I’m late on weighing in on this, but I wanted to get past the din of everyone’s ridicule of the book, Shades of Grey; to move beyond the predictable bewilderment and hostility that accompanies monster success like this. That it’s terribly written. That the heroine is silly, dumb, ignorant, naive. That the book isn’t even “real” porn, it’s pretend porn– “mommy porn,” which, apparently, means soft stuff for silly mothers who wouldn’t know good hard serious porn if their bodices were ripped by it. 

These assaults are not new. Erotic books are easy targets, but for hundreds of years the target was literary fiction– if written by women, that is. (I don’t see E.L. James has yet been accused of being “shrill” and “strident,” words historically used to belittle women with a voice, labels that deny women writers a right to power. I suspect Ms. James opted to let her heroine and herself be accused of idiocy, lousy writing and silliness over shrillness and stridency, due to the demands of Mr. Grey.)      

Women are eating  up copies by the hundreds-of-thousands. Why? It doesn’t matter; no one will believe their reasons anyway!  Freud’s contention that women don’t know what they want lives on, leaving critics and experts to jump in to guess. We’re tired of being the boss at work; we want to be bossed in the bedroom!  We need to be submissive because that’s our inherent nature! We miss the masterful man of yesteryear! We’re masochists at heart! The old “Dark Continent” idea about women’s desires prevails. As the late Carolyn Heilbrun wrote in her masterpiece, Writing a Woman’s Life, “It is hard to suppose women can mean or want what we have always been assured they could not possibly mean or want.”  

Nevertheless, I say it’s about power. Not power over (who is bigger, who is more dominant, who is richer, who is male), but power to….power to have her own narrative; to tell her own story of her own pleasure. She isn’t just chosen; she chooses; she does what she wants and she writes it. Here’s a woman who chooses to have sex that thrills but scares her. She chooses excitement, not marriage, as traditional dead-end plots would have young women do. She chooses to take very good care of herself too, which in this case happens to mean allowing herself to be very well cared for. She chooses to depart with the conventional, to go with her gut on some of Christian Grey’s sexual demands, and to reject those that repel her.  She negotiates her own desires carefully, and knows how to assure that they’re honored. (Whether we like her pleasure choices is beside the point, as is whether she signs that contract. It’s her story, not ours.) If power is “the ability to take one’s place in whatever discourse is essential to action, and the right to have one’s part matter,” and I’m quoting Heilbrun again, then the awkward little Anastasia Steele has, in choosing excitement and pleasure, wielded sensational power. 

Stories about women having power and control are pitifully few. Most—in porn as in life– are about pleasing, and the price paid for failing to please. Here is a woman’s story about mutual pleasure, which in my experience is how women define power in the first place.     

The post Shades of Women’s Power appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

The post A Special Video For Women’s History Month 2012 appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

Alta, yes; but somehow I’ve never associated Alta with the beehive state. Rather, its iconic status always seemed to stand alone, stately but stateless; the purists’s place, as Wildcat is the daredevil’s place or St. Anton, the ritzy one.

I can only attribute my ignorance to the kind of deprivation that leads to tunnel vision—I grew up in the east, went to school in the west. The questions were always, “Which do you like better, Vermont or Colorado?” “Stowe or Aspen?” Silly me: I just found a better question: How about Deer Valley, Canyons, Park City and Snowbasin—all of them, each one more wonderful than the next, all on the front of the Wasatch range (Alta, Snowbird and Solitude are on the back) and all close by–next week?

You fly into Salt Lake City and are on the slopes of any of the above in less than an hour—and that’s with no connecting plane deterred by cranky weather to frustrate you. I did the trip last month, and took advantage of Ski Utah’s celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Winter Olympics by going down on the bobsled—on the same track that Olympians go down. That’s me in the picture in fact, second from the front.

For anyone else craving this thrill ride, there’s still time. Public bobsled rides on ice are available through March 17th. You can make your bobsled reservations online at www.UtahOlympicLegacy.com, or by calling 435-658-4206. Bobsled sessions sell out fast, so reserve asap. Once the ice melts, Park City opens summer bobsled rides. The summer rides, on wheels on a cement track, begin the second week of June through Labor Day.

If you can’t make it yourself, here’s the story of my own bobsledding adventure, with a link to full article on Everett Potter’s Travel Report website. Enjoy!

Embedded in a Bobsled

By Dalma Heyn

On a chairlift at Park City a few weeks ago I sat between two young vacationing North Carolina businessmen about to take their first ski run of the day. It was a perfect day: Lots of snow; sunny but not too. They were talking about a bobsled ride that afternoon. They and eight other guys from their firm had laid down $200 apiece (as you can, too) for the privilege of hurtling down the same ice track the Olympic bobsled teams did in 2002. (Park City’s track, in fact, is the only one in the world that lets passengers start at the same point as the Olympic athletes do.)

