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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
In these sexually saturated times, with naked celebrities, amateur orgies and live-action Barbie dolls just a click away, I long for the days when a woman's pout was enough to send a man into conniptions.
Dec 17, 2004 | I knew something was wrong when I found myself, the other night, yawning through a program on VH1 called "All Access: Totally Naked," which consisted of little more than a parade of nude famous people -- mainly women -- cavorting through the televised ether. No, this was not the proper reaction from a 25-year-old man, someone who only a few years ago would've had to suppress the urge to write a letter to such a show's producers thanking them for their fine, thoughtful product. Something had to be done. And so, 18 seconds ago, I typed the words "Vargas pinups" into Google with the hopes of escaping these sexually saturated times and imagining what it was like to be a guy my age in the 1950s, when these innocent sirens were sexual contraband, bona fide smut sought out by men with burning cheeks and sinful minds.
And look at them, here they come! An assault of coy glances, glossy hair, seamed stockings, baroque garter belts. There are boas, bows, blush, lace, glitter, gauze, dimples, curves, curls. Pouty red lips, peachy grins, painted fingers, painted toes, teardrop breasts, buxom behinds, and tiny skirts being hijacked by sudden breezes. Really, though, it's all about those faces ... those smooth, indelible faces hovering in some land between melancholy and mischief, some continent where the expression "Please come here, you funny man" and "Don't even think about it" mean the same thing. There is a blonde in a white satin teddy, hand grazing her forehead, staring off at ... at what? Me? Another has slipped her Rubenesque self into a vaguely see-through catsuit. It's glorious, yes, and yet I have to admit that something here is still off, something is wrong. Each girl inspires in me the same sad reaction ...
Oh, you pretty things! How I wish I found you sexy!
Call me a fool for searching out these pastel pixies in the first place, for hoping they could do the trick. Especially when another, just as simple Google search could provide dorm-room webcams, streaming video, movie clips, amateur orgies, live-action Barbie dolls, celebrities without digitally blurred nipples, perverted teachers, perverted students, barely legal babes and kinky MILFs gone wild. But I don't know. I'm convinced that it was somehow saucier back in the '50s, when sex came in fleeting whiffs, when titillation wasn't so omnipresent that it had ceased to matter. As a man today I live in an age where almost everything (that Britney video, that bikini-clad ditz eating maggots on "Fear Factor") is geared toward the overt idea of getting me off, as if those controlling the pop cultural universe sit around conference tables saying things like, "It's good, very good, but could you masturbate to it?" Theoretically, this should be a modern man's utopia. And yet it's often the opposite, muting males with a kind of erotic impotence, a jaded boredom that comes with having seen it all without having to do anything to get it.
