FIFTY SHADES WISER ...

“It’s just harmless fantasy”…how many times have you heard that sentence and what was the topic of conversation to which it referred?  If you’re talking about an eight year old boy dreaming of being ‘A Spaceman’ and flying to the moon then yes more than likely it is just a fantasy.  Even though he may be totally obsessed with the idea and driving you up the wall by regaling you with tales day and night of how he’s going to battle the space monsters when he gets to the moon, in his 8 year old mind he really believes it’s going to happen.  However in reality unless his name is Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin then the chances are his fantasy will remain just that….a fantasy.

A fantasy is your imagination unrestricted by reality.  I think in many instances fantasy is the reality you wish you had particularly when it comes to sex.  Take note here, I said sex not relationships.  Let’s be honest and open from the start on this one (ladies included) by admitting that none of us daydream and fantasise about ‘having a relationship’ with our ‘Dream Person’.  I readily admit as a red blooded male that I don’t see Kate Beckinsale or Eva Mendes (giving away secrets now) and think ‘oh I’d love to take her shopping then go for a nice meal’.  I’m sure that would be a very pleasant experience with either one of them particularly as I love shopping for clothes and eating but I’m not going to waste valuable fantasy time wondering round The Trafford Centre with Kate when we could be somewhere private and I could get busy peeling her out of that tight black number she wears in the Underworld movies!  Why take Eva down Manchester’s ‘Curry Mile’ in my fantasy when we could just go straight to bed and work our way through an altogether more appetising sort of menu?

You see, as promised I’m being totally honest with regards to my particular fantasy women and nowhere at all does ‘a relationship’ come into it, it’s only sexual fantasy and in reality it’s very unlikely to ever be more than just that.  Pretty much like the little boy who wants to go and fight space monsters on the moon, he’ll grow out of it and move on and I’m sure that a couple of years down the line I too will have moved on and I will be having sexual fantasies about someone other than Eva or Kate, although that particular shift of sexual attention would cause problems if I were actually in a real relationship with either of them….so you see fantasy in this sense really is harmless.  

So when is fantasy not harmless or even potentially harmful?.... Believe it or not there used to be a brilliant advert on TV a few years back that shows exactly how fantasy can be dangerous to a relationship.  It was an advert for John Smiths Bitter and starred Peter Kay so obviously it took on a comedy aspect but like they say, there’s a hint of truth in every joke.

The scene is set in a restaurant and Peter and his wife are having a meal with another couple.  There’s a television on the wall showing a music video with lots of pretty girls doing aerobics clad in skimpy, tight fitting lycra outfits.  Peter’s wife says to him “I bet you think those girls are gorgeous” to which he replies “There’s only one lady in my life”.  She continues…”You can go out with any girl in the world, who would it be?” “I only love you, I’m not interested” he says.  By now she has a bee in her bonnet and persists…. “I’m offering you Kelly Brooke on a plate or Tess Daly.  I won’t get upset, it’s only a game”.  Now it’s at this point having worn him down that she gets the answer that she really was not expecting and certainly was not wanting as he finally gives in and says with a faraway dreamy look in his eyes… “Claire from work”…..

Boom!  What a bombshell!  Her face is a picture of total disgust and disbelief.  The other couple are squirming in their seats as the camera cuts to the photocopying room at work where we see a shot of Claire doing her copying and Peter lets out a gentle sigh of adoration.

Ok it’s a comedy advert playing out a hilarious scene but I see exactly where it’s coming from in terms of fantasy and relationships and it is so true to real life. Peter’s wife was happily offering him Kelly Brooke on a plate, although maybe she wasn’t quite as cool with this as she was making out, I think she was sussing him out a bit.  She was asking a question to which she really didn’t want the answer but a little devil inside her made her ask anyway.  (We’ve all done it).  So even though deep down inside she really didn’t want to think of her man fancying someone else she could cope with knowing the competition for his charms was coming from a Kelly Brooke, a Tess Daly or some other glamorous, out of reach, television or film star who wouldn’t give her beloved a second glance in the unlikely event their paths ever crossed.  But the 'Boom! Moment' had thrown something totally unexpected into the equation. The 'Boom! Moment' had thrown Claire from work into the melting pot and caught Peter’s Mrs totally off guard.  If he’d admitted to fancying Kelly Brook she could have consoled herself with the fact that Kelly is a stunning looking woman who loads of men fancy and why should her husband not join the queue of admirers?  She could take comfort in the thought that Kelly lives in a totally different world to them and was just someone they saw on TV or in magazines from time to time.

