The Pious Pornographers

For years I have been bumbling along in the naive belief that the women's magazines were devoted solely to such matters as how to chintz up the living room and get a cake to rise. But it seems I was wrong – the most worrisome problem facing milady's monthly gazettes is how to muss up the marriage bed and keep one's mate aroused.

This belated discovery was as accidental as it was painful, and resulted from my having bitten down on a stray piece of shell in the lobster Newburg, cracking the filling out of my favorite molar. My face throbbed like an empty oil drum in a West Indian steel band, and I sat up all night drawing what comfort I could from a beaker of lukewarm bourbon.

Sometime between midnight and dawn, I went out to the kitchen to renew the prescription, and found a pile of ladies' magazines stashed away in a bottom cabinet – things that my cleaning woman had apparently salvaged from the dumbwaiter to help while away the siesta hours she spends at my apartment each week.

In my lonely agony, I leafed through an old Redbook on the off chance that I might find a recipe for Newburg that didn't call for little pieces of sea-shell, but there wasn't a recipe in the book. The nearest I could come to anything that applied to my problem was an article called How Safe Are School Lunches? and an ad for a boneless bra. There was a piece on Jackie Gleason and a picture-essay on The Doctors Who Fell in Love, but the one that made me lean against the Kelvinator and start reading was My Husband Avoids Making Love to Me, a Young Wife's Story, as told to Michael Drury.

"The problem in my marriage is that my husband doesn't make love to me as often as I would like," the Young Wife began, and went on to explain that she had been married for four years to an accountant named Ken, who was always bringing work home from the office: "What does a wife do when her husband sits at his desk all evening, kisses her perfunctorily at 11 o'clock and goes right back to his books and papers?" she moaned. "I've cried out my need on his shoulder, but he only listens and pats me and does nothing. It's humiliating. Once I got so angry that I threw a hairbrush across the room at him."

I felt like throwing a hairbrush at him, too. How Ken could sit fiddling with his debits and credits while June was pawing the nap off the broadloom, I'll never know. She was only asking for a few minutes of his time – no longer than it takes the average accountant to make a simple cross-entry.

"One night I said quite early in the evening that I thought I'd go to bed," she confided. "The truth was that I was exceptionally tired, but he must have taken this as a seductive hint on my part because about nine o'clock he went down in the basement and began painting the summer furniture."

At this point, I began to suspect that either June had been giving herself home permanents with roquefort-and-garlic dressing, or Ken had a friend downtown. Things went from bad to worse, until: "Finally, just last month we had a real fight. Ken came home one night and told me he was going to form a small band with five other men.... He said they were going to play one night a week just for fun and maybe fill engagements now and then.

"I blew up. 'What did you marry me for?' I cried. 'I never see you as it is; you work three or four nights a week. You never show me any affection any more unless I ask you to. You get angry if I play with your ears, or even kiss you. Now you want to form a dance band and go out the other nights.'

"'It isn't a dance band,' he said coldly. 'A few guys want a little relaxation; that's all. I work hard; I'd like to have a little fun. As for love-making, if you'd drop the subject and quit treating it as an obligation, I might feel a lot more like doing it ...'"

And so on, until it seemed their voices would waken the whole house. Though it was none of my business, I couldn't help thinking that June might have gone a long way toward solving her problem if she had just quit playing with Ken's ears. Things like that can ruin a marriage, and to judge from the stuff I read that night, most marriages are pretty shaky affairs.

Picking up a Ladies' Home Journal, I found that it devoted a regular feature to matrimonial rescue work, with a special disaster squad headed by Paul Popenoe, Sc.D. "My Husband Wanted Me And The Other Woman Too. He Needed Us Both," the cover announced in a coast-to-coast whisper. "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" And on page 69 there was an action photo of hubby and the Other Woman locked in a stand-up embrace, while wifey peeked in at the door. "On Thanksgiving I walked into the kitchen unexpectedly. Paul and Florence were in each other's arms," the caption said in horrified italics. And to make an old story piquant, the article was headed by a two-speech dramatic prologue, suitable for presentation by Little Theatre groups who couldn't afford the royalty on Seven Keys to Baldpate.

