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Joey LeDrew
Professor Malcolm Campbell
English 1103
2/15/2015
Topic Proposal: Fifty Shades of Green: Does Sex Sell, and at What Cost?
Introduction/Overview
Prostitution, love hotels, Fifty Shades of Grey, anime and manga. What do each of these
have in common? They are all various forms of money making giants all around the world. And
they also each have the connotation of sex associated with them. For my Extended Inquiry
Project I want to delve deeper into these various businesses and forms of media with the burning
question of Why are these successful, what cultural impacts and social stigmas do they have?
Now to on to the math behind these economic cash dumps. The movie adaptation to the
widely popular (among women age 40 and up) Fifty Shades of Grey while only having just come
out this past weekend (February 13th-15th) it has already raked in an estimated $91 million
dollars. That is insane, when compared to things with a much more light hearted theme, like the
Spongebob movie, which only got a third of Fifty Shades sales this weekend. To put this into
perspective, this $91 million is more than MVP National Football League Quarterback Peyton
Mannings salary combined over 6 years. Movies with heavy sex related content have been very
successful as of late, with the popularity of Matthew Mcconaugheys Magic Mike grossing $167
million with a budget of only $7 million. Its also spawned a sequel, aptly named Magic Mike 2,
coming out in the near future.

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Love hotels. The (not so) discrete place where you may go with your potential
booty call to do love things. These magnificently named and designed hotels are incredibly
popular in Japan, a country often known for its over sexualized themes in literature and movies.
Love hotels started in 1968 in Osaka, Japan. They are often used as short-stay hotels, meaning
that if you miss a train or need a place to shower and freshen up before a meeting, you rent a
room for a few hours. They are also fairly cheap, with rates such as $20 for 2 hours. Love hotels
are a huge business in Japan, with there being over 25,000 of them, visited over 500 million
times a year, and raking in a whopping $40 billion dollars. With there being so many hotels,
there develops a sort of competitive nature amongst those who create them. This has allowed
many whacky themed hotels to be birthed from this competition, such as a Hello Kitty S&M
themed hotel, a very precise replica of the Queen Elizabeth, and even a Jurassic Park themed
hotel.
Prostitution is the worlds oldest profession John Marston. This quote, while
paraphrased and from a fictional video game character, is actually quite interesting. I highly
doubt it is the worlds oldest profession, but it is certainly close to being it. It seems that when
prostitution was legal, it was a viable, and profitable job for women and men alike to have. Now,
however, prostitution is illegal in almost all of the United States, except certain counties in
Nevada. That certainly doesnt stop it from happening though, just watch Cops. According to a
2004 study, 15% of all men in the U.S. have paid for sex. The business of prostitution is a big
one. Nearly everyone has a piece in it too, such as gang and government owned brothels,
massage parlors that serve as fronts for things like escort services, and even the Internet, with
reputable websites such as Craigslist having an Adult Services section at one point in time.

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Initial Inquiry Question(s)

Does sex really sell? Is the question I have narrowed my project down to so far,
however there are other side questions, like what cultural affects do these businesses have, and
should they be legal. But for right now, this is what I have concluded to as a good inquiry
question.
My Interest in this Topic
My interest for this topic stems from a few other interests. For example, I really like
Japanese culture, and often watch videos on YouTube that show various aspects of culture in
great detail, and most often times with comedy. So last Summer I watched a video that talked
about Love Hotels, and I was shocked to see that it was as big of a business as it was. I had
previously known that they existed, but I never knew how prominent they were. Also, in regards
to anime and manga, I like these things a fair bit, and read an article from CNN calling all of it
child pornography, and that it shouldnt be exempt from Japans pornography laws, but that it
only is because manga sales account for over 20% of all book sales in Japan. So I really like the
business and law aspects of these types of things. These things are also popular topics of debate,
such as should prostitution be legal? and such.
Next Steps
For my next steps as to where I should find research, I am going to go out and get a
prostitute and ask her for her rates Just kidding. In all seriousness, I think just doing more
research in regards to each individual topic (i.e. love hotels, anime and manga, romance novels
and movies, prostitution, etc.) and get more statistics and fun facts. Ill also ask people their
opinions on things like the legalization of prostitution and different peoples perceptions of the
business of sexual things.

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Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_United_States
http://womensenews.org/story/prostitution-and-trafficking/000922/prostitution-not-victimless-careerchoice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3HAhvYynnc
http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/box-office-%E2%80%98fifty-shades-of-grey%E2%80%99explodes-with-record-breaking-dollar817-million/ar-AA9rrWY?ocid=ansVariety11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Mike#Release