Fifty Throws of Shade

I'm seeing a lot of reposts of this "Fifty shades of grey is romantic only because the guy is a billionaire. If he was living in a trailer it would be a Criminal minds episode." thing. 

Apparently it was a tweet first, maybe?

I don't know.

I have a pretty serious issue with that.

(I have pretty serious issues with 50SoG too, but those have already been discussed).

Over 100 million people have purchased this book.

I suspect (though I don't think there's any study data) that the vast majority (let's say 90%) of those people are female presenting--since the story is written to appeal to a certain gender/sexual preference demographic.

Is making the claim that the thing that is drawing people to that book the fact that the main character is rich not just a very unsubtle way of saying there are a 90+ million women out there that are so shallow that money alone is enough for them to modify all of their opinions about a person?

Is that statement not incredibly offensive?

Shouldn't we be bothered by that?

I feel like I'm missing something.

It's not like those 100 million copies were purchased in irony--a very great many people really liked this book.

Just. . .a thought, people: resharing that status is saying to 100 million people: you're too shallow to care about anything in your fantasy beyond whether or not the object of your fantasy is rich as fuck.

Maybe--just maybe--that isn't actually true?

Sunday, February 22, 2015