The blusher’s guide to 50 SHADES OF GREY
Fifty things you need to know (and a few you don’t!)
ON FRIDAY, couples will be sneaking into the local cinema, trying to pretend they are going to see Spongebob Squarepants. And single women will be wearing burkas, or at least dark glasses, as they purchase a ticket.
Because the film version of sadomasochism novel Fifty Shades Of Grey hits (ooh!) our big (err!) screens on Valentine’s weekend... although if its male lead produced a red rose, he’d probably flay you with it.
No critic has been allowed to see it, but who cares? We are not going for the dialogue or Dakota Johnson’s acting skills. We will all be going for the naughty bits, of which we have been promised plenty.
And if you have been too shy to read the trilogy, fear not! Here is the ultimate blusher’s guide to what must surely be the literary (and I use that word loosely) and filmic event of the century.
I’ve also given each fact a ‘blush rating’, so you can either avoid – or skip straight to – the steamier bits.
1 E.L. James (real name Erika Leonard) wrote the book about a billionaire dominant, Christian Grey, and his seduction of ingenue Anastasia, on a Twilight fan site, under the pen name Snowqueen’s Icedragon. Thanks to academics at Anglia Ruskin University, we now know that the vampire is a metaphor for STDs, addiction, homo eroticism and racism.
2 Salman Rushdie said: ‘I’ve never read anything so badly written that got published. It made Twilight look like War And Peace.’ American novelist William Giraldi called the books, ‘Eighthgrade gurglings’. Note: both naysayers are men.
3 The Fifty Shades Of Grey book has been translated into more than 50 languages and sold 100million copies – more than any of the Harry Potter books except the first. The blush rating is the maximum three
as we should all be ashamed of ourselves.
4 Fifty Shades was the first book to sell more than a million copies on the Amazon Kindle, mainly due to the fact it spared our blushes on the train.
5 The Red Room Of Pain where Christian acts out his fantasies contains an oxblood leather padded bench, a wooden polished rack with canes, chains and whips. I wonder, does the cleaner Hoover in here?
6 The Red Room also contains a ‘butt drawer’ – and the book’s one funny exchange. Christian shows Ana the nipple clamps. ‘That’s for both,’ he says. ‘Both nipples?’ ‘No, for both pleasure and pain.’
7 Ana is a virgin before she meets Grey, and naive. Of Grey, she says: ‘He’s a patronising son of a bitch sometimes.’
8 Ana works in a hardware store part time. She is puzzled when Christian comes into the shop and purchases plastic cable ties.
9 Christian buys Ana a MacBook Pro laptop so she can research BDSM (bondage, discipline and sadomasochism) and so he can always reach her by email. He also buys her Manolo Blahnik heels, Cartier earrings, Gucci suits and Agent Provocateur undies. The last brand is a big mistake: should have been La Perla.
10 Normal non-BDSM sex (my fave bit of this whole hoo-hah around the film was when a red-faced Emily Maitlis spelled out what BDSM stood for on BBC’s Newsnight) is called Vanilla.
11 Spem in Alium, a 40-part motet by Thomas Tallis, plays in the background while Ana is blindfolded and flogged. Not known for her love of Renaissance polyphony, E.L. James probably misread the first word in the title…
12 Ana calls her genitals her ‘sex’. Cringe-making.
13 There are 21 clauses in the ‘submissive’ contract that Grey wants Ana to sign. He demands for example that Ana never look Christian in the eye. Not legally binding, of course.
1 4Christian’s first gift to Ana is a three-volume first edition of Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, whose heroine falls from grace and is sorely punished.
15 The words ‘jet ski’ are mentioned 29 times in the trilogy.
16 Ana must always be waxed or shaved down ‘there’. This isn’t kinky, this is normal! It’s not 1972, the year Last Tango In Paris was released (and immediately condemned by the Pope).
17 She must sleep eight hours a night. What man ever demands that of a woman? Most of them want us up early – after a restless night listening to them snoring – warming croissants and unloading the dishwasher!
18 She needs to eat a balanced diet to keep up her strength. One meal consists of ‘three oysters, four bites of cod, one asparagus stalk, no nuts, no olives, and you’ve not eaten all day. You said I could trust you.’ I object to him making her eat and find it unrealistic. Most men moan about our stress-fat tummies and grab our wobbly bits laughing.
19 Christian’s middle name is Trevelyan. Who knew E.L. James could spell such a long word?
20 Ana, while in the Red Room, must call Christian ‘Sir’ Actually I don’t mind this. Men don’t need names. I call my boyfriend ‘Hey, you. Whatsisname?’
21 Ana has a very annoying ‘Inner Goddess’ who keeps interrupting proceedings, viz: ‘She sways in a gentle, victorious samba.’ And, ‘My goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.’ She obviously has been watching too much Strictly.
22 Christian has cigarette burns the markson his chest, for childhood but Ana mistakes chicken pox scars.
23 She must wear an appropriate wardrobe when with Christian: a fitted grey pencil skirt, pale grey silk shirt, high heeled black pumps. Grey by name, grey by nature!
24 There are ‘soft’ limits to their sexual play. This means they are agreed, but a safe word or hand signal means stop when the going gets a bit heavy.
25 Ana does say no to some of Christian’s demands, but I really can’t explain that in a family paper.
26 E. L. James has never been to Seattle or Portland, where the book is set. She used Google Street View to visualise the setting, all glass, steel and leather.
27 Christian lost his virginity aged 15 to Elena, a friend of his mother’s, known in the book as Mrs Robinson. She introduced him to his lifestyle.
28 Ana frequently reminds herself, ‘I must not nuzzle. I must not nuzzle.’ What is she? A spaniel?
29 Ana has ‘hard’ limits, such as no acts involving