Where Does Hair Belong?

In May 1915, an ad appeared in Harper’s Bazaar announcing to American women a problem that until then they didn’t know they had. A photograph of a young woman wearing a one-shoulder dress with her arms arched over her head, displaying perfectly hairless armpits, read, “Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.” This ad launched body hair removal as a widespread social norm that still exists almost a hundred years later.

Rebelling against Victorian ideals of womanhood, the 1920s gave rise to a massive unveiling of the female body and an obsession with the presentation of the physical self. Female clothing of that era, such as revealing flapper dresses, encouraged women to display and feminize their body parts. The body itself became the fashion of the 1920s, creating an obligation for women to be hairless. This change of emphasizing the body rather than clothing in fashion meant that women were required to be more aware of their physical selves. By imposing uniform standards of beauty, the media then instructed women to dislike and deny their bodies, informing them that they must undergo strict grooming procedures in order to disguise and conceal their natural form.

The strong relationship between the media and gendered body norms persists to this day, and people still declare images of hairy women as embarrassing and physically repulsive. Why do we never see hairy legs or underarms on TV in any context other than as a joke? Every time female body hair is even mentioned in the media, it is usually followed by disgusted shrieks of “Eewww!’ and “Gross!” Media has conditioned American society since birth to think of the natural female body hair as unclean and unfeminine. Why are these same features on a man not seen as unhygienic and disgusting? People don’t look at a man’s underarm hair with the same repulsion as they do at that of a woman. Men have many choices for facial and other body hair, while women are left with just one: hairlessness.

In order to be considered “feminine,” women are expected to negate their adult selves by removing the most visible, prominent physical sign of becoming an adult. In a more naturalized context, the hairless woman could be considered less feminine than the woman who keeps her body hair, as she is removing a feature of her natural, womanly body. However, due to distinctions made particularly in American culture between what is masculine and feminine, perceptions of male and female body hair in the United States are completely different. Students at UC Berkeley described facial hair and other body hair on men as “sexy,” “natural” and “manly,” while they regarded female body hair as “smelly,” “dirty” and “gross.”

Most women don’t even think about removing their body hair, as it is something they do almost unconsciously. Shaving is considered to be a rite of passage for girls in their teens, and then continues throughout their lives. Adolescence is a critical time of identity formation, and so over time, the youth come to understand body hair removal as an everyday, commonplace practice that forms a natural and normal part of grooming. The practice of hair removal is so normative that it generally goes unquestioned.

[Photo: Olivia Crawford, Caliber Magazine]

Influences by the media and society cause women to be perpetually dissatisfied with their bodies and to consider any bodily hair other than what’s on their head as impermissible, unacceptable and ugly. Women at UC Berkeley who chose not to incessantly shave shared that when they first grew out their body hair, they felt like they were on public display and that everyone was looking at them. People frequently approached them about it, and they recalled other women telling them, “Don’t do this! You’re a cute girl! You can get a boyfriend if you stop this!” Even other women cannot stand to see a woman’s body in its natural state. In her Huffington Post piece “Skinny Versus Curvy: Why Women Can Never Win”, Irish writer Mary McGill explains: “Women’s bodies are treated as public property, as ‘things’ to be consumed, improved and judged.” She goes on to describe how women’s body parts are frequently reduced to “dehumanised ‘bits’—breasts, hips, thighs, bums, legs,” and how women themselves are often each other’s harshest critics.

On the other hand, male body hair, particularly facial hair, has been traditionally linked to power, strength, virility, leadership and, ultimately, the ideal of masculinity. In recent years, however, the male body has also been subjected to intensive scrutiny and objectification. The “metrosexual,” a straight man who spends time and money on his appearance, largely came into popular and consumer culture in the 1990s. The idealized male body was concurrently constructed through the media, primarily in health and fitness magazines. The emergence of a “new kind of man” could be seen in fashion magazines like GQ, in clothing adverts, and even in sports figures like David Beckham. The practice of “manscaping” became popular, and a survey in Men’s Health magazine found that more than 80 percent of men clip, shave or wax their body hair, and 60 percent of men trim their pubic hair.

Male students at UC Berkeley described feeling pressure to trim or tidy their body hair. A number of them explained that they understood the removal of body hair to be “the polite thing to do” and that they felt it “looks better.” The majority of these students reported beginning to remove body hair once they started college, while some had been removing their body hair for years before that. Male students all indicated different levels of hair removal: a few shaved their whole chest, some trimmed their underarm hair, others paid particular attention to their eyebrows and nose hair, and nearly all focused on their pubic hair. Typically, though, women experience far more pressure than men to conform to the hairlessness norm. Why is it that women are required to shave and men can choose?

