Julie and Julia Blogger Now an S&M Icon

Difficult as it may be to imagine, blogger-turned-author Julie Powell—played by the adorable Amy Adams in the recent Julie and Julia—has become the new poster child for S&M, thanks to her latest book. "For your average reader of Julie and Julia,” Cleaving—which follows her foray into apprentice butchering as well as her experimental, extramarital affair—might be “a little disconcerting,” she tells Salon.

She included the kinky parts to explore the question of, “Why this kind of sex? Everybody thinks about getting tied up and tickled with a feather every now and then—but in terms of that real craving, where was that coming from?” she says, adding that the two seemingly disconnected topics of the book do share something: “I think that the butchering has the same kind of uncomfortable dynamic. There are knives; the men are very strong; the meat is dead.”
(More Julie & Julia stories.)