Fifty Shades Of Grey leads to an increase in women’s porn consumption, study says

A new study from the University of Waterloo has found that Fifty Shades Of Grey is motivating women to seek out explicit material online, a trend that is likely to continue when sexually frustrated viewers realize that the movie stops just short of showing Jamie Dornan’s penis.

Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies and presumed real cool gal Diana Perry interviewed 28 women ages 20-50 about their pornography consumption patterns, and found that reading the book makes women who don’t know their PornHubs from their YouPorns curious about what exactly is out there on the Internet. “[The book] is exposing them to a genre of material that they either didn’t know existed or they didn’t know that they liked,” Perry tells Salon. Much discussion of what exactly constitutes “erotica” as opposed to “porn,” and if that distinction really matters, follows, as well as a rebuttal of the notion that women prefer written erotica to dirty movies. “Some women seek out the literary stuff, but they are also going online and seeking out visual pornography,” Perry says.

This study of course has a very small sample size, and the X-rated surfing habits of a couple dozen Canadians doesn’t necessarily reflect the female population at large. But as the self-declared sophisticates of the world—ourselves included—put down Fifty Shades Of Grey, isn’t it a net positive for women previously unacquainted with their sexuality to explore it, even if that exploration involves a handcuff-wielding teddy bear? And to these women on a journey of discovery to find something hotter than that so-called “sexy” movie that didn’t even have any dick in it, we have only two words of advice: Incognito mode, ladies. Incognito mode.