The debate over body hair revolves around arguments for personal freedom and control over one’s body. Post-feminism argues for liberation through empowered choice, and some people consider a woman’s ability to choose to engage in beauty practices to be empowering. However, for most women, the “choice” to remove their body hair is not much of a choice at all. Removal of body hair has become tacitly compulsory, and women who say they prefer their bodies to be smooth or hairless, or that it makes them feel sexy, are responding to internalized standards of beauty. Female students had difficulty remembering reasons why they started shaving other than “because everyone else did it and I didn’t want to look weird.” They added that they still remove their body hair “because it’s expected, [and] I don’t want people to look at me funny.” Is this what women will still be saying another hundred years from now?

 

This article appeared in Caliber Magazine, Issue 7 Fall 2012.

Tracing the Trend: Trainers

1500s: 

• 1526: The earliest recorded sports shoes belonged to King Henry VIII. While no images or examples of the shoes survived, “football boots” were listed within the ‘Great Wardrobe of 1526’, a sort of shopping list. The royal football boots are known to have been cleated, rubber soled and heavier than the normal shoe of the day. They were made by his personal shoemaker Cornelius Johnson at a cost of 4 shillings, the equivalent of $160 in today’s money. Henry VIII later tried to ban football (soccer) in 1540, a decision which historians attribute to his “not being picked first […] and […] being taunted because of his weight.”

[Photo: Wikipedia] 

1800s: 

• 1876: Plimsolls, rubber-soled sneakers with a canvas top, were first developed in England.
• 1887: An article appeared in The New York Times referring to the slang term ‘sneakers’ used by Boston school kids to refer to their tennis shoes. They called them ‘sneakers’ because they were so quiet that criminals wearing them could sneak up on unsuspecting persons.

 

1910s: 

• 1916: Soft rubber-soled tennis shoes were mass-produced for the first time when the U.S. Rubber Company introduced ‘Keds’.
• 1917: Marquis Converse produced the Converse All Star. It was designed to be worn by the professional basketball league.

[Photo: Vogue Italia, January 1994] 

1920s:

• 1923: The basketball player Chuck Taylor endorsed Converse basketball shoes, which became known as Chuck Taylor All Stars. Over the years, the Chuck Taylor All Stars transitioned from athletic shoes to casual footwear, evolving into the shoe of choice for many subcultures. Everyone from Elvis and Kurt Cobain wore All Stars, making the shoes popular among many groups throughout the decades.
• 1925: Adolf ‘Adi’ and Rudolf ‘Rudi’ Dassler began making athletic shoes with removable metal studs for soccer. They were extremely popular and prior to World War II, the Dassler brothers were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes a year.

[Photo: Vogue Italia] 

1930s:

• 1936: Jessie Owens wore Adidas when he won four gold medals at the Olympics. Adi Dassler had driven from Bavaria on one of the world’s first motorways to the Olympic village, where he found Owens, unpacked a suitcase filled with spikes and persuaded him to try them. Following Owens’s success, the good reputation of Dassler shoes was cemented among the world’s most famous sportsmen, and the Dassler brothers were flooded with requests for shoes from athletes and trainers of other national teams.

 

[Photo: Slate]

1940s:

• 1948:  During the war, the Dassler brothers’ factory was seized for anti-tank weapon production, and tensions grew between the brothers due to their differing opinions on the Nazi Party. After the war, they split up; Rudolph went on to create Puma and Adi founded Adidas, which became the most popular athletic shoes in the world.

 

1950s:

• 1955: In the first half of the 20th Century, trainers were worn only by athletes. However, following the release of the film Rebel Without A Cause, teens began wearing them as fashion statements, inspired by James Dean.
• 1958: Reebok is founded. The company takes its name from an African gazelle. At $60 (which would be worth $480 today), Reebok shoes were the most expensive running shoes on the market.

 

[Photo: The Holborn Mag]

1970s:

• 1971: Caroline Davidson created the ‘SWOOSH’ logo for Nike. It represents the wing of the Greek goddess NIKE. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, was a lecturer at her university in Portland, and asked her to design a logo that could be placed on the side of a shoe. She designed the SWOOSH, and he paid her $35.00. The following spring, the first shoe with the NIKE SWOOSH was introduced.