"He: Perhaps I could have resigned myself to having little sex in my marriage. But I cannot get along without companionship.

"She: Paul's hours are long and irregular. I work hard and get tired. By the time he eats dinner I'm practically dead on my feet."

At the mention of the word "sex," I began to realize that the subject wasn't exactly taboo in the ladies' magazines. In fact, they almost seemed to welcome it. To fill the reader in on a marriage headed for in-law trouble, for instance, another young wife felt obliged to lay bare the secrets of her wedding day to the whole April Journal audience: "My bridal gown was ordered from New York ... we had a caterer, and so on. My mother and I planned every detail – and I mean every detail – with infinite care. But just before we left for the church, I suddenly began to menstruate. Sheer nervousness was responsible." And, when his turn came, the lucky groom grumbled: "Susan probably told you about our honeymoon, but maybe she didn't mention that I spent a good part of our first year sleeping on the living room sofa. Susan was terrified by the physical side of love. Whenever I would approach her, she was likely to become upset or to be so terribly tense that often the result was a nervous illness of some kind. For at least six months, outbreaks of hives kept her miserable."

Looking into the May Journal, I soon discovered that Susan wasn't the only woman who could take sex or leave it alone. In his monthly Making Marriage Work feature, Clifford R. Adams, Ph.D., quoted a couple of wives who would just as soon paint the porch chairs. "I couldn't ask for a better husband, but I don't like him when we have sex," one confessed. "Occasionally I can tolerate it, and a few times I've almost enjoyed it, but usually it sickens me. I don't know how I can take it when he's home all the time."

Perhaps in the interest of restoring editorial balance, a money-problem case on page 91 was illustrated by a shot of a bathrobed brunette leaning over a bed, tugging at her husband's shoulder. "Long ago I lost any physical appeal I ever had for Ted," she explained in the caption. "It has been months since he has shared my bed. Once, although I hated myself for being so unfeminine, I stopped beside his bed. He pretended to be asleep."

To help stem this rising tide of incompatability, which threatened to swamp the entire issue, the Journal called in Dr. Abraham Stone, of marriage-manual fame, to tell Joan Younger What Wives Don't Know About Sex.

After establishing the need for sex education, and the necessity for modern woman to shed her acquired inhibitions if she ever hoped to know the "joy of sex union," Dr. Stone and Miss Younger began to close in on the subject with a series of questions and answers that read like an entrance exam at Honeymoon Tech.

"Q. What are the chief differences between a woman's and a man's sexual reactions?

"A. There are several basic differences between men and women in this respect. The man, for instance, is more readily aroused sexually by psychologic stimuli, and he needs little direct stimulation and little preliminary love play. The sex union is the culmination of his drive. For the woman, the major sources

(continued on page 62)Pious Pornographers(continued from page 26) of arousal and satisfaction are the tenderness, the touch, the caress, the kiss, the embrace that is a part of love-making. In marriage, she craves this kind of attention as evidence that she is wanted and desired by her husband. Satisfactions from actual sex union may only come much later to her. Then again, usually a man cannot function sexually until he is fully aroused, while a woman may receive the man at anytime, even if she has little or no desire... Another difference is the way men and women react at the completion of their relations together. The husband, for physiological reasons, may feel tired and want to relax and rest: the woman, less fatigued and more relaxed, may wish to continue the affectionate intimacies and caresses. She is likely to misunderstand and resent her husband's lack of continued interest and his desire to fall asleep..."

Humming a snatch of Hello, Young Lovers, Wherever You Are, I skipped to the next question.

"Q There, is so much talk about the 'cold woman' today. Is frigidity in women really so common?

"A. Well, there are different categories of frigidity. There are some women who have no sex desire at all. They have no sexual appetite and no pleasure from the sex relation. They are entirely indifferent to sex and submit to their husbands merely as a duty. Such instances of complete frigidity are comparatively rare. Lesser degrees of sexual coldness are, however, more frequent. These women may become sexually aroused now and then, but the intensity of their desire is on a minor scale. Their coldness may be due to the psychological inhibitions we have already spoken about, to physiological deficiencies, or, more often to Continued on page 126."

