'Fifty Shades of Grey' may drive women to porn: Study

Toronto, Feb 23
A small yet significant study has revealed that some women turned to watching pornography for the first time after reading the best-seller "Fifty Shades of Grey".

"Several women [we interviewed] were hopping in for the first time to pornography or sexually explicit material that were written by women for women," researcher Diana Parry from University of Waterloo in Ontario said in a Salon report.

For her study, Parry interviewed 28 women in their 20s to 50s about their pornography habits -- and she found that women in the group increased their consumption of sexually explicit content after reading the book.

"It is exposing them to a genre of material that they either did not know existed or they did not know that they liked," she said.

According to a previous study in the US, young adult women who read "Fifty Shades of Grey" were more likely to exhibit signs of eating disorders and had a verbally abusive partner than non-readers.

Moreover, women who read all three books in the erotic romance series were at an increased risk of engaging in binge drinking and having multiple sex partners.

"All are known risks associated with being in an abusive relationship, much like the lead character Anastasia is in 'Fifty Shades'," said study author Amy Bonomi from the department of human development and family studies at Michigan State University in the study that appeared in the Journal of Women's Health.

The erotic drama has been adapted into a movie and is reaping good results, having so far earned over $400 million worldwide.