wiggle their eyebrows and make inappropriate comments and passes at me simply because I teach yoga. I’m a yoga teacher, not a whore."

I completely missed the meme about yoga instructors being whores, or whore-like. I had more a picture of them as spiritual, new-Agey, sometimes ditzy folks, generally focused on being healthy mentally and physically, in a sexy sort of way. Frankly, the contortions yoga practitioners go through look too difficult and uncomfortable to make me think of sex. (I honestly have the same problem with extreme bondage poses, they look so uncomfortable I have trouble thinking them sexy, even though the women are naked and tied up, though I realize that the women who are thusly bound are probably either flexible enough to handle them readily, or kind of enjoying the pain, or both).

Sure, the women who practice yoga are sexy and slinky and bendy and probably very good in bed, but it never struck me as what yoga is ABOUT, I mean, most forms of physical exercise and sports that women engage in make them slinky and sexy and are also venues for male fantasies, but that's not what they're ABOUT.

Still the visual similarity is intriguing, and fun to think about in an entirely salacious way. Check out the my post on this topic on my Politically Sexy blog for a thoroughly NSFW illustrated version.

Why Do the Bluenoses Rage?

"What, me, porn?"

Ran across a story about a schoolteacher who bought a student a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. A private school teacher named Roger Aidoo bought a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey for a 14 year old male student, who had requested the book as part of an extracurricular reading assignment.

The student's mother, Maya Ladson, did not think this was an appropriate thing for the teacher to do, and complained to the school about it. Fair enough, the school administrators hauled Aidoo in, gave him the third degree, and were apparently satisfied with his story that he was not all that familiar with the fact that Fifty Shades of Grey contained lots of explicit BDSMy sex.

Ladson, however, ain't buying it. She wants Aidoo fired. But the administrators, in a rare display of scholarly backbone, aren't firing him over the irate cries of one crazed bluenosed mom.

Here's my take on the story. Buying the kid a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey was a boneheaded move by the teacher. But it's not a firing offense. Hell, any kid with access to a computer can find porn that will make Fifty Shades of Grey look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. So the appropriate thing to do is to haul Aidoo in and tell him, "That was a really stupid thing to do, and if you do anything remotely like it in the future, we are going to fire you so hard and fast it will make you head spin. Now get out of here, you knucklehead."

The interesting thing is why Lawson's panties got totally bunched up over this. Bluenoses seem to get worked up over sex-related matters orders of magnitude more than regular people do. That's why they have so much influence, I suppose. I suspect that bluenoses are people who have attempted to repress their own sex drives in various ways, and every sexual thing that comes along is just a huge irritant to them, whereas it just does not bother the less sexually repressed. They're pains in the asses and generally useless, and it would be a shame if Mr. Aidoo lost his job because he irritated a bluenose. He would hardly be the first if he did, however.

Fork U: Cosmo's Horrible BDSM Sex Tips Inspired By Fifty Shades of Grey

As Midori and others have noted, Fifty Shades of Grey has been an overall good thing because it's allowed people to start talking in public about BDSM without the endless EEEEEWW bookending that once had to surround any commentary about BDSM in the mainstream media.

But this is not an unalloyed good thing. When the conversation opens up, everybody gets into it. At least now the conversation can be balanced between the knowledgeable and the not knowledgeable and not totally dominated by the witless old dinosaurs of media that once dominated the conversation. But now you'll get voices like your horny post college grad little sister who thinks she knows everything about sex and intimacy because shes' been on a few dates and fucked a few boys, but really doesn't know a hell of a lot, but that won't stop her from telling you how to do EVERYTHING sexual.

In the media, that would be Cosmopolitan magazine. So I was delighted when I found this hilarious, wonderfully snarky article on Nerve.com about 17 really stupid pieces of BDSM sex tips from Cosmo. I was chortling, guffawing and sniggering throughout. Check out tip number four if you don't believe me ... then go read the article.

