TITLE    : Vintage Erotica
STORYID  : vintage-erotica
SUMMARY  : Past porn revisited.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2010-06-10
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |erotica|vintage|porn|photograph|drawing|picture|illustration|lingere|nostalgia|


Recently, I've been perusing vintage porn over the Internet. Primarily, I've been enjoying illustrations rather than photographs, but I've also been checking out photos. When one looks at as much porn as I do (and writes erotic fiction as well), he or she becomes jaded sooner or later. For a while, the two sexes (and their combination, in the case of transsexuals), several genders, and many types of sexual acts keeps things interesting. Eventually, though, boredom, even ennui, wins out. How many times, after all, can a person be excited yet again by a pert and pretty pair of tits; a hairy or hairless set of genitals, male or female; perfect twin buttocks; and anal, manual, oral, or vaginal sex or some alternative thereto? Whether a score, a hundred, or a thousand, at some point, temporarily, if not permanently, the thrill is gone.



That's where, most recently, my perusal of vintage erotica comes into the picture. Pictures, whether photographs or illustrations, take one back to another time, when different hairstyles and fashion statements were all the rage and, in many cases, the people themselves had a somewhat different look than their contemporary counterparts have.



The uniform of yesteryear's femme fatale was much the same as it is today: bra and panties, garter belt and stockings or pantyhose, and high heels, although other accessories of lingerie, such as strapless push-up bras, thong panties, modified men's briefs or boxer shorts, were not available (or readily available), and today's variety of fabrics, colors, and patterns had not yet appeared on the scene. However, the slip, like the miniskirt and bellbottom jeans and slacks, ubiquitous in the 50s and early 60s, is seldom seen today. The 70s were characterized by full skirts, princess skirts with inset waistbands, sundresses, maxi dresses, flared slacks, and jumpsuits. The power suit for women, modeled by such movers and shakers as Margaret Thatcher and Nancy Reagan, characterized the 80s. Shoulder pads, long line jackets, blazers and trousers, petticoat dresses, knitwear, long cardigan coats, and Lycra wear became fashionable in the 90s.



Breast implants were not a wholesale business before a decade or two ago, and transsexuals didn't arrive in the public consciousness until the New York Daily News reported that a former soldier, George William Jorgensen, Jr., had undergone sex-change surgery to become a woman. Statistics are uncertain as to how many post-op transsexuals there are today, but some estimates put the number at approximately 19,300 in the United States aloe.



Pubic hair was all the rage in past decades, although other body hair was as verboten among American women then, as now. Men were much the same as always in appearance, despite slight differences in clothing style. Their hair, if not their penises, tended to be longer and their cocks were circumcised more often than not, a trend that seems to be vanishing among today's men, many more of whom are "intact" than their predecessors were.



In the 50s, women's hair was big; it was also, more likely than not, teased, sculpted, sprayed, or permanently waved. The poodle cut was immensely popular. Men wore crew cuts, flattops, or Elvis Presley-style pompadours with ducktails and sideburns.



The beehive was a popular hairstyle for women in the 1960s. More and more, though, the big hair of the previous decade gave place to the wilder, more carefree hippie look of the 60s and 70s female flower children. Flips, shaggy, and straight hair became fashionable, and women sometimes frosted or streaked their hair as if they were Elsa Lancaster. Men wore Beatles-style mop tops or shoulder-length locks, often with mustaches, goatees, or beards. Nehru jackets, beads, platform shoes, tie-dyed tee shirts, bandanas, and polyester debuted.



Women wore their hair shorter in the 80s and 90s, often in a swept-up fashion, with partial waves or curls, reflecting the country's more conservative political and social atmosphere.



As much as, if not more, than the physical appearance and clothing of the men and women involved in yesterday's sexual antics, the environment and the objects of everyday life that it included date the erotica of the past. There's no mistaking the furniture and the décor--or, for that matter, the architecture--of previous decades for contemporary ones.



In the 50s, living rooms featured kidney-shaped coffee tables and sectional couches; dining rooms contained light-colored tables that featured veneered rather than wood surfaces; chrome and vinyl were popular in the kitchen, as were breakfast bars; in the bedroom, one's partner may or may nor have been blonde, but the furniture, including the bed, was likely to have been. Bright colors appeared throughout the house.



In the 60s, Scandinavian lounge chairs, shag carpets, minimalist furniture, stereo consoles, knotty pine paneling, hanging lights, tiered tables, macramé plant hangers, Polyprop chairs, lava lamps, beaded curtains, and waterbeds were all the rage.



Fluorescent lamps, director's chairs, indoor-outdoor carpet, bunk beds, grandfather clocks, recliners, beanbag chairs, and sleeper sofas were found in the homes of the 70s.



The 80s and the 90s introduced ceiling fans, sling chairs, computer desks and chairs, lacquer tables, and furniture suites.



In the 40s, with the advent of the bikini, cosmetics companies began an advertising campaign to encourage women to shave their cunts. These ads continue today. In the British version of one such ad, a young blonde woman is shown stroking the cat that lies across her lap (her pussy) as she sings about how she fantasizes when she feels "blue."



A moment later, she appears, smiling broadly, in the doorway of her house, wearing a hot pink top and a pink polka dotted skirt. Her favorite fantasy, she says, is to "mow the lawn." The camera pulls back to show that she's not alone. Two other women, a brunette in a yellow and white striped top and orange short shorts and an Asian in a light blue top and dark blue short shorts, begin to push pink lawn mowers as, stepping in dance-like strides, they join the blonde in song, singing, "Mow it! Do it! Cut it! Trim it!"



