20 Reasons Nancy Drew Needs Your Help More Than Anastasia Steele

Despite very real and horrific human rights violations escalating throughout the world, the United States is STILL focused on the personal safety and emotional and psychological health of fictional character Anastasia Steele. Is her relationship truly consensual? Can she ever really heal a deeply damaged lover? Will she, too, learn to pilot a helicopter to engage in international aid work with Angelina Jolie?

I don’t know.

But I do know you are not nearly preoccupied enough with the increasingly poor decision-making and ensuing threats to personal safety that Nancy Drew has engaged in over the years. How dare you overlook Nancy Drew, a national treasure. She solved The Secret of the Old Clock for you! FOR YOU!

Then you just turned your back on her to worry about more important things like the Vietnam War, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Beatles breaking up, Cambodian genocide, Ethiopian famine, the Iran-Contra scandal, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the growing AIDS crisis, the Gulf War, genocide in Africa, Yugoslavia, and 47 other places, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine school shooting, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, the sub-prime mortgage collapse, the debut of the iPhone, devastating earthquakes around the world, Arab Spring, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, same-sex marriage rulings, unaccompanied Central American minor refugees, Boko Haram kidnapping Nigerian girls, civil war in Syria, ISIS, Ebola, race relations, and various cat memes.

HOW DARE YOU?! Nancy Drew needs your full attention. She has needed it for decades. She is clearly damaged from years of reckless living with no one to look out for her and engage in endless debates about the fragility of her decision-making ability. How could you be so careless? Nancy Drew solved over 240 mysteries for you, and the least you could do is take a genuine interest in her well-being. You should be consumed with worry about her mental and emotional health and what the future holds for her.

Look how badly Nancy has needed your concern and advice:

Seriously folks, please stop worrying about Anastasia Steele. She is a fictional character residing in literary and cinematic worlds full of other fictional characters who are much more damaged, depraved, and dangerous, but it’s OK because NONE OF THEM ARE REAL.

You are all living, vibrant beings with great capacity to be agents of change in the real world—a world that needs your energy, creativity, thoughtfulness, and intelligence devoted to much more urgent matters. Please, let’s take the Fifty Shades of Grey debates and put them in the trash pile with the white-and-gold/blue-and-black dress and set them all on fire. I’m pretty sure your kids are peeing in a closet or doing something else that needs a greater share of your attention anyway.