October 18, 2015

"My guess is that many women my age brokered a series of compromises, shaving our legs (but only when people would see them)..."

"... performing oral sex like porn stars but insisting on reciprocity (because Betty Friedan would have wanted it that way). We’d drink shots in short skirts, but we’d come up with a series of code words and signals so that our girlfriends could steer us safely home; we’d go teetering down the streets in our cutest, highest heels but clutching cellphones and a bristling fistful of keys as we walked; trying to have it all, do it all, be it all, sometimes without even figuring out which parts of it felt good or right or authentically pleasurable."

Just one paragraph from "Longing for the Innocence of Playboy," by Jennifer Weiner.

24 comments:

Mark said...

She was 13 in 1983, thus born in 1970.
I don't know when the good old days she talks about happened, but she came of age in the early 90's when no one except businessmen and drug dealers carried phones around.

I am her same age, she really pretends to be a lot younger than she is.

rhhardin said...

It's a good thing there are only two legs. Imagine being a cow or something. It's twice the work. And does the bull notice? No.

holdfast said...

I started college in 1992. Several of my classmates gad cel phones that year. They were all Asian girls with over-protective parents.

Sebastian said...

"performing oral sex like porn stars but insisting on reciprocity (because Betty Friedan would have wanted it that way)"

I call BS.

"What do feminists want?"

Whine, whine, whine about how women can't have it all, due to the bad, bad, bad men.

Roughcoat said...

Boo hoo.

Laslo Spatula said...

"...many women my age brokered a series of compromises, shaving our legs..."

Who Brokered the Bikini Wax?

I am Laslo.

mikee said...

Playboy was never innocent. It was self-censored. Ludicrously so, in a vain attempt to sell masturbation products as art.

David said...

rhhardin said...
It's a good thing there are only two legs. Imagine being a cow or something. It's twice the work. And does the bull notice? No.


Ha! Double Haha!

Laslo Spatula said...

Look for a plethora of articles that will surround 'The Last Nude Playmate.'

Special Collector's Edition, no doubt.

Also: the first Playmate to show her asshole. Perhaps.


I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

"Most men my age, sons of the 1960s and ’70s, have a Playboy story, whether it involved borrowing one of Dad’s copies or sneaking a peek at their local convenience store."

My Playboy story was about the guy who delivered my sailboat back from Mexico in 1976. He carried lots of copies of Playboy so he could give them to Mexican customs officials who would then pass him along without going through a detailed inspection of the boat owned by a hated Yankee. They were bribes for a society where Playboy was more valuable then money. Cheaper, anyway.

mccullough said...

Nostalgia column by middle aged woman.

JAORE said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wince said...

My Playboy story is we found a huge collection left out on the sidewalk for the trash.

We took them and stored them in a treehouse (more a platform, really) in my friend's backyard. Then a hurricane swept through.

The wind blew them around and tore them asunder, littering the entire neighborhood.

There were at least a dozen young boys -- previously not privy to our collection -- out prospecting among the soaked, loose glossy pages.

Laslo Spatula said...

From "Final Destination 2":

Rory: You're gonna die after me, right?

Kimberly Corman: Yeah, I guess so.

Rory: Would you take these?

[handing over keys and wallet]

Rory: And if I die, uhm... would you throw away my drugs... and my paraphernalia... my porno...

[pauses]

Rory: Just, you know, everything that's gonna break my mom's heart... please?

Kimberly Corman: [nods]

Rory: Thank you.


I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

""... performing oral sex like porn stars..."

Very few 'regular' women perform oral sex "like porn stars."

Most regular women put barely more than the tip of the cock in their mouth while perfunctorily giving a half-hearted glorified hand-job.

Tongue-work is pedestrian and timid.

Boredom and fatigue set in early.

Little eye contact.

No sense of sexual hunger.

No semen dripping down their chin at the end.


I think the writer is one of those.

I am Laslo.



Theranter said...

My Playboy story is one of “Great Moments in Motherhood”

Visiting my parents for the weekend. My 10 year-old son had not been seen for a while, checked the fishing pond, not there. Decide to check the guest bedroom. As I walk in, I see my son shove something under the covers. Curious (and knowing it was some form of contraband that I would have to work really hard at not laughing over and somehow act stern) I asked him what he was hiding. With a sheepish look he takes out a Playboy magazine. I said “oh, where did you get that?” He said “In Grandpa’s bathroooooooo……ewwwww!” The look on his face was priceless. And of course the stern-parent thing went out the window as I howled with laughter. 15 years later and we both still laugh about it!

Laslo Spatula said...

While the author was giving timid blow-jobs Real Feminists were Fisting each other.

Innocence all the way up to the wrist bone.

I am Laslo.

Sam L. said...

The HORROR! The horror...

CatherineM said...

Mark - she may have become an adult in the early 90s, but still dating etc in the mid to late 90s. Short skirts came back around 96 along with (not very nigh) sort of platform/loafer/heals. Kind of 70sish. We had cell phones. We all ordered them from the same place and they delivered these Nokias. We certainly didn't walk around on the phone. It was expensive. We mostly used it to find our friends when trying to meet ("I am standing by the ..."), to update on ETA, and when lost.

So I don't think she is lying....

CatherineM said...

She is right on the money about the "if you are a cool girl, you would enjoy strip clubs." That was a phase in the 90s. Never did that or understood the need to be that cool.

CatherineM said...

The Playboys I saw were those while babysitting. The magazine rack or drawer in the bathroom. They were people with small kids who didn't have to hide stuff yet.

I also saw my first porn babysitting at 12. September 1981. They had "ON TV" pay service. One channel and if you paid for it, porn came on at midnight. Wow. What a shocker. It included a tutorial on felatio. I was shocked. Why do people want to do this and why do the Fishers have this on their TV?!

Now kids can easily Google to see young girls hoping to become rich and famous have someone ejaculate on their face after anal sex. That's what shocks me now.

Carnifex said...

CathereineM said--"Now kids can easily Google to see young girls hoping to become rich and famous have someone ejaculate on their face after anal sex. That's what shocks me now.

Hey! It's the Kardashian way!

damikesc said...

Women give blowjobs?

Unless they're dating and not remotely close to being married, evidence seems scant of that.

Anthony said...

One would hope they'd do better BJ'S than porn stars. Those are sine for the camera's benefit.