I leafed through to page 126 and continued reading: "but you're the first girl I've ever met with a mobile nose.'

"Suddenly she had to laugh. 'Now there's a remark for a girl to dream over at sunset.'

"He grinned. 'Look – why don't we sit down somewhere? There's no law at a party that says you can bend the elbow but not the knee.'

"They sat down on a love seat that had been pushed into a corner. They began to talk. Sally forgot where she was. She was vaguely conscious of dim figures moving thickly in the background, and..."

I was vaguely conscious that I had somehow wandered into the wrong column of print. Sure enough, it was a short story called You Must Meet Noel. But even here love came in for a clinical treatment. Besides having a mobile nose and being "vaguely conscious of dim figures moving thickly in the background," Sally found that Noel's voice "gave her a queerly soft, clogged feeling in her chest."

As the story rode on to its inevitable clinch ending, with the sweet threat of nuptials in the offing, I wondered how Sally and Noel would make out in their marital relations. Would she break out in hives every time Noel approached her with "the touch, the caress, the kiss," and other "preliminary love play," or would she want "to continue the affectionate intimacies and caresses" to the point where Noel would end up forming a small combo to play engagements at Birdland?

Personally, I'd had all the sex I wanted for one night – but not quite enough to fill out an issue of the Ladies' Home Journal. There was still Tell Me Doctor, a monthly mail-order dispensary conducted by Dr. Henry B. Safford under a shingle that featured a snapshot of a Troubled Woman facing a Trusted Physician in his office. Her head was lowered as she pinched the bridge of her nose in distress. His brow was furrowed, and his right hand half extended, as though he were either trying to make a difficult point or collect an old bill. "Every month I have a good deal of pain," the Troubled Woman was quoted as saying. "Could that possibly have anything to do with my being unable to have a baby?"

"'As you know,' the doctor began, 'I have made a very careful examination--'

"'And you found something? Oh, I do hope there is something you can do.'

"'Yes. I believe there is. Suppose you sit back and listen while I explain. It will be quite a long story because I'll have to give you a little lecture on anatomy and physiology.

"'I wonder if you know that the uterus, or womb, is an organ about three inches long, composed of smooth muscle fibers and suspended by several sets of ligaments within the cavity of the pelvis. It is shaped like a small, inverted pear, the lower third being called the cervix, or neck, and the more prominent part the body.'

" 'I learned that in Freshman Hygiene,' remarked the young woman.

" 'Excellent! What may not have been emphasized is the fact that this "Pear" is not perfectly symmetrical. Even in the normal state it always has a slight forward bend.'

" 'Why is this, Doctor?'

" 'I can't answer that. It is simply an anatomical fact and it seems to work out pretty well in the scheme of reproduction...' "

The upshot of it all was that "In a normally placed uterus, the cervix lies in contact with the seminal pool after a normal intercourse," whereas in this young lady's case it didn't. "Your uterus is acutely bent forward – so that it lies practically in the shape of a letter U on its side," the doctor told her. "In scientific terms, you have what is called acute uterine anteflexion."

As the rosy dawn came to kiss the kitchen window, I found myself wondering how long this sort of thing had been going on. Certainly no one could quarrel with the idea of trying to improve the nation's sexual relations, but with so much emphasis on malfunction and misery the general effect struck me as being a trifle morbid. In not one of the back issues could I find a single case of sexual contentment or a cervix with a smile. Could it have been because there weren't any to be found? Or was it because testimonials to sexual happiness were considered indecent – possibly even lewd?

By approaching the subject with a medical license and a little black bag. there were clearly no limits to how far the ladies' books could go, and there seemed to be a strange double standard by which such "frankness" was judged. Consider, for example, what the reaction might be if a popular men's magazine were to publish the following dialogue:

"I wonder if you know that the penis, or male member, is an elastic, extensible organ of variable length composed almost entirely of cavernous tissue capable of becoming turgid and hardening into a state of bone-like erection. In repose, it is shaped somewhat like a pendulant banana, the fore part of which is called the glans."

