grey

I’ve been mulling about this prompt all day - arguing with myself about what there really is to say, and what I prefer my prompts to be about. If this is to be both a 100 words prompt, and a reflection on the year, then I have to be honest – for me, the colour grey has been sullied this year by the ridiculous popularity of a very poorly written piece of smarm.

I have so much to say about it, and yet all of these strong opinions exist without my having read the book. I value my time, and my reading time in particular, too much to read crap. I don’t mean that I don’t read erotica, or even porn. I enjoy well-written erotica as much as I enjoy any other good writing. But despite, or perhaps because of, all the hub-bub, I cannot bear to waste a moment actually reading this book to do a full review. And yet, I feel like it has somehow subtle infected my life and for that I have to say something. 

What bothers me most is that this illiterate tripe is promoted to women and labelled as ‘mommy porn’[I could write a whole separate post on how obnoxious and offensive that term is, and perhaps I will later], women swoon and post not-too-subtle posts in social media about how this crap writing makes them swoon, and as a woman I despair for my kind. We deserve better. We deserve better writing than Twilight fan fiction full of clichés, strained metaphors, idiocy, and monotonous repetition, and we deserve better plots than being beaten into submission. If you really want to empower women's sexuality, as so many of the people who like this crap argue, wouldn't you write about a woman being dominant in her sexuality? Bah

I actually don’t know that I can write a coherent post about this. Everything I read just makes me cringe. My point is, I’ve always thought the colour grey was beautiful. Subtle, mysterious, comforting, deep. Previously, the phrase ‘shades of grey’ brought to my mind the subtle dance that happens where the ocean meets the sky. Or the million warming tones of a pigeon’s wing. Or the soft warmth of a wool sweater. How do you rename and reclaim a colour?