Why has the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy been so popular all around the world? And not only Fifty Shades, but a host of copycat books. The BBC reports that erotica is the fastest-selling genre of books selling to women, “cannibalizing” the rest of the publishing industry. And why are spiritual women reading such books at the same rate as women outside the church?
These facts concerned Dannah Gresh and Dr. Juli Slattery, and together they have written Pulling Back the Shades: Erotica, Intimacy, and the Longings of a Woman’s Heart. Juli read the trilogy in a spirit of prayer — literally on her knees, she says. Dannah did not, but she did listen to the stories of countless women who have read Fifty Shades of Grey or other books in the erotica genre — spiritual women: praying grandmothers, pastors’ wives, missionaries . . . and teen girls. Why are these women and girls reading these books? Why, as the young man wrote to Dr. Miriam Grossman, are so many girls almost obsessed with Fifty Shades? “Its draw is the sexual fantasy. But what’s the fantasy? Being completely controlled and intimidated by a man who ties her up and degrades her? What? That’s what a woman dreams of?”
As Slattery read the books, she identified five unmet longings in women, based on the roll-coaster ride of emotions she personally experienced as she read, and on her years of experience as a counselor:
To escape reality.
To be cherished by a man.
To be protected by a strong man.
To rescue a man.
To be sexually alive.
Meanwhile Gresh, from her interviews with women who had read the books, identified five characteristics of successful erotica:
Focuses on female fantasy
Presents an innocent female protagonist who makes a man forget other women even exist.
Presents a controlling alpha male who dominates the female.
Characterizes the female protagonist as the only one who can meet the deepest, darkest needs of a man.
Offers detailed descriptions of sex.
Both authors were astounded at the correlation between their two lists! EL James seems to understand what women want. But is what she offers what they need to fulfill their longings?
Gresh and Slattery wrote Pulling Back the Shades with two goals in mind: (1) to help women see what Fifty Shades and other books like it can do to their lives, and (2) to “pull back the shades” on the sex lives of the women who read their book — their longings, their questions, and their wholeness as a spiritual and sexual woman. There is a right way and a wrong way to satisfy those longings. A way that is destructive and a way that is healthy.
* To escape reality. Reading erotica can, for a brief time, allow you to imagine what it would be like to fall madly in love with a gorgeous man. The fact is: your heart was designed for adventure and romance, and your body was designed to physically respond. The longing is legitimate. But the reality is that fantasy doesn’t satisfy; it leaves you feeling more unsatisfied. We need the emotional oneness of a real relationship.
* To be cherished by a man. A woman, whatever her age, yearns for the experience of being chosen and cherished by a man, to be one man’s “one and only.”
* To be protected by a strong man. In today’s western culture, women may not admit this openly because they want to be independent and equal with men. But we secretly yearn for the very thing our independence has destroyed. Women who are ashamed of admitting this longing for a strong, confident man are finding an outlet for this longing by reading about a distortion of one in Fifty Shades of Grey. But authoritative leadership shows itself in loving sacrifice, as modeled by Christ, not in domination, abuse, or humiliation.
* To rescue a man. We all have a deep, imbedded desire to make a profound difference in the life of a man. This desire is biblical. Woman was created as a completer, or “helper,” for the man she marries. But for a woman to continue in an abusive relationship, as Ana does, in the belief that she can change her man is fantasy. It rarely happens in real life.
* To be sexually alive. These books do arouse sexually. “I got pulled into the story,” Slattery writes. “My body even got pulled in. There were times while reading the series that I was appalled by the graphic and twisted sexual scenes — but I was also aroused.” While erotica might originally heighten sexual feelings, it erodes something much more important — intimacy. Our body, our mind, and our spirit were created to crave intimacy. Sex alone is never enough.
What your teen girls and the young adult women you know and love need to know:
. . . that their sexual desires are good, a gift of God (Genesis 2:18; 1:31). They don’t need to be ashamed of them, or keep them secret. The desire to be held, touched, and cherished by a man was built into us by God. We are designed that way.
. . . that even though in God’s sight women are equal to men (Genesis 1:27; Galatians 3:28) and share the mandate to care for his creation (Genesis 1:28), God has built into women a desire for a husband who will be the head of the home as Christ is head of the church (Ephesians 5:23).
. . . that a girl should expect her future husband to love her, to nourish and cherish her, to delight in her, to give himself for her, to bring out the best in her — as Christ does for the church (Ephesians 5:25, 28-29; Song of Songs).
. . . that if as a single person she refrains from sexual intimacy, as God intended, she will have sexual struggles: loneliness, unfulfilled desires, temptations. She needs to be honest about these unmet longings, and she needs to find a safe place to talk about them so that she doesn’t choose destructive ways of dealing with them.
Spiritual discernment should set Christian women — you and your teen girls — apart from the world. Don’t let anything else replace God’s Word as the source of truth or comfort in your life. Instead, as Gresh and Slattery write, let God “build a wall of truth around you, equipping you to live in this world with love and holiness.”
