Female Fifty Shades of Grey readers more likely to uphold sexist attitudes, study finds

Young female readers of the Fifty Shades of Grey books are more likely to endorse out-dated sexist attitudes, according to a new study.

EL James has sold more than 100 million copies of her raunchy novels about the BDSM relationship between playboy billionaire Christian Grey and his submissive, student Anastasia Steele, but acadamics have revaled that women who read them display higher levels of “ambivalent, benevolent and hostile sexism”.

The research team at the Ohio State and Michigan State Universities define benevolent sexism as the belief that women are meant to be protected and cared for by men and hostile sexism as objectification. Their new paper, Sexist Attitudes Among Emerging Adult Women Readers of Fifty Shades Fiction, was led by Lauren Altenburger and analysed data from 747 women at a US midwestern university aged between 18 and 24. Altenburger’s study measured the women’s views using the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which asks those surveyed to respond to 22 statements on a scale of agreement.

Researchers discovered that the 61 per cent of respondents who had finished at least one of the trilogy held “stronger ambivalent, hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes” than those who had not read any. Readers were also asked to select the words they felt best described the book from a range including “hot”, “abusive”, “degrading” and “romantic”. Those who described the story as “romantic” were more likely to accept “notions of benevolent sexism” that subtly uphold ideas of female submissiveness, such as believing that the “weaker, less assertive, more emotional and less intelligent” Anastasia is unfulfilled without a relationship and needs the dominant Christian to complete her.

The academics have suggested that it the “sizable portion” of women who found Fifty Shades of Grey romantic is “concerning” because the series “romanticises dynamics that are consistent with violent romantic relationships”. Furthermore, they have criticised portrayals of the books as “empowering” and “mommy porn”, arguing that “nearly every interaction between the main characters conforms to traditional gender ideologies”.

Altenburger and her team acknowledged that rather than Fifty Shades causing sexist attitudes in readers, it may be that those with preexisting sexist views are more likely to read it in the first place. However, they believe that readers should learn to digest fiction more critically, while writers should strive to “represent more egalitarian gender roles”.