“I did it last evening,” I volunteered softly.

“Omigod,” one of the men said through his blue bandana-covered face: “Was it amazing?”

“Yes. It was.”

“Amazing, like a superfast rollercoaster?”

“No, not like a rollercoaster.” The men were staring at me now, awaiting specific description of what, if not like the fastest rollercoaster in Christendom, it was like.

“Amazing, as in…” I started, and then took leave of my vocabulary, “as in….” I grabbed the only word I could find “…as in intense. More than intense, really. Intensely intense. Intensively intense.”

Read the full article at Everett Potter’s Travel Report.

The post My Bobsledding Adventure appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

I’d expected some resistance to the pleasure option, since, if marriage isn’t sobering, sanctified, and serious, what is? Ever since the Puritans turned the pursuit of happiness into a frenzy of righteous self-improvement, Americans have opted for betterment over pleasure. We are suspicious of enjoyment for its own sake (pleasure has to improve our blood sugar levels). It’s as though what’s good for you long ago won out over what feels good. But what was special about these readers who chose what we called “The Pleasure Marriage” is that, when I interviewed them individually some time later, they were still having fun. Their marriages, of the ones I was able to find out about, were the happiest.

Often the busiest couples made fun the highest priority. An Oregon woman wrote, “Yes, we work. Yes, we have a little girl. Yes, we care about her. But yes, we go away together, without her, as long as a week.” The price this wife pays for fun with her husband is the criticism of friends and family. “It’s as if,” wrote another Oregon woman who did the same, “having kids is incompatible with having a terrific time without them. Our friends who have spent the last fifteen years putting their children first every second feel very righteous about it–and outraged at us–but we see they’re not so happy now. We are.”

At the risk of sanctifying fun the way we’ve sanctified marriage itself,  let’s face it: people are fleeing marriage. And women are leading this flight. So, if more women married for fun (and risked the family’s and the culture’s censure) is it possible that more women would want to stay married? If more women had a great time with their husbands, would divorce stats—way over half of all divorces are initiated by wives—change?  If pleasing wives were put first on a list of Things to Do, would “wife” become a sexier word?

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

The post Fun appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

So, who is narrating the story of this photo in Victoria’s Secret window in Fairfield, Ct.?  (We added the type to illustrate where it might have been more appropriately shown) Odd  that the moment when women are powering ahead, storefronts and magazine covers  feature skinny young girls not only made  up to look like fashionable adults, but posing in a  way that clearly suggests  subjugation—as  does the girl above. Whose viewpoint is this, do  you think? Who’s telling girls about to inherit a legacy of unprecedented power that their  REAL power lies not in their education and their upcoming careers, but rather, in looking  like baby hookers,  pouting and bruised and with their arms up in their air as if in chains?  Are storeowners telling this story so they  can sell underwear? Perhaps. Photographers,  who want to make their mark? Maybe.

But come on, folks, it’s endemic. Who’s so scared of women’s power that all they can do is send messages to young girls that say, Forget about it, girls: What you’re good for is sex. JC Penney and Forever 21 are right now offering them tshirts that say, “I’m Allergic to Algebra” and “I’m Too Pretty to do Homework.” Cute?  Innocent? Not when you remember who is coming home with more bachelors and masters degrees. Not when you know who is the majority of the workforce. Ask yourself, Who doesn’t like those facts?

If we’re not interested in who is urging this role on girls, who is urging them to be anorexic and provocative and passive, we shouldn’t be surprised that even the youngest teenagers are gaining popularity by giving fellatio at parties to as many boys as possible. (Have you heard the new one? It’s called “Pterodactyling,” and, like its sad little cousin, Rainbowing, young girls do it to get “street cred.”)

When girls are afraid to be round, as women really are, they’re also afraid to be women; they’re afraid to be imperfect; they’re afraid grow up.  So who’s teaching them to back off from being round, powerful, assertive women?  Who’s telling them to shut up and back off? Who’s urging them to become underweight and ill and to think of themselves as nothing other than–oh how tired and tiring this is–sex objects?  And—really, please, ask yourself not only who, but WHY?

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

The post Who’s Sabotaging Teenage Girls? appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

I worry particualarly about women, vulnerable now to similar magical-thinking-solutions. I’m hearing young women talk about finding a guy to marry—quickly. I’m hearing older women talk about the futility of trying to reinvent themselves and instead figuring they’ll just hang on for dear life. As with trying to solve the world’s problems with faith and belief systems, trying to stay safe through all the old conventional means is dangerous to our collective psyche. When the economy is tight, and when men get scared, certain things happen like clockwork: There’s more domestic violence. Women tend to retreat; to return to the home, if not literally, then figuratively, as if the homely virtues ever paid off. We imagine that things were so much better long ago.