4. "Press a fork (firmly, but don’t break the skin or anything) into different parts of his body — his butt cheeks, his pecs, his thighs."
This was clearly written at lunchtime, after a morning spent rummaging around the office for kinkspiration. Rejected options: "Hold a blueberry muffin in your fist and punch him in the mouth." "Pretend to be a naughty piece of printer paper and tell him to 'staple' you." "Act like a PDF and order him to 'fax me hard.' Make all relevant noises."
Incidentally, if the women who read Cosmo need to be cautioned against stabbing someone with a fork hard enough to break the skin, then their partners are going to need more than a safe word.

Captain Underpants Tops Fifty Shades of Grey

According to reports from the Associated Press, EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey ranked only number four on the American Library Association's "challenged books" list, i.e., their list of the books most frequently complained about by parents, educators and other bluenoses. Topping the list at number one is Dav Pilkey's "Captain Underpants" series of books, the adventures of a superhero toddler in a comic book created by two fourth graders, who accidentally becomes real (it's complicated).

The AP seems vaguely surprised that Captain Underpants topped Fifty Shades and all the others, but really, they should not have been. Have you ever SMELLED a toddler? Periodically, on the basis of smell alone, they can out-offend anything that is not either a skunk or dead, or a dead skunk. Fifty Shades never had a chance against THAT level of offensiveness. I totally sympathize with those who do not wish to be reminded of the sensitive issue of toddler stinkiness via a provocative title like "Captain Underpants."

My personal solution, however, is not to read such books. That's why I'm not a bluenose ... just a regular sort of nose that does not like the smell of toddlers.

Teagan Rand's Slave Harems of Xhagia Series Could Have Been The Natural Successor To Fifty Shades ... Except For All That Bukkake ...

Chained, collared and wearing a boustier ... soon to be a very sticky boustier! Image source: Cover of "A Slave Girl for the Emperor" the first book in the four-part Slave Harems of Xhagia series.

I am a sucker for combining fantasy/science fiction themes and bondage themes, let's just put that right out there. Anybody who has read almost all of the Gor novels can reasonably be suspected of being that.

THAT must be why I've read all four of Teagan Rand's “Slave Harems of Xhagia” books, because I DEFINITELY never intended to read all of them. I just planned to buy that first book and move on. Well to be honest, the REAL reason, and as an erotica writer I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but it's true and I gotta keep it real … I got hooked on the plot. Between an arresting and interesting plot, an intriguing universe and a smooth writing style that makes turning the pages very, very easy, I got hooked.

Set in the not too distant future, Slave of the Emperor and its successor books deals with the adventures of Christine Berenger, one of many women who have been kidnapped by slavers of a vast interstellar empire known as the Xhagian Empire, to serve as slavegirls in the harems and bordellos of Xhagia.

OK, I hear you already … I thought the same thing myself … “Another damn story of aliens who want our Earth women … what the hell … well it IS porn … er, erotica ...”

But here is where Teagan Rand proves she is made of better stuff than your average pornifier. Tuns out the Xhagians and humans are both descendents of an ancient race called the Valk who died out about 25 million years ago, and seeded the galaxy with a variety of humanoid races for some mysterious reason that's essential to the plot – and no, this review will not contain any spoilers, this is all established early on.

So the cross-species attraction is understandable, as is the fact that Xhagian males are taller, handsomer version of Earthmen … they're basically both subspecies of the Valk.

What's more, Valk males and Earth females find each other tremendously sexually attractive ... also for reasons that are essential to the plot.

This is what really made me sit up and take notice of Rand's books. Instead of using the science fiction background as the thinnest of tissues to hold together her story of the romance between Christine and the Xhagian slaver Dalgaz Tav, and all the hot slavegirl sex that she and the other slaves have with him and other handsome Xhagian men, Rand thought her background through in such a way that it's essential to and supports the story, making it stronger.

This is a good thing because although the "Slave in the..." series is FULL of submissive slavegirly goodness, and includes some bondage, its central fetish is, well ... bukkake. Bukkake is not a fetish I enjoy, nor is it ever likely to become one, I mean .... YECH! But it seems that the sperm of Xhagians has some property that renders Earth slaves orgasmicallly ecstatic for prolonged periods, and it only takes contact with the skin to make this orgasmy goodness manifest itself. And the Xhagian men produce lots and lots of sperm, much more than Earth men. They also have a very short refractive period and like to have sex a LOT.