An African-American beauty with wild dreadlocks gives the audience a wink and, with a knowing grin, as she holds an open pair of hedge clippers in her hands, sings, "Some bushes are really big." An Asian, tending a bonsai tree, admits, "Some gardens are mighty small," and covers her mouth as she giggles at the double entendre she's made. "Whatever shape your topiary," the blonde sings, "it's easy to trim them all." She stands behind a landing strip of a bush; on her right, the African-American model is stationed behind an inverted triangular shrub. The brunette model stands behind the heart-shaped bush to the blonde's left. Each of the women holds an open pair of hedge clippers above her 'topiary."



The blonde is next seen seated behind a pair of pink tulips and, as she sings, the African-American, armed with a pair of pink electric hedge trimmers, trims a wild bush; the camera again shows the blonde as, smiling, she uses a small, hand-held clipper to tend to her own bush, a round ball between her thighs, out of the top of which the two tulips grow: "Whenever I see a weed," she explains, "I mow that rascal down/ so all that's left for me to see are tulips [two lips] on the [pubic] mound."



Previous images are repeated as the Asian cultivates her bonsai tree and the blonde pushes her pink mower across a lawn, encouraging viewers to "mow the lawn." Then, a pink cabinet door is opened, and the blonde retrieves the advertisement's product, a razor, from between the garden tools, a trowel and a hand-held weeding implement, that flank it.



Then, as the blonde uses a pink leaf blower to blow a clump of weeds off a statue of Venus, she sings, "Never feel untidy./ Just spruce up your Aphrodite."



"Mow the lawn," the chorus of women suggest again as the blonde, now holding her cat as she walks toward the camera, her girlfriends mowing the lawn with their pink mowers behind her, asks, "Feeling rough around the edges?" As the others continue to sing, "mow the lawn," pushing their mowers, she declares, "It feels great to trim the hedges." Behind her and her girlfriends, every woman in every yard on the block mows her lawn. The product, Wilkinson's Sword's Quattro for Women, then sweeps across the screen, which shows a lawn.



In the American version of the ad, nubile young Asian and Caucasian women (no African-American women are featured), walk past bushes which become smaller, trimmer versions of their previous selves as the women pass by. The same basic shapes--inverted triangle, landing strip, and heart--as are shown in the British ad also appear in the American counterpart, but there are no hedge clippers, mowers, or verbal references to bushes, lawns, weeds, or tulips on a mound. The message is straightforward and humorless, as, presumably, Wilkinson believes its female American audience must be.



Incidentally, a Wilkinson ad also encourages men to shave "the hair down there." No actual man is featured, though, just a blue male silhouette, sans penis, with curls "down there," and the emphasis of the message is twofold: how to shave safely and why a man would want to shave "down there" at all: getting rid of the "underbrush" makes the :"tree" look "taller."



Let me describe a few of the many images that I find most, well, erotic, among the dozens I've admired as, in the process, I analyze some of the elements that tend to make such images erotic.



Servants, voyeurism, wayward priests and nuns, older women and younger men, bondage, cock sucking, cunnilingus, flagellation and spanking, female domination, masturbation and ejaculation, group sex, bondage and discipline, bisexual threesomes, supernatural sex (that is, sex with demons or witches), mythological motifs, sex among Victorians and Edwardians, sex as theater, lesbian lovemaking and the use of strap-on dildos by lesbians, outdoor sex, and humorous sexual situations and shenanigans are all present and accounted for in vintage erotica, although, unfortunately, owing to the greater sexual repression of earlier days, there's little gay male or shemale content, for which reason that which is available seems all the more sexually charged and valuable. Although bukkake isn't available in vintage erotica, there's plenty of fellatio, complete with cum shots and sperm-splattered faces. There's a little interracial sex, usually of the anal variety, with long, thick ebony cocks penetrating virginally tight white assholes.



Much of the same fare is present in vintage erotic photographs. A few even show the use of sex machines--motor-driven mechanical devices attached to phalluses or dildos. Urolagnia, or golden showers, is also a feature of some vintage erotic photographs. 



Generally, the women of yesteryear have a wholesome, if not exactly innocent, girl-next-door look. Typically, their tits are large and natural, rather than small or medium and artificial, and their cunts are almost universally hairy. 



What makes vintage erotica erotic? For me, it's partly a nostalgic return to simpler, more innocent times (although the "innocence" of such times is belied, it seems, by the images of coupling couples engaged in a variety of sexual acts between assorted participants); wholesome girls-next-door whose faces are not hardened by drug abuse and alcoholism; the mild sense of taboo that attends these images (especially when anything other than heterosexual vaginal intercourse performed in the missionary position); and, finally, the mere fact that I'm viewing sex and sexuality through the lens of the past, wherein that which is all-too-familiar in the age of unfettered and widely available--indeed, ubiquitous--Internet porn is renewed by its being distanced by time and the style, fashions, and accoutrements of another time long gone.



Until a time machine is invented which allows us to return to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (or before), viewing vintage erotica is about the only way we have of sampling sex as it was understood (and performed) in bygone days, when we or our parents (or our parents' parents) were young, brazen, and hot to trot. 