"I learned that in Freshman Hygiene," remarked the young man.

"Excellent! What may not have been emphasized is the fact that this 'banana' does not hang perfectly, straight. Even in the normal state it always has a tendency to dangle a little to the left or to the right."

"Why is this, Doctor?"

"I can't answer that. It is simply an anatomical fact and it seems to work out pretty well in the scheme of reproduction. Your member, however, is not only off plumb, but has an acute right hook – so that it hangs in the shape of an inverted question mark," the doctor explained, drawing a large, limp ¿ in the air. "In scientific terms, you have what is called acute interrogatory ante-flexion."

Woozy, by this time, from the highoctane combination of anteflexion and (continued overleaf.)Pious Pornographers(continued from page 62) bourbon, I bundled the whole stack back on the dumbwaiter and toddled off to bed, making certain to set the alarm so as not to miss my dental appointment on the morrow.

The dentist's waiting room was crowded the following morning. I squeezed in on the sofa between a teenaged girl and a white-haired grandmother type, both of whom were engrossed in magazines selected from the smorgasbord on the office table. The old girl was up to her pearl earrings in What Kinsey Is Doing Now, in the May Redbook, and the girl to my right was browsing through the Special Beautiful Women Issue of Cosmopolitan. Having flipped through Have a New Figure by Summer, which was illustrated with four-color shots of a nude with, apparently, no nipples, drying her face and knees, she turned back to the front of the book and settled down to read Sexual Problems of Beautiful Women – possibly against the day when the dentist would remove the braces from her teeth.

Now that I was hip to the sick, sad sex kick of the ladies' magazines. I bypassed National Geographic and reached for the current Ladies' Home Journal. A young June bride gazed hopefully from the pink-and-blue cover. Her veil and gown were as chaste and white as the bouquet she clutched to her fragile bosom. A touching and uplifting sight, one calculated to soften the heart of the sourest cynic and fill him with a warm glow of optimism and Positive Thinking. Imagine the letdown I experienced, then, upon opening the issue at random to page 109 and being bluntly asked, Can This Marriage Be Saved?

" 'Now my second marriage is on the rocks,' 31-year-old Ivy said in a flat, dulled voice. A handsome, big-boned woman, she sat hunched in an attitude of weary despair."

And in the lower right-hand corner was a fast-lens photo of Ivy hurling a cup of coffee in her husband's face. "Kip suspected Ivy's carelessness with the hot coffee might not have been entirely accidental," the caption said. "The night before, Ivy had put her arms around him and he had rebuffed her. He had become unable to respond to her sexually."

And there we were, back on that again. The dentist's nurse beckoned for me to come climb up in the high-chair, and I put the magazine aside, resolving to continue my studies if I managed to come out alive.

Riding home on the novocaine, I picked up a copy of the June Redbook, understandably attracted by the question on the cover: Can You Trust Your Dentist? But before I knew it, I was over my clavicle in a description of The Man No Woman Can Resist, by Laura Stewart.

"What I'm about to report is personal, embarrassingly so, but I've recently learned that my problem is shared by thousands of women like me. So perhaps my 'confession' will serve a valuable purpose.

"I'm happily married. I'm expecting a baby. Yet I have fallen in love with a man who is not my husband.

"I'm in love with my obstetrician!"

That just about did it, as far as I was concerned. But when the July Redbook came out with The Tragedy of a Young Girl, I wished I was back in June with Mrs.Stewart.

Here again love and pregnancy had a bizarre medical twist. Only Jackie Smith wasn't married and never got to see an obstetrician. She died as the result of a bungled abortion performed by a hospital orderly in her lover's apartment, and her dissected body was disposed of piece-by-piece in Manhattan's trash baskets.

This "true account of a fateful search for success – and love" set the tone for the whole summer. I Made One Terrible Mistake! cried Help-for-Love-and-Marriage case #36 in the AugustWoman's Home Companion, while the Journal gave red-letter headline treatment to "Thinking she was in love, she gave in – wonders, now, if she can ever marry."