Think of them as the the male equivalent of the big-breasted bimbos who want to have sex with everyone as soon as possible who show up in male porn. And the sperm of Xhagian men is so powerful and effective on human female psyches that its effects are ninety percent of what it takes to transform the captive Earth women into lust-bedazzled sex sluts, reduced to panting wanton slavegirls without much need for lashing or punitive treatment of any kind. It's all about the sperm, baby!

What's more, the Xhagian men find the Earth women VERY attractive, more attractive in fact than Xhagian females, who are only interested in sex when they are fertile and ready to conceive children. And instead of being jealous, the Xhagian women are pleased that the Earth women are keeping their men from being all sexually wound up when the Xhagian women are not interested in sex, which is basically, most of the time.

And of course, these books are essentially romances. Dalgaz Tav, the male lead, is that rarest of all creatures, a slaver with a heart of gold. He might be charged with picking out the prettiest Earth women kidnapped by Xhagian slavers for the Emperor's harem and transforming them into total hose beasts for use by the Emperor, but he CARES about those women, by gum. He and Christine soon develop strong feelings for one another, but can a romance between the top slaver in the Xhagian Empire and a lowly human slavegirl really work out? I'll never tell … read the books if you want to find out!

Keeping the Emperor's and others' harems and bordellos full is why the Xhagian slavers constantly raid Earth for women to stock their harems and bordellos, but it's germane to the plot in more than one way, for there is a mysterious relationship between Earth humans and Xhagians that plays out over the course of the four books in the series that is essential to the plot.

This is what really impresses me about Rand's writing. There are a lot of erotica writers who can write a convincing sex scene, but most miss out on the tremendous potential of science fiction and fantasy to make erotic stories more powerful and believable. She worked out the way the genetics and customs of the Xhagians and humans affect her characters and her story and makes it work FOR the story, sometimes in surprising ways. This is a hallmark of good science fiction and fantasy writing, when the writer does not use their fantastic or futuristic plot elements merely as props for the story but works out how they would affect their world.

Larry Niven is a great example of this. He predicted flash mobs before they happened, because he envisioned a society that had instant communications and instant transportation because they had teleporters, and he wondered how that would affect how ordinary people behaved. He decided they'd use them to form crowds out of nowhere just for fun and parties. And of course, flash mobs are people who use cell phones out of nowhere, they just use more mundane transportation.

Niven's thinking-through of his futuristic ideas even on aspects that aren't central to the plot is what characterizes really great science fiction, it adds a very nice density and richness to your story.

And Rand's thinking through of the different sexuality and genetics and culture of the Xhagians add nicely to her story. I wish she had thought the Xhagians through in other respects, they're basically technically advanced ancient Romans in outer space in other respects, which does make the story seem a little thin at times.

There's just one element where Rand falls down in terms of world-building, and its' a pet peeve of mine, so I'm going to have to bring it up though I doubt it will matter much to most readers. Rand's Xhagian Empire is pretty much ancient Rome in outer space, with a heredity emperor presiding over a court full of nobles who scheme to become Emperor themselves, generally without success.

Now, see … interstellar empires and heredity aristocracies just don't go well together. If you are going to have an interstellar empire ruled by an hereditary aristocracy set in the distant future, you need to explain why a civilization so technically advanced is being run by a type of government that is clearly archaic even to a bunch of planetbound types like us contemporary Earthlings.

I mean, believing that the best man to govern is automatically going to be the firstborn son of the current ruler implies a certain ignorance of genetics, y.know?

I'm not saying you can't HAVE aristocracies running interstellar empires, I'm saying gimme some handwaving, baby. You know, something along the lines of “although the Xhagians were well aware of the problems posed by succession in an hereditary aristocracy, all other forms of government had proven unworkable due to the Xhagian males' fierce competitiveness, which quickly transformed any government based on merit, popularity or other objective standard into a festering hellhole ruled by paranoid warlords. Aristocracies were stupid, but they weren't as stupid as chaotic hellholes full of rival warlords. It was a matter of government by lesser evil.”

Was that so hard?