 

[Photo: Nike]

1980s:

• 1984: Sales of trainers increased massively when Michael Jordan signed contract to wear Nike’s ‘Air Jordans’. When he first saw their original designs for the red and black shoes, he commented “I can’t wear that shoe, those are devil colours.” The NBA banned these shoes from games when they first debuted, which also increased their value. These trainers went on to become the most famous athletic shoes ever made. They were so popular that by the early 1990s, it is estimated that 1 in every 12 Americans had a pair of Air Jordans.
• 1986: Run DMC’s song ‘My Adidas’ helped to promote the Adidas Superstar 80s.
• 1988: Aerobics fads of the 1980s lead to increased sales of women’s trainers. Also, Melanie Griffiths wore trainers for her commute in the film Working Girl, starting a habit that is still popular today.

 

1990s:

• 1998: The Spice Girls had a huge impact on women’s fashion, in particular their platform footwear. Their iconic Buffalo platform trainers greatly influenced trends in women’s footwear and became a must-have.

[Photo: Daily Mail]

Now:

• 2012: Isabel Marant reinvented trainers for her S/S 12 show, introducing the Bekket and Willow styles of wedge trainers. The shoes, retailing at $760, sold out instantly. Marant explained the idea behind the shoes, “It’s something I did since I was a teenager. I would cut up cork and put pieces of cork into my sneakers because I wanted to look taller. And I always thought about this, what I was doing when I was young, and I thought I should really achieve something around this idea. Sneakers are so comfortable but at the same time it’s not very elegant. To have a little heel in it makes a difference […] It’s a balance of fashion and a way of life.”
• Raf Simons contrasted formal wear with trainers in his S/S 13 menswear show, pairing trainers with suits or tailored jackets and shorts.
• Off-duty models and Danish fashion bloggers started the trend of wearing trainers as everyday casual footwear with smart dresses and suits. The sleek shape and futuristic white soles of the Nike Free 3 has been a particularly popular style.

[Photo: Oyster Mag]

An edited version of this article appeared in UC Berkeley’s Bare Magazine Issue 12 Fall 2012.

The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism

[Photo credit: http://deyoung.famsf.org]

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presents this selection of major works from The William S. Paley Collection at the de Young Museum. William S. Paley, founder of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), was a leading force in communications, entertainment and broadcast journalism for over 50 years. His professional interest in emerging technology and new media undoubtedly encouraged his personal interest in modern art. The exhibition, which contains over sixty paintings, sculptures and drawings, is a notably personal one, reflecting the broad tastes of a singular art collector, rather than one unifying historical period or theme. Paley was particularly interested in French post-impressionism, and the exhibition heavily features works from late 19th and early 20th century French artists who, like Paley himself, helped redefine modernism in their attempts to revitalise the tradition or dispose of it. The exhibition also contains stunning photographs of Paley’s palatial twenty-room apartment on Fifth Avenue, demonstrating how his collection was displayed in his home.

As you enter the exhibition, Paul Gauguin’s “The Seed of The Areoi” (1892, pictured above) makes a striking first impression, hanging by itself on a freestanding panel in a room of dark green walls and subdued, focused lighting. Gauguin’s vibrant, eroticised portrait of his thirteen-year-old mistress holding the seed of fertility portrays the romanticised island of Tahiti as a land of leisure. The painting anticipates the intense, non-naturalistic colour and playing with form that constitute the rest of the exhibition’s works. Colour is everywhere in this exhibition, and the opening collection of works, rich in the works of Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne, are particularly strong. Anglin Burgard, curator at the de Young, described the use of colour as an emotional force, an aspect of modernism’s aim to “teach people to see the world in a new way.”

[Photo credit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk]

The exhibition features a number of monumental works, including Edgar Degas’ ‘Two Dancers’ (1905, pictured above), a large-scale charcoal and pastel which exhibits Degas’ masterful fusing of the abstract discipline of drawing with the natural form of the body, and Picasso’s celebrated ‘Boy Leading a Horse’ (1905-06), which is at once a simple image and startling evidence of Picasso’s technical prowess and mastery of classical composition. The strong colours, abstracted compositions and simplified forms of the Fauve movement feature heavily in the exhibition with pieces by Matisse and Andre Derain. Matisse’s Orientalised, exoticised ‘Odalisque with a Tambourine’ (1925-26, pictured below) stands out, along with the vibrant ‘Woman with a Veil’ (1927), a painting which Paley claimed to have bought from Matisse himself. This claim was later contradicted by Paley’s ex-wife, who revealed that he had never met the artist face to face, and had in fact bought it from Matisse’s son. Paley’s considerable ego clearly didn’t let facts get in the way of a good story, and the exhibition refers to his tendency towards self-promotion.

