50 Shades of Twilight

Bestselling no doubt and yet of what worth? Both series perpetuates the common view of females as 'those in need of protection' but the word 'protection' is used more in the Mafia sense of the word as the females involved must subordinate themselves and transform themselves into what is most desired by their male 'protectors'. I am not the first nor, I hope, the last to comment on these works of vulgar appeal. The well-worn themes of star-crossed lovers, guilty female sexual desire and doomed romance being trotted out once again like so many skeletal horses to stumble across the stage in a ghastly pantomime of decrepit delight. The worst of it is that people paid money for this. Give me a woman who desires to bathe the hero in boiling oil, much to his amusement, instead of these paltry creatures for Faro's Daughter is a much more glorious heroine! There's far more life in her and what woman hasn't wished from time to time to wring her man's neck and vice versa? Exasperation of the female by the male is a richer theme by far if only because there's so much of it. "I bought you a rose because I got my hair cut," he once said to her. Later on this was followed by "What are you doing with those newspapers and that lobster pole?" Admittedly this is better than if he had said to her "Put the gun down," but you can see that one doesn't need fantasy, or weapons, to explore the disconnect between males and females within any one culture's sexual norms and the impact of those norms upon relationships. I offer to you the example of my husband and our son in the kitchen with my daughter and her husband when my daughter yelled "Damn!" All three men froze on the edge of deciding between fight and flight rapidly doing a mental review hoping to God that the fault would not be theirs. Robust life between full-blooded women and men is where the fun lies so when it comes to sex and relationships accept no imitations.