fifty shades of shame

I watch the trailer and see a two-second clip of the actress wearing a blindfold, and I know this is a line I don’t dare to cross. Because if I’m a moth, this is the brightest flame I've ever seen.

a gentle note for readers

The following is a brief excerpt from the latest draft of my memoir-in-progress, unless a seed, the story of how God used something small to heal my heart in a big way.

My story is one about healing from sexual shame. I have chosen to tell this story as authentically as I can, and as a result, there may be parts that are triggering or upsetting to read — especially for anyone who has struggled with unwanted sexual behaviors, shame surrounding these behaviors, and/or mental health issues like anxiety and intrusive thinking.

My prayer is always that the words I write are laced with the grace and love of Jesus, and that this grace and love would overwhelm any shame you carry — like it did for me — but I still encourage you to proceed with discernment.

photo by dollar gill

Fifty Grades of Grey explodes in popularity around the time I start college. I’m working as a cashier at a local grocery store chain, and the first time I see the book is on my register’s conveyor belt, tucked between a bundle of fresh cilantro and containers of Greek yogurt.

The first movie premieres in theaters not long after this moment. Suddenly my Facebook feed is flooded with posts and articles shared by women from my church, most of whom are raising their voices in protest against the content of the series. I join the clamor, tweeting about how the books promote relational abuse even though I’ve never read them.

The truth is, I don’t want to go anywhere near these books or their film versions. I’ve never read or even been that interested in erotic fiction, but I know what BDSM is. I watch the movie trailer and see a two-second clip of the actress wearing a blindfold, and instantly I know that this is a line I don’t dare to cross.

Because if I’m a moth, Fifty Shades is the brightest flame I’ve ever seen.

So I keep my real reasons for boycotting the books to myself, and I watch as female sexuality becomes a hot topic among the same people who had taught my friends and I that we were the only gender with the strength to say no.

A few weeks into all this hullabaloo, a close friend from church loans me Pulling Back the Shades by Dannah Gresh and Juli Slattery: a book written in response to the abrupt influx of Christian women coming out in support of the Fifty Shades series. I keep it hidden beneath my bed for a while, waiting until I can find a long enough stretch of privacy in my seven-person household to feel safe pulling it out.

When that stretch finally comes, I grab the book and walk outside to my front yard, spread a blanket on the grass, and read the entire thing in three hours.

It’s the first time I’ve ever read a book written for women that addresses subjects like porn and erotica so openly. Until this point, the closest thing I’ve been able to find was a Christian book about dating I borrowed from a friend’s bedroom. It had a chapter labeled “Porn for Guys” followed immediately by “Porn for Girls,” and I wondered if the girls’ chapter would finally address what I’d been struggling with my whole life.

I read the “Porn for Guys” chapter first. In this one the author talked explicitly about the things I expected him to — pornography and masturbation, why they aren’t glorifying to God and how they can damage Christian relationships, and practical steps to avoid and/or fight those temptations.

I neared the end of the chapter and felt my heart beat faster, just a couple page turns away from what I hoped would be proof that I wasn’t as alone as I felt.

My hopes were dashed like a glass vase on concrete.

The “Porn for Girls” chapter opened with an introduction explaining how women struggle with “emotional pornography,” or the false expectation of intimacy we get after indulging in too much Hollywood romance. According to the writer, female hearts are what take the brunt of the temptation, not our bodies. Therefore we need to be mindful about the content we expose ourselves to, or else we’ll end up creating unfair standards for our future husbands (who are probably struggling with porn.)

My heart sank as I flipped through the pages and felt that sense of isolation creep back into my soul. There was one throwaway sentence in the middle of the chapter about how sure, maybe some girls struggle with visual porn, but this admission was followed by a heavy implication that these women are the minority.

The outliers.

The odd ones out.

With that experience in mind, Pulling Back the Shades — a little black book cleverly designed to look like the cover of its “inspiration,” for lack of a better word — is salve for my lonely soul. It’s like the authors are sweeping a flashlight beam across the skeletons huddling in my closet.

The book doesn’t change my life. I don’t stand up from that blanket and immediately call my youth group leader so I can pull back my own shades and show her those skeletons.

What happens is this: I give the book back to my friend, thank her for the recommendation, and eventually return to my own “G-rated” version of Fifty Shades behind locked doors. I continue to participate in anti-Christian Grey Facebook discussions, carrying on conversations with other Christians about how wrong it is to glorify and sexualize female bondage.

But in the back of my mind, in the furthest corner of that dusty closet, I gently tuck away the new knowledge this book has given me.

I may still be in the minority, but there are other outliers, other odd ones, other women like me.

And someone is starting a search party for the lost girls.

photo by klim sergeev

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