Welcome to the Bro Blog! “Fifiy Shades of Grey” is the new literary trend. Women are the biggest consumer of Christian Grey’s sultry allure and the men have something to say about that!
Check them all out and enjoy:)
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J.P. Bowgen
Mike Mallazzo
Brandon Wilson
Ben Shartar
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I don’t know much about “Fifty Shades of Grey”, but what I do know is that it’s an erotic novel about a college student and a businessman who delve into some pretty sketchy sexual encounters. It may be weird, but the novel clearly has some momentum behind it – it sold quicker than Harry Potter. You know what that means? We have a very “sex-oriented” population. That’s not a bad thing at all, but consider the type of sexual encounters in this novel. Bondage and discipline? Sadism and masochism? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good time, but those things don’t scream “good time” to me.
That should be evidence enough to show that this novel isn’t realistic at all. I’m sure there is the occasional black sheep in every herd, but this kind of BDSM obsession is few and far between. It gives women the impression that men just want sex, and violent sex as well. That’s not true. Sex is enjoyable, yes, but if anyone ever tells you to sign a contract for a platonic BDSM relationship, you should run. No good can come from a relationship like that. Honestly, what happened to self-respect? This novel only makes men look weak by attempting to make them look strong. There is nothing wrong with having a meaningful relationship – one that doesn’t involve beating each other with a belt. We all have enough social awareness to understand a typical male-female interaction. This novel progresses too quickly and strangely to be written from realistic encounters and experiences.
In my opinion, E.L. James is the Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) of erotic novels. She molds a good story in her novels, but her writing is very poor and born out of fantasy. It seems that she is breeding a feminist culture to expose men for what she thinks we are: petty. Men can be petty, but this novel’s popularity worries me because it has the power to create a society that advocates gender inequality. Believe me when I say this book is full of false impressions. Don’t take E.L. James’ story as reality. If there is one moral to this story, it’s to forge relationships from something with more substance than BDSM. It’s a lot less painful, I promise. Â
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Go to the next page for Mike’s bro blog!
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Happy October Ladies,Â
    The moment you’ve been waiting patiently for all summer is finally here. No, Victoria’s Secret isn’t having a 90 percent off sale. No, Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t standing shirtless outside the arch but this is far more exciting. The time has come for the bro blog to give the definitive male perspective on “Fifty Shades of Grey”. So read on to discover the questions that have burned inside of you ever since our good friend Christian first started grooving the keys to his handcuffs.
 I’ll happily admit that I didn’t actually read the book. Doing so would diminish my status as a “bro” almost as much as confessing that I think O.A.R. is a really bad band. However, I consider myself qualified to write on this topic for a couple of reasons. First off, I am a true connoisseur of romance novels, my three favorite books are Anna Karenina, Gone With the Wind, and Best Lesbian Erotica: Volume 23,though not necessarily in that order. Secondly, I’ve read the Wikipedia plot summary and read several excerpts from the book over my girlfriend’s shoulder and over the shoulder of pretty much every girl that sat next to me on a train or plane over the past year. Most importantly though, I’ve listened to this guy read the climax (pun absolutely intended) of the book aloud about 1,000 times making me just about ready to send my review to the New York Times.Â
 I can easily sum up the male college student’s reaction to “Fifty Shades of Grey” in one word – unimpressed. We’ve been spoiled by free porn ever since our creepy friend came over with his dad’s old magazines and Girls Gone Wild DVDs when we were 13. The fact that you girls are paying for it will mystify me to the end of my days. And it doesn’t even have pictures! That’s the weakest sauce I’ve ever heard of – and being a proud Italian-American, I’m quick to thing that a lot of sauce I’m exposed to is weak. Furthermore, we’re students at a supposedly elite university. It’s almost a requirement to be a bit of a pretentious snob for quality literature. When you got that Northwestern acceptance letter, it came with the pre-condition that you had to give up your allegiance to Team Jacob and pick up some boring Charles Dickens novel. A great man named Brian Bouldrey aside, our English department would be horrified to find out that the longest book you’ve ever read is “Fifty Shades”. Besides, there will be a movie soon anyway with Channing Tatum; why bother to read the book when you can see that beautiful physique on the big screen?Â
 My biggest problem with “Fifty Shades of Grey” is that it makes guys like us downright confused. You ladies all claim to be turned on by Christian’s sauciness but my gut tells me that if any of us tried any of his shenanigans, we’d find ourselves in handcuffs being interrogated by some angry feminist cop. So what I need from all you fine ladies is for you to meet in whatever secret place girl code is written and write the official girl code for what you’d like us to incorporate from “Fifty Shades” into our romantic routines. Until y’all do that we can’t spend hours of our life agonizing over how to decipher it. On behalf of my fellow bros, we’d be happy to learn from Christian if it would make you lovely ladies happy. Until then, I’ll keep my chains and whips in my amazon.com shopping cart until Rihanna finally realizes that I’m the man of her dreams.
Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,
Mike
Read what New Blogger Brandon has to say about 50 Shades of Grey!
