Aella Profile picture
1 Apr, 13 tweets, 3 min read
ok so i just watched 50 Shades of Grey for the first time and im about to belatedly contribute to The Discourse despite having read none of it : a thread
Christian, a billionaire, falls for Anastasia, a hardware store shelf stocker. This is unrealistic and also unattractive; why is Christian falling for her? I assume he must be lame somehow which is why he can't get more successful women who are his own equal.
But probably this is why it appeals to the 'average joesephina'; a billionaire would never fall for a store clerk, so this is precisely why the movie is appealing.
anyway he then gets obsessive/stalkery in classic Twilight-esque fashion
What's interesting is that he does lots of low-status behavior; he pays her way too much attention, he compliments her, follows her around, actually literally stalks her location. But this is interspersed with equivalent displays of extreme power.
It's almost an exact escalation; he tracks her down at work, then takes her on a helicopter ride. He triangulates her location from a cell phone call, then gives her a car. Often it's *mixed*; he has someone nonconsensually enter her home to give her a laptop.
So he's obsessed and hot enough to pull it off. Great:
But he is Emotionally Damaged; he refuses to "do romance" with anybody. And here's the true hill for the heroine to climb; there has to be a *reason* he hasn't been caught by other hot ladies; his manly heart is walled off.
He's also sadistic, elaborately so. Interestingly, our heroine is very not into this, which confused me a bit. Half or most women are into powerplay like this as a sub; why would they want to see a woman who's *not*? My theory is,
this is a method of convincing the audience that he is really, really into this, no actually. He's into this not because our heroine wants this, he's into it *despite* her not wanting it. That's a strong signal, a true signal that his dominance urges are not 'for her.'
But yet as another comparison, despite being authentically dominant, he is also authentically restrained; we get to see him repeatedly not harm our heroine when she refuses him because of some nebulously defined care. He is a dangerous beast, only barely tamed by our lady.
Back to the emotionally damaged bit - we see him often around other hot women. His office staff are lithe blonde ladies in heels. He says he's had 15 contracted partners.
But early on he gives a few special concessions to the heroine, implied as him 'giving in'.
This immediately tells us that she's beaten the rest of the women; she got something they didn't. She's at a farther level (despite it being unclear why tf it's her of all people). This, combined with him visibly associating with her in front of others, raises her own power.
Other people are now jealous of her (implied by seeing other girls gossip about how hot Christian is, or by her picture with him in newspaper). She not only conquered him, she conquered the world *through him*. She's harnessed his power for her own.
So: How To Be Hot, according to 50 Shades of Grey:
1. Have power
2. Be obsessive in proportion to your power
3. Be authentically, independently dominant
4. Have restraint
5. Reserve 'hard-to-unlock' levels for her
6. Have social power you transfer to her by public association

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Aella

Aella Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Aella_Girl

27 Mar
The woke people will hate you for disagreeing; we gotta combat this by accepting them despite disagreeing. When they ban you from their circles, let them into yours (given they are respectful and don't insult). Treat them with kindness, don't fight their hate with hate.
and likewise, when the woke eat their own, offer support for the outcast woke, don't mock them with 'payback's a bitch'.
Be like yeah, we know, we've been through it and it sucks. We have a place for you here and you don't even have to believe what we do; just have compassion.
Cause this isn't sustainable if your goal is to suppress and shut up the woke, even if they want to do that to you. If the goal is to reach them, connect to them as humans, you have to remember the purpose is communication, not dominance. Kindness, not winning.
Read 5 tweets
21 Mar
I'm sorry I'm still not over the massage parlor shootings. This guy explicitly targeted sex workers, both his stated motive and every piece of evidence points to this, yet the discourse is almost entirely about general anti-Asian hate crimes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Atla…
It's infuriating. Sex workers are marginalized by society, prohibited from financial services, put in literal jail, often don't have another choice of employment, and when they get slaughtered, what happens? People focus on another common factor and pretend it was due to THAT.
I am really enraged. Absolutely furious. Even if asian-ness *was* a factor, which it easily might not have been (not all killed were asian, asians tend to populate easily-accessible massage parlors, and he could have easily targeted non-sex-work asians),
Read 5 tweets
20 Mar
this might come as a shock but I feel kinda uncomfortable talking too directly about sex and what arouses me to the public, and I'm not fully sure why. Some theories:
1 latent sexual shame that can only handle being publicly sexual when it's clearly compartmentalized
2 fear people will lie to me to make me think we're sexually compatible
3 i haven't seen other ppl do it yet
4 people might actually arouse me and thus have control over me (??)
But I also have a desire *to* be totally sexually open. There's a lil deep part of me that feels confused when intimacy has boundaries, like if I'm afraid of showing people something in myself then I'm afraid of seeing the same thing in them, which doesn't feel like love.
Read 4 tweets
17 Mar
As a general rule, I assume that racism is probably not a motivation for most things.
Not that it *can't* be, only that it's culturally inflated to the point where I automatically adjust downwards.
There's *lots* of other often-worse motivations for things that aren't racism.
Like, I think a lot of what's perceived as racism would be more accurately described as:
*cultural bias
*classism
*religious fear
*unintended outcomes of innocent upstream things
*gender role problems
*genetics
And to reiterate - this doesn't mean I don't think racism exists. I think it absolutely does, where it does it's horribly damaging to the people who suffer from it, and we shouldn't dismiss racism as "oh it's just classism or something" in cases where this isn't true.
Read 7 tweets
24 Feb
Lots of ppl hate sex workers, which sometimes tempts me to underplay the negative aspects of my job - stuff they'd use to reinforce their position.
But me being dishonest about my reality also reinforces them. I have much more hope in persistent, nuanced honesty.
I want to have the strength to look into the face of someone who hates what I represent and go "you're not wrong about xyz". It's really hard to do! But it's a demonstration that you're treating their mind with respect, that you're not trying to weasel anything into their head.
And the best way to change someone's mind or allow your mind to be changed by them is to demonstrate that you're not enemies and you won't hurt them, that you will refuse to use dishonesty or manipulation to advance your own position, that you want the truth to destroy one of you
Read 4 tweets
16 Feb
The first time I did LSD was at a party in a suburb in New Jersey with a bunch of people I mostly didn't know. I was 21 and hadn't done any drug before besides alcohol, because I was terrified of modifying my brain. I really liked THINKING RATIONALLY and BEING SMART. 1/
but at this party I was a little drunk, and people were being adventurous, and my friend slid up to me and was like 'do u want to eat this strip of paper' and I was like... okay you know what? YOLO. YO-goddamn-LO.
I ate the paper and then sat waiting, kind of autistically. 2/
The party was on, and I didn't really know 'how' to party; I wasn't very good at interacting with the public-school-secular world yet. I had no idea what LSD was like either, I knew almost nothing about it at all. It was supposed to make your world wiggly, right? 3/
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!