Fisty shades of grey

You can't help but look on in wonder at the phenomenon that is Fifty Shades of Grey. (By the way, if you were hoping the word 'fisty' in my title might bode well for a titillating post, you'll have to go find your own post to titillate; it started out as a typo, then I stuck with it to reel you in.) Which proves a point really - any whiff of sex and we're in, specially if it's anything outside the usual (I make the gross, and potentially party-pooping, assumption here that fisting on a Friday night is the exception rather than the rule). E.L. James has hit the jackpot - a happy product of the convergence of the digital publishing and social media revolutia and a society that's constantly craving the next big fix, the biggest and momentarily satisfying of which is sex. 'Like a cattle prod jabbed into someone who is exhausted and dazed, an addictive hit jolted us into a temporary illusion that we were alive and really living' is one of my favourite lines from the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous Handbook, which gives a marvellously descriptive insight into the lives of those who are currently snatch-grabbing to pocket their copy of the now ubiquitous Fifty Shades. Now I know this is not rocket science (or is it, I hear myself ask?); 'sex sells' is hardly breaking news. But Fifty Shades is not just selling sex, it's selling Bondage, Dominance, Sadism & Masochism (when did we slip the B&D into the S&M?) of man over woman. And the irony is, women - yes, women - can't seem to get get enough! What's up girls? Is that what we really want? I find this development far more 'disturbing' than little Ye Shiwen's record-breaking Olympic swim the other day. If you want disturbing, look no further than our collective and mindless descent into sex addiction.