[Photo credit: http://www.moma.org]

The exhibition also offers some smaller-scale discoveries that shouldn’t be overlooked, including George Roualt’s moral and social criticism in his paintings of clowns and prostitutes, stunning sculptures by Auguste Rodin and striking portraits by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, an artist who rarely flattered his subjects. Toulouse-Lautrec’s mysterious portrait of ‘M. de Lauradour’ (1897), with the pink shoes strewn suggestively on the bed, in particular stands out.

‘A Taste for Modernism’ is made up of more than sixty works that loosely define ‘modernism’ over the period from the 1860s to the 1960s. It is more about the personal collection gathered by one man than a survey of any period of tendency. Neither the chronology of his acquisitions nor that of the works he collected suggested an obvious sequence of presentation, and the exhibition falters in some spots, such as the inclusion of a couple of cubist works by Juan Gris and Picasso, which seem out of place and overshadowed by the surrounding Matisse paintings and Picasso’s Rose Period masterpieces. However, while the somewhat messy organisation of the works may be frustrating, ‘A Taste for Modernism’ is overall an extremely impressive exhibition with many stunning pieces.

Also on at the de Young:

Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance, until February 17, 2013.

[Photo credit: http://deyoung.famsf.org]

This exhibition is dedicated to the life and work of the legendary ballet dancer and choreographer Rudol Nueryev (1938-1993). The exhibition features more than eighty costumes and fifty photographs from Nureyev’s personal collection and loaned from ballet companies. “I love the excess, colours, exuberance, voluptuousness and brilliant events,” Nurevey is quoted as saying. He was obsessed with details of fabric, sumptuous decoration and stylistic line, and had his costume precisely engineered to suit the physical demands of his dance. He was particularly interested in Western styles and costumes, and refused to go on stage in the short, baggy trousers of his costume for ‘Don Quixote’, finally appearing in tights after an hour-long stand-off. Nureyev’s highly refined aesthetic ranged from folkloric (‘Don Quixote’) to Asian flourishes designed to suit his opulent Orientalist taste (‘Raymonda’, ‘La Bayadere’). The exhibition contains many of his costumes, rich in velvet, rhinestones, ribbon, glass beads, sequins, faux pearls and metallic threads, as well as the stunning satin and tulle dresses and beautiful crystal headpieces worn by his partners Margot Fonteyn and Noella Pontois.

This World Is Not My Home: Photographs by Danny Lyon, until January 27, 2013.

[Photo credit: http://deyoung.famsf.org]

This exhibition features more than 60 photographs and photographic montages from 1962 to the present, tracing the fascinating and wide-ranging career of artist Danny Lyon. Lyon was a leading figure in the American street photography movement of the 1960s, but his work was ground-breaking in his direct engagement with his subjects and his focus on those on the margins of society. Lyon immersed himself in the world of his subjects, riding with bikers, marching against segregation and spending hours inside the death row unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. His goal to present a charged alternative to the bland pictures that predominate in the mass media led to the creation of striking psychological, political and aesthetically powerful images. Lyon, a staunch advocate of the unembellished moment, worked in the style of photographic New Journalism. He is also a filmmaker, and frequently captured his subjects’ stories on film and in his books. Lyon expressed a desire to “make the picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality”, and his photographs from the Texas death row unit are particularly strong. However, it is his ‘Bikeriders’ series which is the most striking, recording and glorifying the life of the American bikerider in black and white.

An edited version of this article appeared in UC Berkeley’s Bare Magazine Issue 12 Fall 2012.

Debunking Rape Myths: Sexual Assault on UC Berkeley Campus

 [Photos: UC Berkeley Take Back the Night – Clothesline Project 2011]

Sarah was studying late in the library one evening for a midterm. She ended up staying longer than she had planned and had to walk home alone. She wasn’t afraid because she had walked home from that library plenty of times before, and she lived only a few blocks away. She reached a secluded alleyway, which was a short cut to her house, and she decided to take it. Halfway down the alley, she suddenly started hearing footsteps behind her. She began walking faster when suddenly the man following her grabbed her and pushed her to the wall. He proceeded to force her onto the ground, overpower her and rape her. This awful situation is the stereotype of rape and sexual assault—90 percent of sexual assaults are nothing like this.

