It’s the consummate sales pitch, the one supreme idea that led to the biggest winner for capturing human attention. Summed up in three letters, a concept that wherever the word appears, grabs our subconscious and demands attention. A little ‘three letter’ word that printed in bold type stands out against a sea of words or the emptiness of a pristine white page. You’ve seen it. You’ve reacted to it as well, whether you’d like to admit it or not, and been drawn back to it again and again. Like the trick your old man used to play on you, pulling a nickel from behind your ear, over and over, you knew it was a trick, but you went for it every time. The same trick applies here, over and over you’ve seen it and been taken in, you can’t help it, it’s like a wreck at the side of the road; you have to look in spite of all your civilized pretensions. What three letter word could possibly have such effect on mankind? Like you didn’t know; it’s SEX.
The printed word, SEX, is certainly enough to get the attention of any healthy human being with the ability to read, but we can take this a step further. It’s been said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ another wonderful human concept, one that I can totally agree with, and when it comes to SEX it takes on an even more powerful relevance.
We humans react to visual stimuli. Show someone a picture of a juicy steak and like Pavlov’s Dogs they start to salivate. Flip open the latest issue of Penthouse to a gatefold spread and most young males suddenly find a pleasant stirring in their ‘jockey shorts.’ I would venture to say that women experience some warm and friendly reaction to the centerfold in Playgirl as well. They are reacting to the visual images of the human body, either engaged in some provocative behavior for the camera, or simply nude and displayed for the viewers appreciation and libidinous lust. This is why Playboy, Penthouse, Gallery, Hustler, Playgirl, and the plethora of other such printed material became so popular back in the 1960’s and remains of adult interest to this day. Even though sales have fallen off for the magazine publishers, there has been an expanded interest in the video releases available with SEX as the theme.
What is now referred to as a ‘porno empire’ is merely the extension of the sexual interest born back in the 50’s with those little ‘Tijuana bibles’ that parodied familiar cartoon characters of the day involved in all sorts of sexual situations, or their cousins, the tiny ‘photo bibles’ which were poorly produced miniature books of crude looking people posed in sexual acts in black and white; the ‘black bar’ over the eyes to protect the not so innocent, or the guys naked except for their socks, where often among the humorous images presented.
This proved there was a market for sex, but it needed to be legitimized in order to maximize sales and make it publicly acceptable; a fight from the start. There was, and is, a group of protectors of the public morality, a ‘league of decency’ if you please, that are always there trying to protect us from the evils of SEX. Anything relating to the issues of SEX, other than an unfortunate description for ‘how babies are made,’ has always had these morality experts pulling their wagons in a circle to fend off the legion of smut peddlers they’ve sworn to eradicate. In spite of their efforts the selling of SEX for recreational purposes has blossomed to a billion dollar a year cash cow. People are always going to find a way to get whatever it is they’re told they can’t have, something we all learned as kids, but these folks seem to have forgotten.
SEX just isn’t something we drag out from under the bed in a box along with the ‘orgy butter’ and ‘the ultimate intruder’ vibrator. Today, as most days, you will find sex everywhere you look. Why? As we’ve discovered it’s of universal interest and thus becomes a co-opted tool of advertisers and those with a product to sell. If you hook your feminine hygiene spray, shampoo, mouthwash, condoms, cigarettes, booze, underwear, clothing, cars, candy, or any of zillion other items to SEX you sell more of your product. Are we surprised? Should we be surprised? No, I think not, but we shouldn’t be so quick to deny the fact that it’s happening. A lot of folks, many card carrying members of the ‘league of decency,’ deny the implications of a woman moaning her way through a heavy shampoo, her silhouette shown undulating on the steamy shower door, but the rest of us know what that sound is and it isn’t just the appreciation of shiny clean hair.
The reason all of this takes place is inherent. Human beings are arguably the thinking animal, but an animal nonetheless. We have been questionably gifted with a brain and having been so gifted, we have invented all sorts of things to make our lives better, while distancing ourselves further and further from our natural animalistic past; or at least that’s what we’d like to believe. It’s hard to shake some behaviors, even after fifty thousand years of evolving.
