Saturday, May 11, 2013

Women love erotica. They always have and always will


What has the literary world learned from the blockbuster that was Fifty Shades of Grey? Ahead of her appearance at The Telegraph Hay Festival, Dr Brooke Magnanti examines women's relationship with erotica and publishing post EL James.

This file combo made of book cover images provided by Vintage Books shows the
Photo: AP
Has erotica changed the literary landscape? That's the topic I'll be taking on at The Telegraph Hay Literature Festival in a couple of weeks, along with Nikki Gemmell, Jojo Moyes, and Linda Kelsey. With the hype and high sales of Fifty Shades of Grey finally starting to settle down, what are we left with, and what does it mean for writers and readers?

What seemed to surprise people most of all was the notion that women were - shock, horror - interested in sex. This is a perennial 'discovery' by the mainstream, who every 10 years or so revisit the notion that the female of the species is as sexually motivated as the male, claiming this is something "new", then cue panic.
It's neither new nor a reason to panic.

Who, after all, buys Mills & Boon and Harlequin novels, with their covers featuring women falling into the buff and bronzed arms of men? Women do. Who writes the slashfic (slash fiction) and fanfic (fan fiction) online that takes sexually fantasising about well-known television and film characters to a whole new level? Women do. Early studies even suggested as many as 90 per cent of fanfic writers were female. When search engine data is analysed, who is more likely to Google the terms "free sex" and "adult sex"?
Believe it or not - women 

When the erotica craze was in full swing, I turned down a request from my publisher to hop on the band wagon. In part, at least, because I believe you can't fool the reader - a cynically-written book will always be found out. But apart from authentic passion being something that transcends taste, what else have we learned from the phenomenon, and will it last? 

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