This Valentine’s Day, laugh with Fifty Shades—not at it
WOMEN’S DESIRE IS A MYSTERIOUS, feral thing, and if you think you’ve got it figured out because you’ve looked at a few Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, you’re not even close. No wonder most men, and plenty of women, would rather not scrutinize either the success or the content of E.L. James’ expansively steamy Fifty Shades novels and the movies adapted from them, Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and, now, Fifty Shades Freed. It’s easier to laugh at these deliriously popular books and movies than to tangle with what’s actually in them and with what they might mean to an audience. Plus, in the midst of our roaring cultural conversation about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, the elusive intricacy of what makes women tick is probably the last subject any of us wants to talk about. Which is exactly why now is the time to talk about it.
In Fifty Shades Freed, Dakota Johnson returns as Anastasia Steele, the once prim but now sexually adventurous heroine introduced in Fifty Shades of Grey. In that movie, she was a