In a burst of pseudo-sexy humor remarkable for any ladies' book, Loyd Rosenfield was permitted to give tongue-in-cheek treatment to the problem of How To Have an Affair in the September Cosmopolitan. But, since he was neither a practicing gynecologist nor a fully-accredited marriage counselor, everything stopped 10 feet short of the bedroom door.

In the following month, October, Cosmopolitan granted me temporary surcease from the usual diet of gloom by printing photographs of female persons named Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Anita Ekberg, Gina Lollobrigida, Diana Dors and others – a load of cheesecake second only to that of a one-armed waiter's at Lindy's. My glee was shortlived, however: the magazine closed with a full-page announcement of a Special Love and Marriage Issue coming up in November, with articles on Mixed Marriages, the Divorcee's Plight, andThe Biology of Love – this last purporting to impart "The importance of sex to your physical health, personality, and success in marriage. How your body 'protests' sexual maladjustment." It turned out to be well worth a month's anxious waiting, for when the Love and Marriage Issue arrived on the stands, it more than lived up to its advance billing.

Looking into People offered the latest lowdown on "Virginal wives," "Jealousycrazed mates" and "Fire-setters and sex." Skimming past The Cosmopolitan Shopper, with its ads for bust developers, spot reducers and Amazon Jivaro shrunken heads, the reader shortly arrived at a compendium of Facts Picked Up Around the World, by David E. Green: "Eskimos think nothing of exchanging wives. At festivals it is one of their principal diversions. Among good friends, trading a wife for a week or two every few months is par for the icy course. . . In Norway and Holland, there are very religious groups that have the shocking custom of requiring a girl to wait until she is pregnant before she may marry. . . Herodotus tells of a custom called 'hetaerism' that demanded every native woman, once in her lifetime, to sit in the temple and not return home until she had made love with a complete stranger. This was designed to bring foreign blood into the native strain."

Having been warmed up to the subject with a little preliminary word-play, the reader was presumably in the mood to relish a page of quotations on love from famous authors. "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties," quipped Oscar Wilde, while Shakespeare gently implored:

Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.

It is to be all made of sighs and tears. . .

It is to be all made of faith and service. . .

It is to be all made of fantasy. . .

Apparently unwilling to take a mere shepherd's word for it, the editors sent for a doctor – Frank S. Caprio, M.D., who gave the subject full, frank treatment in The Biology of Love. Taking a professional cudgel to the "two great enemies of sexual maturity in marriage," ignorance and wrong attitudes, the doctor gave everyone to understand that sexual love was far from being all made of fantasy, though of sighs and tears there was no lack. As a practicing psychiatrist, it was Dr. Caprio's opinion that:

"Too many married couples begin to take sex for granted after the first year or so of married life. They become slipshod and perfunctory about it and fail to see it (and experience it) as something pleasurable and inspiring. They treat love-making as a matter of habit, of biological necessity, not realizing that it can renew and refresh their marriage.

(continued on page 70)Pious Pornographers(continued from page 64)

"Another misconception many young married people have is that the best sex is spontaneous. Couples who believe this theory yield to the impulse on the spur of the moment, whenever they happen to be in the house . . ."

Don't get it into your curly little head that Dr. Caprio favored making a production of it on the front lawn. All he was after was a little finesse and forethought. Since "the most rewarding and consistent sexual happiness is planned," a couple "should agree in advance on their times together, as they would plan for a party."

While paper hats and noisemakers could be dispensed with, the doctor turned out to be a strong advocate of small favors. Indeed. "there should be frank requests for what is desired for maximum response. It might be more time, a different position." Even so, "Success comes slowly. in the course of years, as couples learn what caresses achieve the richest response. and how to time these responses so they achieve orgasm together."