But Claire from work was a totally different kettle of fish.  Claire from work had come right up on her blind side.  While she suspected hubby almost certainly fancied some celebrity or other from Hollywood or wherever and if he did it was only in fantasy and therefore harmless, Claire from work posted a real threat of ‘clear and present danger’ and the look on her face as he dribbled out her name was the ‘priceless’ and hilarious realisation of that danger.

Claire from work was not a distant and untouchable celebrity who Peter would probably never meet in his life.  She was a real, live and probably very touchable woman that he saw five days a week at work.  In fact he probably spent more time with Claire than he did with her!  Did she sit near to him?  Did they have lunch together?  What’s happening on the occasions when he claims to be working late?  What does Claire look like?  For all she knows her husband could have his very own Kelly Brooke lookalike working in his office and why has he never mentioned her name before? What’s he hiding from her?

As I said earlier every joke has a hint of truth and this comedy sketch contains far more than a hint. Comedians like Peter Kaye deliver ‘observational comedy’ where they make light of real life issues making them funny in order to get a laugh.  This sort of comedy works because we all have our own real life examples to draw on, be it something that has actually happened to us or involves someone that we know. What this sketch illustrates quite clearly is that sexual fantasy is indeed harmless as long as the subject of the fantasy is so distant that it almost certainly could never turn into a reality be that subject a specific person, persons or sexual scenario.

If I was in the throes of hot passion with Trudie and she inadvertently called out Brad Pitt’s name in a screaming orgasm I suppose I would be a little put out that she had to invite an imaginary 3^rd party to bed with us but I would get over it safe in the knowledge that she’s not actually dating him behind my back and I was the man on the spot actually inducing the orgasm. If however she took to calling out the name of one of our friends or a work colleague, then that’s a whole different matter.  She most certainly could be seeing him for extra marital sex or if she wasn’t it would still have more potential to become a reality than Brad jumping on a plane from Hollywood to Leyland in Lancashire so he could climb into bed with her while I was out at work.  (Sorry Trudie! I’m not saying Brad wouldn’t fancy you but I bet he’s never even heard of Leyland.)

In a nutshell I’m saying fantasising about someone untouchable in my view is safe and harmless to a relationship but if the fantasy object of your desire is closer to home and within your reach then the alarm bells have to start ringing.  Recently there’s been a phenomenon sweeping the country that I believe is blurring the point of difference between harmless and harmful by confusing the idea of touchable and untouchable fantasies.

Every adult on the planet who can read is by now familiar with ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’…this book and the others in the trilogy is described as being an erotic novel and contains throughout lots of eroticism and explicit descriptions of extreme sexual acts between the fictional characters in the story.  This book is selling faster than any other book before it; millions of copies are being swept off the shelves in the main by women readers who by all accounts find the explicit sexual liaisons described in the book totally captivating.

I was at a charity concert a few months ago and one of the prizes in the raffle was the 50 shades trilogy.  The compere was announcing the list of prizes and asked the room “Who’s read 50 Shades?”…. his enquiry was met with loads of whooping and cheering from most of the women there as they raised their hands to indicate the fact that they were indeed on the ‘Mummy Porn’ bandwagon and were by no means embarrassed to admit it.  I remember thinking at the time how strange I found the almost celebratory whooping and cheering. If the guy with the mike had announced that one of the prizes on offer was ‘Legs akimbo Monthly’ or ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ (showing my age here) then asked the guys in the room if they’d seen it?  Would he have generated the same enthusiastic response from his audience?...I think not.  Then I found myself wondering why that was?  The answer I came up with was this…

