Marie Claire: Mainstream Media Continues To Just Not Get Fifty Shades of Grey

First published on 9/20/2012

The Autralian edition of Marie Claire Magazine's website is asking, "Has Kinky Gone Mainstream?" referring of course to the way 50 Shades of Gray has steamrollered its way into public consciousness via selling 50 million copies.

They ask in that lame, timid way that mainstream magazine articles typically do, "Has kink become mainstream?" Then they refer to a few experts, quote a few random people they know, and go on to draw some safe-sounding conclusions about not following the crowd and doing kinky stuff just because that's what's fashionable, and instead exploring what YOU want to do (or not do) is the key to have a fulfilling sex life. The painfully obvious disguised as wisdom.

And when they are not engaging in a festival of "Duh!" they are getting it wrong:

But is this anything new? “Nobody is reinventing anything. It’s all been done but differently,” says Dr Morrissey. “Think the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days Of Sodom written in 1785, Pauline Réage’s Story Of O in 1954, right through to Nancy’s Friday’s My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies in 1973. What’s revolutionary is the fact that it’s so public.

No, that's not what's so revolutionary about 50 Shades. It's the fact that it's MOMMY porn, not Daddy porn. It's a demographic that has never been associated with porn of any kind, and now they're going for kinky sex. THAT'S revolutionary! If GUYS had taken up some porny book big-time, if them mainstream even noticed, they would dislike it, thinking "Horny guys getting kinky, can't be a good thing."

But since it's mommies it IS revolutionary, which is why Marie Claire's staff have no idea how to respond to it, and really don't "get" it. Really revolutionary stuff has a way of being hard to figure out.

Fifty Shades of Grey Update: 20 Million Sold Worldwide

First Published 7/4/2012 To a certain extent, writing about anything other than 50 Shades of Gray feels almost futile, it's that big a phenomenon. New sales figures show the book has sold 20 million copies worldwide.

I think by now the explanation for its success is in part its success: it now has "plausible deniability" going for it. The fact that everyone else is reading it makes it OK to read. You can enjoy the dirty, dirty scenes in the book knowing that you are not an extraordinary freak, or even out of the ordinary, while doing so. Like Slave Leia, it's entered the popular culture. It's "OK" to enjoy it.

But here's the thing. It's being described as a new "tentpole" book by traditional publishers. Such publishers have pretty much neglected their midlist books ... once the staple of the publishing industry ... in hopes that sales of one or two bestsellers will compensate for the lack of the lower-profit books.

Here's the thing, though. 50 Shades of Gray owes NONE of its success to the big publishers. It was a runaway bestseller as an e-book, long before Vintage Books moved in and made E.L. James a multimillion dollar offer she would not refuse. All the Vintage Books people did was add traditional sales to the success of 50 Shades of Gray as an e-book.

So, there is no guarantee that publishers can generate such sales in the future. They did not create the book's success in the first place. All they can do is jump on the bandwagon and hope that fan writers or erotic romance writers sends a new tentpole their way. It's no way to run an industry. In fact, it's down right stupid. Then again, we've seen bankers and politicians behave like idiots for years. Why shouldn't traditional publishers do the same? Personally, I hope the lot of them go out of business, if they can't do better than they have done.