To make sure that everyone got a fair whack at success, the Love and Marriage Issue of Cosmopolitan even included a handy Marital Contract with a standard Intercourse clause, all ready for signing:

"The parties agree that [number of times] a [week or month] on an average, under normal conditions, should not be considered excessive. They agree that it should not be necessary for one to urge or insist that the other shall indulge in an act of sexual intercourse, because the other does not have the right to refuse, except for serious reasons. They further agree that it would be quite selfish and unjust for one to manufacture excuses or put difficulties in the way of granting the other's request. Mere inconvenience or disinclination are not sufficient reasons for refusing.. ."

Filling in the blanks might appear to be fun, until one got around to reading the fine print in the closing summary:

"It is hereby agreed that the provisions of this agreement may be incorporated by the court in a court order. In making this agreement we and each of us hereby acknowledge that should either of us willfully fail to comply with any such court order, we shall be subject to being brought into court on a proceeding to show cause why we should not be found in contempt of court. We further understand that in the event that we are found in contempt of court we shall be subject to fine or imprisonment, or both, as provided by law."

As if it weren't enough to risk being hauled up before a judge to "show cause" on a breach-of-intercourse charge, the Marital Contract included a lot of other booby-traps concerning Drinking, Gambling. Household Expenses, Flirtations, Late Hours and Third Persons in the Home. Hailed as "A 'magic' agreement worked out by a divorce-hating California judge," for purposes of reuniting "quarreling couples headed for divorce," it read like a no-hijacking pact between two rival trucking concerns. A sleeper phrase in the Love-making clause, stating that "The wife agrees to respond to the husband's efforts in love-making and to avoid acting like a patient undergoing a physical examination," set me wondering what Dr. Safford was up to in the November Ladies Home Journal, and I dropped Cosmopolitan halfway through a picture story on childbirth.

The cover of the November Journal was baited with the promise of an article on what husbands don't know about sex. Brushing aside the brightly-colored pages, I made my way into the interior, where Dr. Abraham Stone had set up a field clinic in a small clearing surrounded by an impenetrable growth of fiction.

"Q. A frequent complaint of our women readers was that husbands made too frequent sexual demands. What is considered to be the average of sex relations in marriage?

"A. Statistical studies show a marked variation in the frequency of marital relations, ranging from once a month or less to once daily or more. Much depends upon the physical conditions, the emotional states and the ages of the couple, especially the age of the husband. On an average, men under 35 will have relations in marriage about two to three times a week. After 40 years of age, the frequency gradually diminishes to an average of one and a half times per week, and to about once a week after the age of 55. In any of these age groups, however, there are marked variations. and no couple should try to follow any particular 'average' . . .

"Q. One threat to a wife's sexual satisfaction, as revealed in our readers' letters, is the inability of the husband to wait for his wife's climax. Is there any help for this situation?

"A. Though some men may be able to carry on the sex relation for a fairly long time, most of them will complete it within one to two minutes, unless they make a conscious effort to delay it. Often this effort is not easy for a man to sustain. As it takes the average wife a longer period to achieve a climax, this becomes a source of marital dissatisfaction and resentment. The husband ideally should employ in advance various forms of sex arousal and stimulate his wife to a degree where she, too, will attain a full response . . ."

In reply to a question on where a man could get "practical information about the needs and nature of women," Dr. Stone suggested that the best guide to sexual know-how was an intelligent wife, who could "make him aware of her wants and her reactions." In addition to a wife with a flair for direction, Dr. Stone hinted that there were also "cultural media of communication: magazines that nowadays not infrequently carry informative and adult discussions on the subject of human sexuality . . ."

Reeling under the impact of this crushing understatement, I retreated to page 86 and Can This Marriage Be Saved? to reassure myself that I hadn't been imagining things during the past five months. Sure enough, there was the familiar prologue:

"She: He started to kiss me and I pushed him away. He got mad and I got mad and we had one of our furious quarrels. Jon was still in a towering rage when he left.

"He: I crave signs of affection and Georgia knows it. She used to flinch if I brushed her shoulder when we sat down in a restaurant or touched her knee in the movies."

