Sex In Ireland 2012: A Hot Press Special
It isn’t just the popularity of 50 Shades Of Grey. In 2012, young Irish people are far more comfortable about themselves, their sexuality – and their sex toys – than ever before.
Anne Sexton, 28 Aug 2012
As I walk out of Miss Fantasia two young men stop me.
“Ooh cheeky!” laughs one, as his friend gives me a wink and a double-thumbs up.
Their attitude is not lascivious. Rather it is playful. Nor does it hurt that neither looks older than 25 and they’re both good-looking! I wink back and give them a cheeky smile.
It is an uplifting, positive experience making a nice change from the reaction of the older Garda who saw me walking in and gave me an unsettling look – part lust, part disgust.
Perhaps this is not so surprising. There has been a generational shift, as Miss Fantasia’s Jacinta tells me: young people are not ashamed to be seen in the shop, browsing merrily through the selection of outfits, lingerie, sex toys and DVDs with their heads held high.
Is our attitude to sex changing? Yes, and it has been for a while. While I doubt that the phenomenon of E.L. James’ 50 Shades Of Grey is directly responsible for this, the popularity of the book certainly reflects it. In that sense, 2012 may well be a watershed moment in our attitude to sex.
50 Shades Of Grey has been flying off the shelves at such a rate that publishers can’t keep up with the demand. According to David O’Callaghan, a buyer with Easons, over 20 million of the books have been sold worldwide, 3.4 million in the UK and around 85,000 in Ireland. That’s as I write. By the time
you read this, the figures are bound to be significantly higher.
An astonishing 1,645,422 copies sold in the UK in just 12 weeks. It took Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the best-selling paperback of all time, 46 weeks to achieve the same figure.
“In the last week in the UK alone, it sold one million copies,” says O’Callaghan. “They can’t print them fast enough. There are three key problems. They don’t have enough paper at the moment, they don’t have enough foil for the jacket and
they don’t have enough trucks, when they do get them printed.”
So who is buying 50 Shades?
Mostly women, says Bruno Batista of Chapters in Dublin, ranging in age from around 20 to 50. “We had book clubs come in and buy them as well. It’s selling faster than the Harry Potter books, the Twilight series or even The Da Vinci Code.”
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