That said however, I've noticed a disturbing trend in romance fiction lately. There's this particular type of protagonist a lot of writers seem to gravitate towards. You see, it's not just that she (or he, as the trope so,metimes extends to gay pairings as well) has never had sex (which is perfectly fine on its own, of course!) She's also never dated. She's never wanted sex. She's never felt arousal. She's never masturbated. She's never tried alcohol. She's never gone to a party. She doesn't know what a "butt plug" is, despite the self-explanatory name. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that she is naive practically to the point of ridiculous.
And you know, it's fine to be introverted. It's fine to be a virgin and even slightly, naive, but the way these protagonists are written is completely unrealistic. And 50 Shades is probably the worst offender here.
1. Not having a smart-phone, laptop or email.
There is no WAY in hell Ana didn't have an email before Christian bought her that Mac. You literally need one, so you can apply to university and then you need it for various assignments.
Not having a personal laptop can happen, I guess, but from the moment you arrive at university, you are told you can do everything online and it will definitely make your life harder. Hell, when I was studying in Edinburgh, I even had to go online to do my laundry! Not kidding - you get a card, then you register to this website, put money in your card and then you can do laundry.
Smartphones you can go without fine, but people do use them a lot! Also, I'm sorry but I refuse to believe that Ana has spent four years in university and never learnt how to google stuff. I wouldn't have survived high school without that ability, let alone uni! You realize that doing research is like Academic Skills 101, right?
So then why has EL James made our heroine so detached from the world? Well, see... the internet is a place of all information. Ana with an internet connection will not be that same ridiculously-innocent Ana that we all know and hate.
2. Never having mastrubated/had any sexual fabtasies and desires of any sort:
Again, I feel the need to point this out: asexuality is a thing. There are people who don't feel sexual attraction and while that doesn't equate to arousal, there are plenty of sex repulsed and sex neutral aces that just don't care about sex or even mastruabting.
That said, this isn't the case with Ana. I cannot explain this better than the ladies at 50 Shades of Green. As Nella explains: "The reason why Ana has never had any sexual fantasies before she meets her Twu Luv is not so people would relate to that, because no one would. It's that they'll relate to the fact that they think that's how it should be."
3. Not knowing basic things about sex:
There's a lot of time you just have to roll your eyes at how clueless Ana is, but as Erika points out, there's no way she'll be that clueless after four years in university. The reason EL James wrote her this way, is because she needed someone really "innocent" to be the foil of Grey and his "dark" ways.
Except... James has a very broken idea of innocence. She thinks that being innocent means a naive, conservative, clueless idiot. Ana can have no experience and still be at least a little street smart, confident and aware of her own fantasies and limitations (aka the way Dakota Johnson attempted to portray her.)
And just for funzies: here's the chapter where Ana and Christian have sex for the first time, re-capped by the awesome Jenny T, and an audio version, read by Kate Davidson.
Coming Up Next: Christian Grey VS Seto Kaiba or How Yu Gi Oh Did It Better.
This. This so much.
ReplyDeleteAna really and truly pissed me off because she's - ostensibly - supposed to be a character I can *identify* with. She's the same age (or therabouts; I'm 21 and I *think* that's how old she was in the original) and I'm very introverted and extremely socially awkward and still a virgin.
Of course, I'm sure as hell not clueless about sex though. I mean, the things I learned in middle school alone... Well. It's pretty much impossible to get through American public school without learning a thing or two, internet or not. And the fact that Ana is so clueless about even email and such... It strains credulity. I can't suspend my disbelief.
I'm for a lower-middle class family and I've known how to use a computer - on the internet - since I was six. They taught us these things *in school*. In middle school and high school (not to mention college!) I had more than half a dozen projects, research papers and such that required using the internet as a research tool. Hell, in the 10th grade my English teacher spent almost two weeks showing us how to find reliable sources online and how to properly cite them in a paper just so we would be fully prepared for a long project we were working on in class. I refuse to believe Ana could have gotten through her life so clueless about not only sex, but the internet, technology and life in general. The girl is beyond naive; she's simply stupid.