Fifty Shades of Psychologically Imprudent, Self-Defeating and Out of Touch with Reality

The movie is coming out! Fifty Shades of Grey! There’s a BIG buzz on Facebook. Women who read the book are salivating to see it all come to life on the big screen. Oooohh!

Before I go further though, let me apologize for the long title. I wanted to call this “Fifty Shades of Crazy” but my editor wouldn’t let me so I was forced to euphemize with psychological terms. Now I’ll admit up front, I haven’t read the book. I don’t want to. And I don’t want to because of what women who have read the book have said about it. And I’m not talking just about the critics…I’m talking about the fans!

“It’s soft-core porn for women.”

“So here it is, I gave the book a chance and found myself mesmerized by the relationship between Ana and Chris. I found potential in their relationship and the idea that Grey was a haunted soul. What women can resist the subliminal need to nurture a tortured soul? I tried to look beyond the BDSM and found myself getting more and more comfortable with their relationship. The chemistry between the characters is clear and charged with electricity, the explicit scenes often times made me blush.”

For those of you who are unaware, the book is about a “relationship” between a 21-year-old female old student who interviews a 27 year-old self-made billionaire who takes an interest in her and leads her into a sexual relationship based on bondage, dominance, and sado-masochism. Sounds romantic, eh? Well I guess some seem to think so as the film is being released on Valentine’s Day.

I’m sorry, but as a licensed mental health professional I have to state the obvious. The world has gone crazy. There’s no other adequate word to describe it, except for perhaps sick or twisted. After all these years of feminism touting the equality of women and supposedly fighting for such rights and dignity, the truth could not be clearer. Modern feminists have succeeded in doing to women what the worst misogynist only dreamed of 100 years ago. Actually, I should correct that statement. Modern feminists have succeeded in getting women to do to themselves what the worst misogynist only dreamed of doing to women 100 years ago. There. That’s more accurate.

Why abuse women forcibly when you can get them to volunteer? It’s a perfect plan. Sorry, but I have to chuckle a bit at the feminists of the '60s. They were so small-minded. They thought creating a new cigarette just for women was the ultimate statement that women had come a long way toward equality. After all, why should men hog all the lung cancer, strokes and heart disease? That just wasn’t fair. And they sure fixed it!

But in addition to cigarettes, women won even more equality with the contraceptive pill. Why limit your poison to tar and nicotine when you can turn your own hormones upside down and increase your risk of breast cancer, strokes, heart attacks and infertility with just a tiny little pill taken daily? Combining it with cigarettes works even better, for those bent on even more equality…(but wait…if you have more equality, that would actually make you superior, right? I guess so. Hard to keep up with this logic but that sounds good.)

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about the premise behind Fifty Shades of Grey. Codependency is the first word that leaps to mind. But by all accounts, this goes way beyond the bounds of codependency into outright abuse. What blows my mind is that women have come to equate that with romance. Really??  (Melody Beattie, call your office!) Or is it that we’ve become so accustomed to fantasy and virtual relationships that we’ve substituted them for real ones, pretending the damage they inflict is also not real?

Here’s what I would like to believe: that buried beneath all the smut, poor writing and abuse, on some level this book appeals to that nurturing part of every woman that makes her feminine and beautiful. That part that wipes the tears of a child who skinned her knee, makes her volunteer at nursing homes and adopt stray cats and unwanted dogs at the pound.

“What woman can resist the subliminal need to nurture a tortured soul?” Is that it? Oh gosh, I hope so. I hope we haven’t truly fallen this far. But instead of selling our souls and becoming sex slaves to accomplish this, let me make some suggestions:

First, Ladies, if you’re looking for romance, “happily ever after” and to “nurture a tortured soul”, I’d suggest you find a decent, hard working man with a little paunch and less than optimal triglycerides caused by all the fast food he’s eating because he has no time to cook as he builds his career, with the goal of providing for his family or future family… and learn to cook and take him on as your project. The odds are way more in your favor. Yeah, I know it sounds so 1950’s but to me, it’s a lot better than the 2015 Fifty Shades of Grey version of a happy relationship.

Second, if a good read is what you’re up for, just read the reviews for Fifty Shades of Grey on Amazon. Some were laugh out loud funny. I really enjoyed them.

Last, just get a puppy!