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 The collective pulse of the bro seems to beat rapidly when reacting to any mentioning of “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Women, however, seem to display a similar acceleration of beats per minute in reacting to the book but due to an entirely opposite emotion. Yesterday, while wandering about my dorm, I stopped every passerby I could and, without introduction, pointed at him/her and blurted “Fifty Shades of Grey’—thoughts.” The overwhelmingly dominant female response was positive, and it always seemed to include, in some form, the resounding phrase, “Oh. My. Gawd.” Additionally, some popular adjectives the women tended to use included: “hot,” “steamy,” “informative,” and “erotic.” One source who prefers to remain unnamed remarked, “I like, loved it, but like I also hated it, because I just don’t like trust guys anymore.”Â
 For men, on the other hand, the conventional reaction didn’t consist of many words; instead, I counted six incidents in which upon stopping and asking I received a look that can be most closely associated with the way one would react to tasting sour milk. A couple of the quotes I was able to jot down were “so bad,” and “not chill.” But to my question, “Did you read the book?” not a single bro responded “yes” (assuming all told the truth).Â
 Granted, as a bro, I don’t much appreciate being perceived as irreparably untrustworthy by the women around me due simply to a work of fiction. In fact, it pains me to hear responses similar to the one above from the poor girl who has lost her faith in men. At the same time though, I can’t say I know many bros who aren’t at least slightly intrigued by the sound of “steamy,” “erotic,” or most of all, “informative.” So, with those descriptions of the book in mind, why haven’t we given “Fifty Shades” a shot? Is it the fear of being judged by passersby when they glance at the title of the book in our hand? Is it the stigma society has stamped onto it? Truthfully my answer to both would be, uh, yea.Â
You might infer from my surveying of peers and the general scarcity of personal opinions about “Fifty Shades” in this post that I haven’t read the book myself. But that’s exactly what this post is about. I am reaching out to fellow bros and in a way to myself, urging us to give this thing a shot and see if we can’t get as much out of it as so many girls have. Perhaps once someone passes me with a copy in my hand, then walks 100 feet and sees you reading one, then walks down a flight of stairs and sees your bro also reading one, we can stomp the stigma and be able to engage in intellectual discourse about “Fifty Shades of Grey”. How else are you planning on striking a conversation with that girl you’ve been crushing on? “What’s your major?” At that point, you’ve already lost her.
 A good bro is comprised of many qualities—but closed-mindedness is not one of them. Who am I to be hypocritical? Until now, I would never bat an eye at the mere prospect of reading this book. But now I think I’m going to. It would be nice if some of you bros did the same. It could pay dividends.Â
Ben’s got something to say… keep going!!!
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Ooooh, good question Anonymous Reader! It can be tough to figure out just what that smile means or what his posture means about how he feels towards you. In fact, there are an abundance of books and articles written all about this subject by people who are REALLY smart. But I am not one of those guys. Instead I will just say my rambling thoughts and experiences on the subject of that fine line between extremely flirty and “Wanna get out of here?”
So guys flirt. Obvious, I know but it is the premise of everything I am about to say. I flirt with pretty much everyone. I have kind of fallen back upon a friendly and somewhat flirtatious tone with all girls I meet and am close with, and I even faux flirt with some guys I know as a joke, but guess what? I definitely am not tryna start something with everyone I flirt with, that would just be absurd and I assume notorious for my reputation. However, some people might be asking themselves what is flirting? Flirting is a silly mating ritual developed between humans in today’s society in which a guy/girl must impress the other individual in such a way to create a spark of interest, and every guy has a different tecnique or method. Look on the internet or youtube if you do not know what flirting looks like because I cannot help you there. But just because he flirts with you
Do you want to know the sure fire way if he likes you? If he makes a move. I know, I just blew your mind with that piece of brilliance. But chances are if a guy likes you, he will make a move. What does this mean for you though? Well guys can still be nervous creatures, so give a guy some encouragement. If you think a guy is flirting with you, flirt back a bit and see what happens. Sometimes a guy is just waiting for some sign it is okay to make the first move, and I promise it will seem right in the moment. The worst thing I have experienced is girls who feign disinterest because I don’t play that game and I just end up leaving her alone and not making a move. It is a stupid technique and we go to Northwestern, are we stupid? No we are not, we are intelligent young leaders of the future so let’s act like young adults here.
If nothing I have said here works there is always the new age thing about just making the first move yourself. Or if that is too much for you then you can always gently force his hand (that is an idiom and not a sexual innuendo). I will not give you the details about how to do this because the best is for you to do whatever you feel comfortable with. I will tell you this much, I have had girls make the first move with me and it worked so don’t be scared of failure, because failing without trying is way worse than failing by virtue of not failing.
Oh and please please please do not read into things too much. That is absolutely the worst thing ever. Sometimes if he smiles at you it might just be a smile and not a secret sign that he wants to marry you and grow old together, that is just crazy.
Flirt well my friends and I apologize if my advice leads to anything that hurts your feelings later down the road but I do not claim responsibility for that.