University of California, Berkeley’s Clery Statistics reports that the number of forcible sex offenses has risen from four to 23 within the past three years. The popular misconception about rape and sexual assault is that of a stranger attack in a dark alley or behind bushes, at night, in a lonely place, with a knife or some sort of weapon. While these kinds of attacks do happen, in reality, over 90 percent of victims know their attacker socially. In a recent study by the National Institute of Justice, female survivors of rape said they knew their attackers as fellow classmates (35.5 percent), friends (34.2 percent), boyfriends or ex-boyfriends (23.7 percent) and acquaintances (2.6 percent). The vast majority of attackers (84 percent) does not use a weapon or violence, and instead uses verbal threats and an intimidating stance to control their victims. People tend to perceive only stranger rape as “real” rape, and consider incidents of sexual assault by an acquaintance as simply sexual misunderstandings rather than genuine sexual attacks. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) reported that even victims of acquaintance assault often do not identify their experience as sexual assault. In a survey conducted by Amnesty International in 2005 as part of their “Stop Violence Against Women” campaign, 30 percent of people thought a woman was at least partially to blame for being raped if she was drunk. Twenty-six percent of people held the same view if the woman was walking alone in a dangerous area, wearing sexy or revealing clothing, or if it was known that she has had many sexual partners. Around one in 12 people believed that a woman was totally responsible for being raped if she had had many sexual partners.

Sexual assault is defined as any physical act of a sexual nature that is performed without a partner’s consent. It is distinct from rape, as it does not refer exclusively to forced intercourse—rather, it includes any kind of unwanted touch or forced sexual activity. Consent means positive cooperation in an act or expression of one’s intent to engage in the act. The individuals consenting must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved. Consent cannot be given while the person is coming in and out of consciousness, under the threat of violence, or through other forms of coercion. There is a significant difference between UC Berkeley policy and California state law regarding the definition of “consent” as it relates to sexual assault and rape. California state law emphasizes that a case may be considered sexual assault or rape if the person participating did so against his or her will. That is to say, that the sexual conduct or intercourse occurred even after the complainant indicated that he or she was not willing to participate. UC Berkeley policy has a stricter definition of consent: it emphasizes that the situation may be considered sexual assault or rape if the individuals involved did not actively and voluntarily give consent. This means that silence does not signify consent, and consent must be explicitly expressed.

Sexual assault is particularly prevalent in college communities—the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey (1998) revealed that every 21 hours, someone is raped on an American college campus. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice on “The Sexual Victimization of College Women” (2000) found that one in five college women are raped during their college years, and one in four experience sexual assault or attempted rape. According to NYU’s National Statistics about Sexual Violence on College Campuses, one-third of victims are freshman students between the ages of 17 and 19. Sexual assault remains the most radically underreported crime. It is estimated that 81 percent of on-campus and 84 percent of off-campus attacks are not reported to the police. In addition to not reporting to the police, 42 percent of college women who are raped don’t tell anyone about the assault.

Meanwhile, sexual assault within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is frequently overlooked. Same-sex sexual assault has not received much attention from support services, researchers or the criminal justice system, resulting in many survivors suffering from a lack of resources and support. Same-sex sexual violence can occur between friends, partners, acquaintances or strangers. It can occur in relationships, on a date, or even when individuals within the LGBT community are targeted and sexually assaulted or raped as a form of heterosexist social control. In a survey of college students at New York University, it was found that 11.7 percent of gay or bisexual men and 30.6 percent of lesbian or bisexual women reported experiences that met the legal definitions of rape. Same-sex survivors are even less likely than opposite-sex survivors to report the assault to the police or seek counseling—they may either fear that their sexual assault will not to be taken seriously or that their experience will be minimized (or, in some cases, sensationalized) by the police, the hospital, rape crisis center and others.

UC Berkeley’s recently published Clery Statistics demonstrates a staggering rise in the number of forcible sex offences on campus. Such a shocking increase in the incidence of sexual assault on campus calls for active efforts to challenge the culture of rape on college campuses. Rape culture on campus perpetuates sexual assault by validating rape myths and often blaming the victim, thus intensifying the shame and silence that the majority of sexual assault victims deal with. In order to bring an end to sexual offenses, it is necessary to have an open and honest discussion about the realities of sexual assault and rape, to confront the myths that surround it, and to shatter the silence surrounding sexual violence in our world today.