Pornography as we know it in the traditional sense (should I be using the word traditional in the same sentence as pornography???) is something that mostly men use as a sexual fantasy outlet and features in the main sexually explicit images of women in magazines and movies.  Considering how many men look at porn (and trust me there’s loads of us) and the widespread availability of it, it’s still generally regarded as being a seedy, underground thing never to be discussed in mixed company and that’s why if the Compere at our Charity bash had asked “Who’s watched Debbie Does Dallas?” he would have encountered a wall of silence as all the men in the room shuffled around uneasily and stared at the floor or smiled at their partner in sheepish denial.  I also think that if any man was to admit in public that he used porn 9 out of 10 times his partner would be very disapproving of the public revelation because men know that other men use porn and many even talk openly about it to each other while women also know that men use porn although quite strangely ‘not their man because he doesn’t need to and would not even dream of it because he has her!’

Now this is where we start to see a real point of difference between the sexes and the use and acceptance of pornography.  It’s almost as though fifty shades has encouraged women all over the country to ‘come out’ and admit they do actually have more than a passing interest in porn and they are not ‘coming out’ quietly either.  It’s very similar to the eighties when all of a sudden it became ok to be Gay and Gay people the world over started ‘coming out’ and celebrating the fact that they’re sexuality was at last socially acceptable, to the degree where they began to have special days to mark ‘Gay Pride’ with marches, street festivals and parties.  I wonder if we’ll be witnessing marches and festivals in the future where thousands of women unfurl banners declaring their love of ‘Mummy Porn’ and their ‘right to read it’?

Many people will argue that there is a world of difference between Fifty Shades ‘Mummy Porn’ and the type of porn that men use.  They would argue that the Mummy Porn is just harmless fantasy and imagination, whereas men look at real people having real sex in films and magazines which is degrading to the women in the magazines and films and also to the partners of the men using porn.

I don’t see it like that at all.  I can’t get my head around the fact that so many women would feel offended, betrayed, unsexy, humiliated and a whole host of other negative emotions if they thought their man ever used porn.  Or should I say if they could ever admit to themselves that he does or has at some time or other. Because chances are he has….he’s a man and it’s something that men do without any kind of sleight on you.  Just because your man looks at sexy girls in a porn film it does not mean he no longer loves you.  It does not mean he no longer finds you attractive and sexy; it does not mean you are unable to satisfy his needs.  In short you have no need to feel threatened by the girls in his film or magazine.  Why?  It’s because we are back to the Peter Kay and Kelly Brook scenario. We are talking about girls that he doesn’t have a cat in hells chance of ever meeting let alone sleeping with.  Chance would be a fine thing that he should meet three gorgeous girls who all happened to be lesbians but strangely wanted your hubby to join in their sex games.  It aint gonna happen!  He knows and accepts that fact and that’s why in his very basic male way of thinking he’s not cheating on you when he uses porn.

Now turning the whole thing on its head how many of you fans of Mummy Porn can say hand on heart that you are not cheating (in your mind at least) on your partner when you read something like 50 Shades?  No I’m not being stupid here, think about it.

A porn film has porn actors playing the parts, real people that your guy has no access to in reality; he’s just a member of the audience.  A 50 Shades type fantasy story also has a cast of characters doing the dirty deeds but the major difference is that you are the Cast Director on this one.  You get to decide who plays which part and chances are you cast yourself as the leading lady which is fair enough but who’s going to share the lead role with you?  Is Mr Gray going to remain faceless?  Is Mr Gray going to be someone famous but untouchable that you fancy or is he going to be someone much closer to home, a real person that you actually know?  Could we be heading towards a Peter Kay and ‘Clare at work’ situation?

I have read all sorts of accounts of women who have been sexually re-awakened after reading the 50 Shades books to the point where they are no longer prepared to put up with the hum-drum existence they have been leading with their boring old hubby.  We’ve somehow migrated from stubborn blindness of the fact that ordinary blokes occasionally get off by watching porn to the point where the topic of conversation at a girls coffee morning can range from ‘the price of baked beans through to anal fisting!