It occurred to me. suddenly. that I had missed the October Journal. Since it was long gone from the newsstands. I was obliged to wait until it made an appearance on the dumbwaiter. It did. finally, and I opened it with trembling hands:

"Don't 'hash over' with 'best friend' sex secrets of your marriage – husbands don't like it." Clifford R. Adams. Ph.D., warned in big blue type at the top of Making Marriage Work.

I Wish My Parents Would Be More Strict, Margaret Parton and Mary Anne Garner sighed in unison, after revealing a typical teenager's experiences with drinking. petting and sex clubs.

What's a Mother to Do? Nan Harrison wailed to Joan Younger, as she sailed into a step-by-step account of the incidents leading to the discovery that her 15-year-old daughter had a boyfriend concealed on the porch roof, outside her bedroom window.

But the big October cover-feature was a Journal Forum Debate on Are We Commercializing Sex?

"Are we distorting our normal sex and marriage attitudes by stressing the physical aspects of sex in our music, our movies, comics and advertisements?" the editors asked, looking fearlessly about in all directions. "Do our public media (continued overleaf)Pious Pornographers(continued from page 70) set up a false picture for youth of what acceptable standards are? Are we giving young people the impression that society no longer regards sexual irregularity as an offense, simply because it is commercially profitable to some businesses to regard it as entertainment? These are the questions posed to a group of five young people and two mothers at a round-table discussion in the New York Workshop of the Ladies' Home Journal . . ."

The five young people were all college students, two of them men, and one of the mothers was a grandparent. The Journal's Public Affairs editor, Margaret Hickey, delivered six preliminary sentences, took a deep breath and said, "Let us plunge right in and talk first about the sex suggestiveness we are all agreed does exist. What influence do you think this has? Is it really detrimental to moral standards? And if it is, do we accept it because it is commercially profitable?"

"Mrs. Marsh: I think there is too much stress on the physical aspects of life in our public media, too many pictures of girls in Bikini bathing suits, or less. This is confusing to young people. It gives the impression that eroticism is the one major element of love and that the psychological, mental and spiritual aspects can be ignored.

"Miss Wilk: The movies are the biggest, baddest influence because there you not only have people exploiting sex in the advertising of the film in order to induce people to buy tickets, but in the films themselves a very unrealistic attitude about sexual mores is presented. The big body of impressionable filmgoers is around 13, 14, 15. They come out of the movies imitating what they see and acting particularly oversexed . . .

"Mrs. Marsh: There's also television. Though it is improving, it is still a downright crime, some of the things brought into the home on television waves . . . "

Rock 'n' roll, Noel Coward, book covers, comic books and college magazines were all given their Iumps in rapid order, leaving the door open for Miss Wilk of Radcliffe to jump in and state: "I would like to really criticize certain men's magazines as examples of rank commercialism. At Radcliffe, these magazines are made available to the students by druggists in the square, who sell them under the counter.

"Miss Garner: The worst feature is the picture of a nude which one of them calls the 'Playmate of the Month,' and under the picture they say: 'Wouldn't you like to play with this girl?'

"Miss Wilk: All magazines show a lot of objectionable pictures, like the awful deodorant advertisements with the lines: 'Are you kissable tonight?'

"Mr. Holliday: Some of the nail-polish and even the tooth-paste ads are as bad.

"Miss Wilk: I remember a spread of a woman stretched out on some kind of couch with a series of questions about whether you are the supposedly passionate type of personality who should use a certain nail polish."

I read every word, waiting for Miss Wilk, Miss Garner or Mr. Holliday to comment on some of the things I had been noticing. But they never did. It was movies, advertising, comic books and "certain men's magazines" all the way. Offhand, I couldn't imagine what movies they were talking about. Had paramount been using Dr. Abraham Stone's questions and answers as repartee in their latest pictures? Was MGM releasing training films on how to synchronize orgasms?

Through it all, I seemed to remember an article about a woman stretched out on a doctor's table, with a series of descriptions like, "The vagina is a membranous sac of extreme looseness of structure which obviously must be capable of great distention in order to allow a full-term infant to pass at birth. The inside is not symmetrically cylindrical but lies in folds." As a matter of fact, it was on page 57 of the same issue, and the lady was the Patient of the Month. There was no question of anyone wanting to play with her, because she was not only eight months pregnant, but had trichomoniasis – an infection that men may contract "in the same way they do venereal disease."

