Now titled Fifty Shades of Grey - so named, as Anastasia says, because her control-obsessed boyfriend is “fifty shades of fucked up” - the first book in the series was an instant sensation, quickly outstripping Harry Potter to set a record in the United Kingdom for the fastest-selling paperback of all time. James, recast the Twilight characters - a 100-plus-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen and his teenage bride, Bella Swan - as business titan Christian Grey and spunky, virginal college student Anastasia Steele the latter becomes swept up in the former’s BDSM lifestyle as they fall in love and lust. The British author, real name Erika Leonard, who took the pen name E.L. Meanwhile, that same year, a book originally written as Twilight fanfiction under the title Master of the Universe and published online under the pen name 'Snowqueen’s Icedragon” was rereleased first as an independent ebook and order-on-demand paperback before getting picked up by Vintage Books as a three-part series. I hosted semi-regular talks at the Feminist Center about representations of gender and power in pop culture, and 2012 was a particularly fruitful year on that front: The November release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 marked the end of a franchise that had bemused, titillated, and annoyed the hell out of my generation throughout our entire adolescence. The campus sexual assault wars are heating up this is the year after a Yale fraternity was temporarily suspended for making its pledges march through campus chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal,” while carrying signs reading, “We love Yale sluts.”Īt the time, I was a student on a different college campus less than 50 miles away, trying to foster meaningful connections as a volunteer for our sexual assault prevention program. Obama is the first sitting president to declare his support for marriage equality, all while various states move to explicitly ban it. You’re wary of being ambushed by a crowd dancing to 'Gangnam Style' at seemingly any moment.

50 shades of grey author