I was at a party on New Year’s Eve with Trudie and we were introduced by the hosts to a number of people neither of us had met before.  During the initial ice breaking conversations one of the women there said that it was quite weird meeting us because she felt that she already knew us having read a previous book we had written together.  Trudie told her that I was currently busy writing this blog about ‘love, sex and relationships’ and that immediately caused a stir amongst the half a dozen women who were listening nearby. “Is it like 50 Shades?”…. I was asked almost immediately by a woman standing next to me who then went on to tell me about her mum who was in her 70s and was thinking about getting herself a copy of 50 Shades.  Knowing that she’d read it her Mum was enquiring if her daughter thought she would enjoy it? “Well if you want to read about anal sex and butt plugging Mum then yes but otherwise don’t bother” was the reply she had given.  

Knock me down with a feather on two counts here….firstly I’m talking to a woman I met just 5 minutes ago about anal sex and butt plugging while other people casually stand around listening in as though we were discussing what Santa had brought the kids for Christmas.  Secondly and even more alarmingly we’ve got to the stage where even Grandma’s in their seventies are looking to spice up their lives with a little bit of ‘Mummy Porn’!  What the hell is happening here?  I have to ask myself.  What is it that these women are looking for and will they find it between the covers of 50 Shades?  Judging by the number of copies that   book has sold there seems to be a hell of a lot of frustrated women out there desperately seeking something different to the sex life they are currently having …or not having as the case may be.  But is erotic fantasy the way forward?  Will your reading of all this highly charged erotica not just serve to add to your frustrations?  As you begin to put faces to the fictional characters in your mind’s eye are you not beginning to stray into dangerous territory? At what point will you be tempted to try some of the stuff you are reading about? Will you want to get hubby involved in your fantasy sex or would it be much more exciting with somebody else…maybe that guy down the gym that you know for certain fancies you like mad?  You’ve noticed the way he always looks at you but you only ever had the courage to exchange a friendly 'hello' in the past but now you are 50 Shades wiser and braver. You’re also 50 Shades more randy as a result of your libido being massaged back into life courtesy of your erotic novels.

I can’t help  thinking that there are more and more women out there on the prowl, playing the role of Cougars in search of illicit sex with willing young studs equally up for a bit of no strings sexual action.  Not that they ever needed the ok from the male species but 50 Shades seems to be playing a major part in liberating women in their own minds in the sexual arena.  Only today I managed to catch 10 minutes of Loose Women on television where the male guest was boxer David Haye and the way he was treated by the middle aged all-female panel backs up what I am saying.  David wanted to talk about his “life changing” time in the jungle when he featured in ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me out Of Here’ and plug his new fitness video.  The Cougars on the panel had other ideas….before he came out they showed numerous clips of his time in the jungle and most of them featured David taking a shower – cue the whooping, cheering and lewd comments from both the panel and mainly female audience.  When David was eventually introduced and entered the studio the noise from the baying pack reached a crescendo.  I thought to myself ‘blimey he’s a brave lad going out there’ like a Christian entering The Coliseum…. As soon as he sat down the panel started on him loading sexual quips and innuendos into every sentence.  It really was getting a bit too raunchy for day time TV and I began to wonder if I had somehow gone back in time 30 years and was watching Benny Hill in reverse or a ‘Carry On’ film?  In those days it was perfectly acceptable on television to use women purely as titillation fodder for the benefit of the male viewer and now things have gone full circle to the point where a handsome young guy is fair game for the ‘Loose Women’ Cougars.  Mind you I have to say fair play to David as he stood his ground and managed the situation very well. He was enjoying the attention and sexual overtures being made in his direction but then surely that’s to be expected from a self-confident man in such a situation?

Men need to wake up and see what’s going on here and react to it. We need to look at why our women are looking to change the social order of all things relating to sex.

We need to get to the bottom of this before it’s too late for too many of us.  By that I mean the married and attached male species has to look at itself in a very self-critical way in order to find out why our women are leaving the bedroom in droves and heading down to Waterstones for sex.  By that I don’t literally mean they’re having it off behind the book shelves with some hunky sales assistant but you never know because that indeed could be the case as the young, free and single guys out there have noticed what is going on.  They know that too many of their married and attached counterparts are not taking care of business in the bedroom department.  They also know that more and more women have decided that enough is enough and are saying “if he can’t satisfy me then I’m off to find myself a Mr Gray”.

