Belle de Jour has returned for another series. Well, that’s not wholly true. Dr Brooke Magnati, the forensic scientist who worked as a high-class tart during her PhD course, has written a book called The Sex Myth. It blends science and statistical analysis with her intimate knowledge of prostitution to challenge received wisdom about the sex industry.
Female reviewers (they have all been female so far by my reckoning) have described the book as ‘important’. (The Times (£) and the Telegraph both carry detailed and favourable reviews.) Magnati’s thesis is that perceptions about commercial sex are being manipulated by ‘agenda setters’ — social conservatives, feminist groups, charities etc, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Magnati believes that the only way to may working girls safe is to legalise their profession — no victim benefits from being outside the law.
It is not all about prostitution. Magnati writes about the ‘porn wars’ without really positing a view beyond her general attitude of anything goes, especially where ‘soap opera with boobies’ is concerned. That trivialises an important question. Does she think that these absurd films demean women and sex? The most compelling part of Caitlin Moran’s barnstorming How To Be A Woman addressed that issue. Moran said she was all for porn; she just wanted to see a woman’s version of it.
All of which brings us to Fifty Shades of Grey — the bestselling erotic eBook by E.L. James, which has been dubbed ‘Mommy Porn’ by the American press. I have been avoiding this book on the grounds that ‘mommy porn’ didn’t sound like my bag, but the clamour can no longer be ignored. Even Nigel Havers is reading it.
First of all, the only thing critics can agree on is that the writing is abysmal. They’re right. Fifty Shades of Grey is Pretty Woman with the odd whip thrown in. It’s hackneyed romance, littered with plodding references to Bridget Jones, The Thomas Crown Affair, Madame Bovary, Birdsong, Dracula and numerous Cary Grant films. In short, it’s all over the place.
Now, the sex. The one thing a self-regarding critic can’t be is a prude. Reviewers have been at pains to say that Christian Grey’s leathered peccadillos are no worse than Mr Rochester’s singular tastes; and that the female protagonist (the preposterously named Anastasia Steele) must come to troubled Mr. Grey’s rescue, just as Jane Eyre saves troubled Mr. Rochester.
There is a clear attempt to paint James’ book as literature, or at least intellectually founded. Indeed, some have said that it is a sexual fantasy for women, some sort of feminist version of the Marquis de Sade written by a middle aged woman sitting at her kitchen table. It is, we might think, what Caitlin Moran wants from visual pornography: sex that is not a graphic comic strip.
But a book that contains the line ‘I’d really like to claim your ass’ doesn’t threaten that virgin territory. That line is representative of what goes on in the ‘Red Room of Pain’ and elsewhere — the non-bondage bedroom, the sofa and, of course, the lift. The Daily Beast has collected the ’14 naughtiest’ excepts, so you can judge for yourselves. I hope that Fifty Shades of Grey is not a female sexual fantasy because it’s beyond parody.
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