In addition to all this, there are hints that Christine is not the simple kidnapped slavegirl she seems to be. She has memories of her childhood on Earth, but she has no memory of how she came to be captured in the raid of the Xhagian slavers, or of the days leading up to those events, though there are disturbing dreams that may point to an answer. And there's a religious cult that is gaining power that thinks the way the human slave girls are being treated by the Xhagians is all wrong … they think they should be treated considerably worse!

Rand, in short, really knows how to stir a plot and keep it going, and can write a pretty good slavegirly submissive sex scene. To be fair, for about half of book three and almost all of book four I kind of skimmed the sex scenes, because1) I'm not into bukkake and 2) there's little or no bondage and 3) not all that much slavegirliness stuff to interest me and 4) the plot had cut in big time and that was what I was really interested in.

Frankly, the Xhagian sperm has the effect of making all the slavegirls so happy and eager to have sex with Xhagian men that you kind of get the impression they'd be paying the Xhagian men to have sex with them if they had any money. This eliminates some of the dramatic tension you have in bondage and BDSM, which was especially a problem in the first and second books when the plot had not fully cut in, and so the books were kind of dull until the plot really got rolling in the last half of the second book. (The set up for the world, the society, Christine's situation, etc., keeps you going easily enough through the first book).

I guess what I am saying is, I would have liked to have seen Christine and the other harem slaves struggling more with their new status as slavegirls, despite the effect of Xhagian sperm on their psyches. Hell, have them seriously puzzled and disturbed by what is happening to them. (Christine does have issued with her enslavement, as do the other harem slaves, but not enough to make the harem girls' experience seem all that slavish … it's more like they are a bunch of happy consensual bukkake fetishists who occasionally have a brief doubt about what they are doing. Not exactly the stuff of sex slavery.)

That said, it's still a fine series of erotic books. They cost just $2.50 each in their Kindle editions, and they run to about 2000 Kindle pages, which of course are not the same as paperback pages. I'm not sure if it was a long novella or a short novel I read, but I definitely didn't feel shorted, because it was a fun ride and it took a while.

I would say that if you like bukkake as a fetish, buy this book NOW. You could not spend your entertainment dollar more wisely.

If you like generally sexy science fiction, also a very good use of your two bucks fifty, because these books are that. On a stick.

If you like sexy slavegirl themes with a strong element of romance, but aren't into the whole heavy bondage thing, these books are also likely to be winners for you. (The slavegirl themes are undoubtedly what kept me reading because …)

If you like bondage, the books are more problematical, there just isn't that much of it. True, the slavegirls are often thoroughly bound and gagged when they are transported from one location to another, and a couple of passages make it clear that the slavegirls are taught to serve while in restraints, but they don't do a hell of a lot of serving while in restraints or being restrained while not serving. I'd still risk the $2.50 on the first book. The sexy slavegirliness might work for you, too.

If you like bondage with a strong element of drama, with the slavegirl fighting it all the way, including fighting her own feelings … these books might not be your cuppa.

All that said, I may not be the best guide for this books' intended audience, as they are definitely romances and I'm a guy. But they're definitely sexy enough to be in the zone of erotica a guy would enjoy reading. I've given you my honest reactions to the books to the best of my ability, which is about all I can do. Read the books and decide for yourself!

And for Teagan Rand, I've got just one bit of advice, perhaps self-serving but I think absolutely accurate: Bukkake just is NOT that popular a fetish. If you want to sell more books, try working a more popular fetish. May I suggest bondage? Fifty Shades of Grey sold seventy million copies, and your books could be the books all those women turn to when they look around for more Fifty Shades of Grey sort of fun reading. You are definitely a good enough writer to grab that brass ring. But you will not succeed by flogging a fetish that has most of your readers going "Eeeew!" and wanting to take a shower.

Ian McKellan, Hellen Mirren Leads In Fifty Shades of Grey Movie?

Ian McKellan and Helen Mirren: inside track for Fifty Shades leads? Image sources: the Interwebs.

The little birds at Universal Pictures are all atwitter with the news that the studio may be preparing a surprising tasty treat in the form of an "M&M" for fans of the naughty novel known as Fifty Shades of Grey. The insiders at the studio are saying that Ian McKellan and Helen Mirren are very much in the running to play Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.