The young, free and singles men out there don’t have some sort of mystical male bonding loyalty to their married brothers that means they wouldn’t dream of bedding a woman if she was married or in a relationship.  Come on guys, work it out, we’ve all been young, single and horny at some time in the past.  The only difference to then and now is that in the past women were far more reserved.  The only Cougar I remember seeing as a teenager was Mrs Robinson in the film ‘The Graduate’.  Now there’s a potential Mrs Robinson lurking in the ‘Sexual Fantasy’ section of every book store in the land!  As men we tend to take a sexual opportunity when it presents itself so as men we shouldn’t need telling twice that other men are out there waiting to have their Mrs Robinson moment with our Mrs be she a Robinson a Smith, Jones or whoever. They don’t care who she’s married to.  If she’s giving them the ‘come on’ they are going to react accordingly.

I work with young men, guys in their late teens and early twenties.  I know loads of young guys that go to the gym I use and you have to believe me when I say “they are on to it!” they are regularly on the hunt for MILFS! (Mum's I’d Like to F..k).  Like any good hunter these guys are choosing their prey.  They are choosing the MILFS because it’s an easy catch where the prey wants to be caught.  In fact this prey comes out of the undergrowth and stands proudly smack bang in the middle of the hunting ground. This prey wants to be noticed.

I’m not in a position to judge the sexual prowess of all these young studs and I don’t know if they are as a group of men satisfying older women in droves once they get them into bed.  What I do know however is that they are succeeding in seducing them into bed and after that it’s too late anyway, the threshold to the bedroom has been crossed and the damage is done. What we have to do is work out what the young guys are doing that is so appealing to our women or probably more appropriately what is it that we have stopped doing over time that has caused our women to lose interest in us and in turn look elsewhere for the great time that we used to show them?  If you take time to analyse the situation it’s not rocket science.  It’s all about little things adding up to make a big difference…..Where you are sporting a paunch because you no longer feel the need to make an effort with your appearance the young stud will be showing off a ‘six pack’ because he works out regularly. When you are slobbing around the house unwashed, unshaven,  wearing grubby jogging pants and scratching your balls she may be comparing you to the well groomed, smartly dressed, cologne wearing young guy that served her that day in the Department Store.  When you haven’t noticed how good she looks in her new outfit or can’t be bothered to tell her how great she looks after a visit to the hair salon, she’s going to be really flattered when the young guy who works in her office starts to lay it on thick with the complements because he’s noticed how hot she looks.

These young bucks are doing all the things that we used to do when we were their age.  They are doing whatever they need to do to get laid and having been there ourselves we know the score and knowing your enemy goes a long way towards beating him.  In order to successfully fight off this particular enemy we have to start with a very self-critical reality check.  We have to look at what we have to offer and maybe even admit that when it comes to competing with ‘young Johnny upstart’ in a physical sense we may not necessarily be on a winner because we do change shape with age or lose hair and gain wrinkles.  However all is not lost for us ‘relationship guys’ because they say “possession is 9 tenths of the law.” (girls, I don’t mean possession as in we own you so just hear me out…) I mean we are already with you because once upon a time you made the decision that we were the only one for you.  The young stud is trying to take you away so we just have to give you enough reasons to want to stick around and I think that gives us the upper hand here. 

We know (or should know) what we did to attract you in the first place so that’s a good start….we know our enemy because he is us 20 years ago and we know you. We know what you like and what you don’t like, we know what makes you tick, what makes you laugh what makes you cry, we know your favourite food and what you like to drink.  We know your favourite perfume and your all-time best tune.  We know how to make your cup of tea in the morning a perfect 10!  In short we know a hell of a lot more about how to make you feel special than some wet behind the ears young thing who’s trying to muscle in on our relationship. He’s using a scatter gun approach to his wooing in the hope that some of his erratic fire will hit the target of love.  We on the other hand have all the years of being with you. We have all this knowledge and experience of knowing just exactly where to shoot cupid’s arrow sniper style for maximum effect….so guys all you need to do now is realise that what I’m saying makes sense, draw back your bow, take aim and prepare to fire that arrow of love.