50 Shades of Babies
Baby boom predicted next year thanks to success of Fifty Shades of Grey books, says the Daily Mail today. It’s such nonsense that I don’t really know where to be being. Let’s have a quick rundown of the problems.
- Fifty Shades of Grey did not invent sex, nor did it invent porn. There have been plenty of erotic books written for women before Fifty Shades came along. People like Jilly Cooper were best sellers decades ago, and somehow these authors didn’t inspire baby booms of their own.
- The sort of sex Fifty Shades of Grey is credited with inspiring – again, according to the Daily Mail, quoting a poll by a dating website – will tend to be controlled and organised. The
Twilight fanficbook does after all focus heavily on contracts between sexual partners. It stands to reason that people would be more likely to use contraception if acting out scenes from the book. - There’s no real evidence that Fifty Shades of Grey has led to people having more sex – a few people posting “I had so much sex after reading this!” on Mumsnet isn’t really enough. Fifty Shades of Grey didn’t just magically materialise in people’s houses, they had to go out and buy it. Presumably most of these people would have bought a similar book if Fifty Shades was not available, especially if they were looking to “spice things up in the bedroom”.
- The story comes, ultimately, from one Professor Ellis Cashmore (the only professor I know of whose website has an intro video). I’m sure he’s a smart guy, but he’s professor of culture, media and sport, not demography or statistics or anything else that you might expect someone making predictions about the birth rate to be grounded in. He’s in the papers quite a lot too, for sometimes quite disconnected stories. In the past month alone, he’s explained the psychology behind penalty shootouts, the meanings of footballers tattoos, homosexuality in sport,the place of Wimbledon in British culture and the reasons Madame Tussauds is so successful. It’s not proof he’s wrong, of course, just a reason to be a bit wary that he’s suddenly leapt out of his department to give the Daily Maila juicy story about a particularly popular book.
- Come on, seriously, this story is nonsense meant solely to drive traffic to the Daily Mail and boost Professor Cashmore’s profile. In 2010, 723,165 babies were born in England & Wales. To be statistically significant, you’d need the book to lead to tens of thousands of extra births – i.e., ones that were not planned. That’s a lot of babies.
Share this:
This Woman Is Too Good Looking
According to writer Samantha Brick, “there are downsides to being pretty — the main one being that other women hate me for no other reason than my lovely looks.”
Friends have frozen Samantha out of their lives due to jealousy and insecure female bosses have barred her from promotions at work.
Samantha discusses all the trials and tribulations of being so fucking gorgeous in a piece she wrote for the Daily Mail.
In it she explains that dinner parties and social gatherings are very tough. “If I can’t wriggle out of them, then often dress down in jeans and a demure, albeit pretty, top.”
To which commenter Helen of Troy remarked, “I know, right?”
[via the Daily Mail]
RobDurdle.com 