Sexual Politics & Fashion, 50 Shades of Grey Meets YVY’s Nude Edition
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YVY’s Nude Edition accessories play around with the dominatrix and submissive side of a woman in their latest collection. The Nude leather and studs enhances the erotic view of a woman’s body and compliments their desire to be naughty, nice and held in check.
Harnessing Sexual Desire
This look for women has become very popular since the The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy stormed into bookstores, asking women to explore their sexuality more fully. In America alone, more than 20 million copies have been sold. The trilogy represents one in five adult print books sold this past spring.
The Daily Beast’s Katie Roiphe writes that the book “has a semipornographic glamour, a dangerous frisson of boundary crossing, but at the same time is delivering reassuringly safe, old-fashioned romantic roles. Reading Fifty Shades of Grey is no more risqué or rebellious or disturbing than, say, shopping for a pair of black boots or an arty asymmetrical dress at Barneys.”
The Grey movement has created a group of people obsessed with labeling as traitors to feminism the women who enjoy such a novel, while a married British woman referred to this book as a reason for divorce. Citing her husband’s vanilla bedroom etiquette as “unreasonable behavior”, she required more from her man.
The Grey book has been labeled with chosen words like “Mommy Porn” which we find to be quite offensive to all women. Why must we call it mommy porn? When in fact women of all ages — with and without children — are buying Fifty Shades.
When men are caught watching porn it is not referred to as being salacious, but rather a societal norm. So why must people put labels on everything remotely erogenous involving women? In recent years acronyms such as MILF (which refers to mothers who enjoy sex) remind me that women are constantly being spoke of as objectives — as in Mothers I’d Like to …
MILF is a man’s word even though plenty of women wear it proudly.
Women and Sexual Desire
Why has it taken this long for some women to realize that they do enjoy a bit of BDSM when they aren’t being forced with sexual assault to partake? More importantly, hasn’t Fifty Shades of Gray given women license to admit in buying the book and reading it openly, that a bit of submission in bed can be inspiring on occasion?
Or is reading Fifty Shades a message to one’s partner that he just isn’t cutting it in bed?
Women should feel the right to be sexy — not because media, magazines and television make us believe that’s all we have to offer. Women should want to enjoy sexual play because we are sexual beings, just as men are sexual creatures.
Admittedly, the topic becomes convoluted when being empowered and sexy doesn’t typically prompt a woman to explore her own masculinity and powerful side as the dominant party in sex play. Why not you in charge today and him tomorrow?
The Ups and Downs of Sex in Captivity
Esther Perel, in her excellent book Mating in Captivity, argues that vanilla sex is often a fast track to divorce court — like it or not. When two people are too close, too known and too predictable, there is no distance to transverse, no gaps to cross and sensual boredom invariably sets in, writes Perel.
Many pro-BDSMers argue that power exchange and what might be called the eroticization of power more accurately describes BDSM, rather than an identity that focuses on pain or aggression. Let us remember, though, that in real-deal BDSM relationships, pain in key to the state of elevated consciousness.
Reading that the pope’s habit of self-flagellation is a saintly expression of humility might be inspiring. Drawing blood is another matter entirely.
Role-playing BDSM and fantasies of submission in erotic novels are a far cry from the daily lifestyles of American women. We seriously doubt that 20 million American women want to be tied to the bedpost indefinitely. I can absolutely relate to a woman who desires to be “taken”. A dear friend of mine told me that when her husband wanted to have sex with her, his seduction technique was to tap her shoulder in bed. Same shoulder, same spot, same soft touch every time. Sort of like Avon calling. Hmmm.
Perel argues that people who nourish sustained, long-lasting erotic partnerships approach each other as if their partner is an undiscovered country, even after years of living together. This avenue of thinking makes perfect sense to us, which is why playing around with BDSM fantasies seems not only healthy, but wise for sustained relationships.
Roiphe writes that recent studies about women who enjoy submissive sexual fantasies conclude they are less prone to have feelings of guilt, shame and unworthiness, contradicting long-held beliefs of many sex researchers, psychologists and feminists.
Sexologist Dr. Yvonne Fulbright argues that “For some people, a good hard smack is going to bring nerve endings to life.”
BDSM and Sexual Politics
Admittedly, the success of Fifty Shades of Grey is complicated for us at Anne of Carversville, given our deeply entrenched work against the flogging of 40,000 women a year in Sudan and the Republican War on Women here in America.
Yours truly was confident that those 20 million American women who bought Fifty Shades of Grey wouldn’t turn the rest of us over to the Romney camp — and they didn’t. This reality underscores the proverbial truth that what women say and what we do are two different actions —and especially in America.
Before the election I staked my reputation on the reality that many social conservative women — God-fearing females whose husbands dictate their every move — would rant and rave about the damn Democrats and socialist president Obama at the dinner table, and then vote for the defenders of women’s rights, rather than the party determined to get us women back in the kitchen where we belong.
My ladies delivered.
Am I the only person who thinks that trans-vaginal probing and having the government dictate exactly how one’s head must be held to watch a sonnogram smack of BDSM techniques?
America’s obsession with Fifty Shades of Grey is perhaps related to this behavior. What we say isn’t what we actually do. What we desire in novels isn’t actually how we wish to live. In moving beyond our own comfort zones, our erotic imaginations soar out of our own boredom but most of us seek some kind of soft landing.
Personally, I recommend tantric sex, but if a red-bottom burns you on, I say go for it. PS: I admit to liking Maggie Gyllenhaal’s movie The Secretary. ~ Anne