With our two essential needs, survival and procreation, we have moved through history attacking and defending whatever we’ve encountered in order to stay alive. Wars are fought over land, wealth, foodstuffs, and water rights in the name of survival; we have to protect the family unit, the tribal unit. No longer the hunter-gatherers of our distant ancestors generation, now living in fixed sites, cities and towns, we fight to survive in an urban or suburban landscape. We developed new concepts derived from our ability to work with abstract thought, but in doing so, we still have never overcome the need to survive and to bear young, and with all probability we never will.
The need to bear young, to reproduce and insure that the species will survive, is the crux of existence for all life forms. This desire to reproduce is seen early in the development of a species, sometimes based on seasonal cycles, sometimes merely based on the advantage of a current situation. Humans, ‘the hairless ape,’ developed an open approach. Whether through evolution or grand design, the female of the human species isn’t required to enter a ‘heat’ in order to facilitate a coupling for the purpose of producing offspring. It has become a matter of choice on her part when approached by a male of the species to either except or reject his advances. It’s a matter of fact in the wild; remember the adage ‘only the strong survive,’ those males showing the best traits and strengths are allowed to mate with the female, thus insuring the best traits will continue into the next generation. It’s just like the hundreds of true life studies we’ve seen on television over the years; the magnificent Stag coming down the mountain to joust with younger males and assure his position as head progenitor. Humans do this too, in a modified version, since we have elevated ourselves to a higher pedestal than the rest of our animal kin, but the outcome is still the same.
The main difference, I observe, may be that you’ll never find a self-respecting Stag hanging out in a bar, trying to hit on a horned and ‘horny’ female counterpart, asking wittily, ‘Hey baby, what’s your sign?’ Yet this is where a great deal of the ‘rutting’ that goes on among the human animal starts out; maybe we haven’t really come as far as we’d like to think we have with our role as ‘civilized man, the king of beasts!’
We spend our lifetimes with SEX at the center of our universe, the unifying force that drives us all; men and women dress to allure, using, perfumes, makeup, and specific clothing to make their intentions known. It all seemed to work pretty damn good up until the last twenty years. Now, because the male has traditionally been thought of as the pursuer, the dominant member of the selection process, our civilized way of thinking now leaves him ridiculed or redressed for what others perceive to be ‘old school’ thoughts about his sexually driven nature.
How did this come to pass? Was it some careful thinking on the part of the wise old members of our society? Or was it more like a current article in Cosmopolitan magazine or Young Ms.? We may never really know, but it’s safe to say it wasn’t a group of men sitting around drinking beer that came up with it. More than likely it was some of those ‘thinking folks’ among us (a dangerous lot) who came to the conclusion that there should be an equality of the sexes, sounds good, but it’s another human attempt to change the natural order of things; something we, as a species do a lot of, but not very successfully; a point that has been illustrated over and over down through our history.
Women should now be able to make the moves on the male of her choice, show some dominant qualities, while the men are now told they need to be gentle and understanding and more in tune with ‘their feminine side.’ Should we be surprised at this? Probably not, because it’s just like humankind to take something as simple and functional as SEX and turn it upside down to make it more ‘civil.’ Impose order on SEX by having us all do our guarded and selective ‘rutting’ quietly behind closed doors instead of nosily and at random in public places. Not only does it take all the fun out of it, but it turns us all into a bunch of guilt ridden anal retentives, a condition that the administrators of the worlds organized religions just love; which is why they are the key proponents of ‘birth without sex;’ it happened once 2000 years ago, so now it’s expected to be the norm. I suppose the fact that conception is taking place in a lab dish is just the next logical extension of this way of thinking. We have finally moved what is the central driving force of the human universe, SEX, to the very edge of manipulated insanity.
It’s funny though, as much as mankind screws around with restricting, changing, rationing, or legislating our sexual urges, the more people will find a new and better way to fool around; if there is any question at all about this happening just look at the huge SEX toy industry that has risen to tease our fancy; so to speak. An industry that has as it’s unwritten motto, ‘Where there is a need, there is a battery powered tool to offer satisfaction or double your money back.’ It all becomes laughable, more of that ‘school boy giggling and guilt,’ when you consider it all to be such a natural act, a joyful and exciting experience and after all is said and done, it comes down to about ten seconds worth of pulsing pleasurable bliss.
So what’s the big deal about SEX? All this for ten seconds of bliss? Maybe we all need to find a hobby?
Your Faithful Reporter - RCat