An edited version of this article appeared in UC Berkeley’s Caliber Magazine, Issue 7 Fall 2012.

 

A Feminist Defence of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has sold over 20 million copies in 37 countries, including over 60,000 copies in Ireland since going on sale at the end of April, not to mention its phenomenal ebook download record. The novels have become the fastest-selling paperbacks of all time, exceeding the Harry Potter series. The series’ remarkable popularity has sparked debate amongst feminists about why these novels, with their graphic depiction of the world of BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism), appeal to women today. Why do modern, liberated women still cling to fantasies of sexual subjugation? This is the issue addressed by Katie Roiphe, who declared in Newsweek that submission was “The Fantasy Life of Working Women.” Roiphe refers to the Fifty Shades trilogy, along with the television series Girls and the film A Dangerous Method, in her article, where she asks “Why, for women especially, would free will be a burden? […] Why is it so interesting to surrender, or to play at surrendering?”. Roiphe concludes that “equality is something we want only sometimes,” and that “fantasies of sexual surrender offer a release, a vacation, an escape from the dreariness and hard work of equality” and the “pressure of economic participation.”

Roiphe’s argument, along with many other articles criticising the anti-feminist ideals in the Fifty Shades trilogy, implies that submissiveness goes hand in hand with weakness. However, being submissive does not mean being a servant. This argument carries the hidden undertone that, as a woman, being submissive in sex means you cannot be independent, you cannot have a career, you cannot be a feminist. Of course the fact that the book focuses on one female submissive does not mean that it is suggesting that every woman should be submissive. How is it feminist to tell other women it is unacceptable to have sex and relationships a certain way? One of the biggest themes of recent feminism has been to promote the idea that what you do with your body is up to you, and if you want to be spanked by your partner, that’s your business.

Fifty Shades of Grey treats BDSM lifestyles with a degree of respect. Rather than glorifying or criticising the acts, the novels situate acts of BDSM in the larger context of the character’s intellects, habits and desires. Roiphe’s argument implies that in a Dominant/Submissive relationship, the two are not equal. In reality, free will is a central part of submissive sexual relationships, relationships which, many critics seem to have forgotten, are acting out a fantasy. In the Fifty Shades novels, BDSM is not presented as being inherently misogynistic, but as a negotiation between partners who regard each other as equals and treat each other with equal respect, both partners undertaking equal attempts at pleasure. Rebecca Newman, sex columnist for GQ, writes that she believes there can be strength in submission: “It is a consensual imagining of having power wrested from you… Done properly, BDSM is ying yang — you are surrendering certain freedoms on the understanding that you are turned on by it. Can a feminist be submissive? If it is consensual, safe, in a loving relationship, then of course. It is a sexual predilection, not a way of life.”

Another key point about the submissiveness portrayed in Fifty Shades of Grey is that the protagonist, Anastasia Steele, always feels she can get out of the Dominant/Submissive relationship. Ana chooses to be submissive, but she does not become Christian’s slave, and she never feels trapped in their relationship. This raises another issue, the idea that male dominance can only imply patriarchy and the oppression of women. The books aren’t exclusively about the couple’s Dominant/Submissive relationship. Despite his original intentions, Christian is able to compromise with Ana to find a balance that they find mutually satisfying and safe. It is frequently mentioned throughout the books that Christian adores and worships Ana, and that her love helps him to work through his Dominant tendencies until he is capable of a fully committed relationship. This is portrayed, however, without suggesting that that is Ana’s only role and that women function only to serve and comfort men. This is something the author, EL James, has discussed in the past. “The thing is that Ana comes across as fairly submissive but she isn’t,” she told Woman’s Hour. “She is actually the stronger of the two of them by far – he is an incredibly fragile, broken person.”

As a woman, and as a feminist, there’s a lot in these novels that I find positive and encouraging. The Fifty Shades trilogy doesn’t follow the usual thread of the erotica and porn industries, in which women are frequently objectified, mistreated and reduced to product. EL James instead offers us a series whose very existence attests to the fact that women also have desires, and that those desires deserve to be met. By placing Ana as our narrator, James avoids the standard complication of female characters being reduced to a sexual object or a mere body. The series has been heavily criticised for its repetitive prose and poor grammar, but I believe it is what this series represents that is significant: erotica for women that has become mainstream. I think we should be proud that a female writer is enjoying massive success forcing the world to reckon with female desire.