As a poor benighted male, who prefers wondering if a girl is kissable to speculating upon whether or not she has trichomoniasis, I found myself echoing the editors' original question: "Are we distorting our normal sex and marriage attitudes by stressing the physical aspects of sex?" And, if we are, which is the more likely to make for distortion – a pathological study of the festering vagina and misshapen womb, or a gracefully posed portrait of sound limbs and a healthy bosom? Could all the "suggestiveness" of motion pictures and advertising create any more false a picture for youth than the quasi-explicitness of the women's magazines?

Three months later, my doubts were answered by some of the letters the Journal found in its own mail bag. From Chico, California, R.A.C., a 16-year-old girl wrote: "I heartily agree with all that was said in Are We Commercializing Sex? but I felt one point was neglected: that even very reputable magazines, including the Journal, contribute to teenage curiosity and interest in sex. Because of such articles as What Wives Don't Know About Sex, the average 'nice' girl with high standards can't help wondering what really does happen in marriage. She asks, 'What should I know about sex?' and feels excited and worried about it. She reads more articles to seek out the answers, but nobody comes right out and says what happens, and she is only confronted with more questions and more fear."

From Sandy, Utah, Mrs. Ralph Bishop wrote: "You have been good to help your readers with their sex problems. Now I'd like to have your help with my problem. My problem is too much sex – too much sex in the Journal."

Mrs. Brandoch L. Lovely of Reading, Massachusetts, found herself "particularly disappointed by the shallowness of the viewpoint (and there was only one) expressed" in the forum. "Of course Americans commercialize sex. What human emotion is not exploited for advertising purposes today? But what is so undesirable about sexual attractiveness?

"As a minister's wife, I get to know a great many families – and it is my observation that those families are the happiest in which the wile and mother does not act like the stereotype of a dowdy old maid. Apparently it never occurred to your panelists that a girl can wear a 'well-filled flaming red dress' and still possess all the qualities that make a good wife and mother. Certainly it is important that young people learn that the psychological, intellectual and spiritual aspects of love are as important as the physical aspects. But isn't it possible to recommend that more attention be given to the nonphysical side without being so emotionally wrought up over the fact that the physical side is widely recognized in our culture today? Let's not get so carried away with reforming zeal that we try to convince ourselves that we must never think about sex until we are safely married. This seems to be the basic assumption underlying all that was said by the forum – and I don't think it's very wise or realistic. please, let's have more than one viewpoint in our forums."

The above letters appeared in the January '57 issue. It was in April that I came across an ad for the Ladies' Home Journal on the back page of the morning paper.

"Where in the world is your wife this morning?" the heading inquired. "You probably think you are 'getting out into the world' this morning. Your wife, on the other hand, is home in a walled-in world completely bounded by the kitchen range and the sink... but is she?

"If she is like the millions of women who will buy and read the April Ladies' Home Journal, you might be surprised to find her with Dorothy Thompson in Iran...in Long Beach, California, with a How America Liues family... trying on a flowered hat with fashion editor, Wilhela Cushman ... in Fort Worth, Texas, with a gaggle of multi-multimillionaires. . . mentally sampling some recipes from China ... or in Samoa with Margaret Mead."

Since I had already read the April Journal, it was with a "queerly soft, clogged feeling" in my chest that I realized she could also be mentally sampling the emotions of a young wife named Carolyn, as she "gave in" after being "terrifically stimulated" by a homewrecker named Jay, on page 54; or she could be off on the trail of a gaggle of perverts and child molesters in a story on sex offenders by Margaret Hickey.

"Maybe your own world seems a little cloistered by comparison," the ad cooed impishly.

To which I could only reply, "It sure as hell does, sister. The biggest, baddest influence in my world is a pin-up picture in a 'certain men's magazine.' They call it the Playmate of the Month!"