I’m feeling a backlash coming on. Before I read a new study showing that women are better off marrying earlier, or that men are happier with young women who aren’t focused on their careers,  or that corporate women are  leaving top jobs to “spend more time with the family,” I want to weigh in.  Throughout history, women have taken the heat for the culture’s fears, and in specific ways.  Whether they’ve left work so men returning from war can have the jobs, or raced into marriage before they’re “too old” or too successful, women have tended to feel powerless to avert the scary endings. and we’ve envisioned no bravery other than falling back into old roles.

Women, conventional goodness isn’t your friend. Maintaining your vision for the future is. If we do all the things we used to do when chaos frightened us with, oh, loss of love, loss of husbands, loss of social approval, loss of funds, loss of everythng, we lose something far more precious: We lose our hope for evolving as women. We mustn’t ever again let anything, especially a flagging economy, threaten our own ability to push through the confines of that old story, the Romance Plot, the one that hurls women back into the kitchen.  Yes, we all yearn for security, but it never did come in the form of  old ideas, old roles, old habits.  Don’t idealize what never was. We’ve spent years setting free a new narrative, one that promises forward movement in the home, in our relationships, inside ourselves. The old story that we fantasize as being magically problem-free, actually brought more women lifelong depression than it did safety and security.

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

The post The Coming Backlash appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

An interviewer not long ago asked the creator of “Mad Men,”  Matthew Weiner, whether he felt Don Draper’s fall from power and failed marriage was a result of his basic, underlying badness–a badness like, say, Tony Soprano’s.

Not at all, he replied. Draper, unlike Soprano, “has a lot of admirable qualities and is basically a moral person, and he makes mistakes. His morality is conflicting. It’s situational, which is the disease of the 21st century.”

There it is.

Today’s Times asks researchers why masters of the universe (and Draper is the tv example of one) screw up and dissemble and hurt everybody they love.  Some researchers say it’s testosterone. Some say it’s power. Some say it’s a fusion of ambition and desire. Some say it’s a control system gone awry in the brain. While I look forward to more such answers in the future—to, say, why sports champions hit the top of their game and suddenly decide to cheat; what prompts  politicians to have children with their household help;  why billionaires defraud and ruin the financial lives of their clients,  I imagine we’ll eventually find something pretty dull. Like, that they feel they occupy a realm above the law and without consequences. And that they feel frighteningly secure in that rarefied air, but, armed with their raging testosterone and entitlement, get itchy to move on to a way cooler place.

And when they ‘re under pressure to say, as Anthony Weiner did, “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I believe him, but alas, I feel nothing. When they eventually feel bad and start apologizing to their wives and families, I yawn. At least  Bernie Madoff  has the courage of his sick convictions. From his jail cell he reportedly announced, “Fuck my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.”

Yeah, well, whatever.

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

The post Weiner’s Reasons? Schwarzenegger’s Apology? Do We Care? appeared first on Dalma Heyn.

I’ve long been curious about the dearth of pleasure we experience in this, the most gratification-focused culture on earth, as are the many women I’ve spoken with over the years in my books.  I understand the reasons for it now, thanks to the extensive work I’ve done with brilliant friends and colleagues who have shared my passionate involvement in the issue.  Elizabeth DeBold, bestselling author, PhD. and EnlightenNext Magazine senior editor, some time ago provided me with  so much insight and understanding  as a result of her own work, and her amazing book, Mother/Daughter Revolution: From Betrayal to Power. Our dialogues then were indispensible for my writing of Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives. We, along with other brilliant women concerned with the issue–Carol Gilligan, Deb Tolman, Dana Crowley Jack, Annie Gottlieb, the late Jean Baker Miller, to name a few– felt ourselves to be a kind of underground posse, excavators digging out the truth about what women want (and girls; and men; and couples) when the language for our desires seemed as deeply buried as the recognition of it was to Freud,  and we set about to dig for the reasons why our culture has been so hellbent on obscuring them.

I’m thrilled  that Elizabeth DeBold and I are  doing what we’ve so long wanted to do: discussing this and  many other deeply felt issues women face today, in a dialogue at M.I.T. in Boston (77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA; 7:30 pm) next Friday night, June 24th. It’s called “Women Surfing the Edge of Change: Life, Love and Work in our Confusing Time.”   We hope you’ll join us.  For more detailed information and to register, click here.

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

The post Women Surfing the Edge of Change appeared first on Dalma Heyn.