Our ultra-secret, ultra-knowledgeable sources say that Universal has heard the complaints from some parties that at 21, Anastasia is young to be engaging in lustful, depraved, kinky sex practices, and that it was ridiculous to say a man could be a self-made billionaire while still in his twenties, so they made an imaginative leap and decided to go with someone completely at the other end of the age spectrum.

And don't be fearful that this casting move heralds backing off from the sexy hijinks portrayed in the book, fans, because word is that Mirren and McKellan are both eager and raring to go. Mirren, quite the hottie in her younger days and always ready to doff her clothing at the drop of an innuendo, and McKellan, who is gay in real life, will have absolutely no compunction about getting it on in ways that will leave audience's brains begging for bleach. And let's face it, at their respective ages, the ropes and chains will help a lot, giving them something to hang on to while they give their all.

And word is, if Mirren and McKellan turn the roles down, there's always Bette Midler and Mickey Rooney waiting in the wings.

EL James Sexy Tweet Game

Are those your hands on my breasts are are you just looking for some easy innuendo, Christian?

Increasingly, the big Internet aggregators are publishing the same boring crap published by mainstream magazines -- regurgitated press releases, articles that are pretty much copies of what all the other big aggregators are publishing (example: "Everyone is all abuzz over the new rumor that (blank) is being considered to be cast as Ana in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie!) and well, generic, boring, inoffensive crap.

So when I see an article that has some element of originality, even on a big aggregator site, I'll happily point it out. Here's a nice article: a writer has noticed that EL James likes to put a little sexual innuendo in her tweets, so she put up some actual tweets by James and made up some fake tweets. You have to guess which is which. Enjoy!

Seventy Million Copies Sold, Oh My!

"I know you want to scream in pleasure, Anna, but we must keep you silenced!"
"Then why are you using a ring gag, Christian?"
"I'm sure I can think of something to put in that ring in your mouth to silence you, Ana." Image source: Public Disgrace.com.

A recent article in Jezebel.com has announced that Fifty Shades of Grey, having sold 70 million copies in 2012 (half of them ebook sales) singlehandedly helped the Bertelsman group (the company that owns Random House) maintain overall group profit levels despite stagnant conditions in its TV, magazine, and music publishing businesses.

I'm very pleased that Fifty Shades has been so successful, it's my hope that it ushers in a whole new era of acceptance and enjoyment of kinky erotic romances, even if some publishers are trying to prevent that. But Jezebel.com is a lot more conflicted on the topic of Fifty Shades. On the one hand, they probably understand that many of their readers bought and enjoyed Fifty Shades. On the other hand, a lot of their readers, either because they are antisex gender feminists who hate any depiction of maledom/femsub anything, or are lit-crit types who can't tolerate sexy romances and the slutty women who read them, absolutely HATE Fifty Shades of Grey.

That's why I love the article, because short as it is it almost explodes with the tension between happily reporting Fifty Shades' success, and snarking the hell out of its success. The article has snark going in opposite directions. On the one hand, it describes Fifty Shades of Grey as "E.L. James' cult sadomasochistic masterwork" implying it's a cultish porn novel (that Somehow sold 70 million copies). But it also takes a slam at the lit-crit crowd, pointing out that Fifty Shades' high level of ebook sales may be because unlike other books, it invites "the book-shaming eyerolls of MFA-holding Barnes & Noble cashiers."

A nice commentary on our economy, the value of a Master of Fine Arts degree, and the probable status of the lit-crit crowd's louder voices.

A very tasty bit of writing, very revealing to the discerning eye. Enjoy!

Interesting Analysis of Fifty Shades

A writer name Nathan Branford has written an interesting analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey. I liked it because it seemed honest. He clearly, actually read the book, came up with his own ideas about it. He correctly saw it as coming out of the romance novels' Byronic romance tradition, and that it's not as badly written as the lit-crit types keep complaining, but he kind of ignores/dances around the BDSM aspects of the novels. Like, he completely misses the fact that the readers just DIVED IN to the kinky aspects of the story.

It's very much the response of a vanilla type who hasn't thought things through and doesn't really want to confront the kink, but it's honest. That's refreshing.