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Sent: 20 August 2011 07:26 By the time I left high school in the US in the late 1950s, it was pretty much recognized by both males and females that the "relief devices" seen in magazine ads then were in fact some kind of sex tool, although full understanding (and appreciation) varied. A gay friend of mine got it right away. As I recall, the ads interestingly enough appeared in both women's magazines and some of the men's magazines as well (an interesting study awaits here). Finally, the ads I most recall featured a portrait figure of a woman holding a cylinder next to her beaming face. This is true for the reasons Lesley gives, but also because some (many?) of the texts of the ads specifically referred to the massage of facial muscles. The dildo (as we'd call it now) rolling around a woman's face sent my gay friend into "paroxysms" of laughter and pity for the straight world's sexual fears and anxieties. The combined uneasiness and arousal about oral sex (more below) was tapped into here, as well as women's anxieties about age and beauty both subject to the onslaughts of the stresses that the ads promised to relieve. The trailer for "Hysteria", like any promotional device, can't serve as a base for criticism of the film as Robert Goff suggests. These are specifically designed to lure customers. I'm sure there will be plenty of aspects to comment on when the film is released. The trailer with its school-boy humor not only entices us with its sexual content but promises to make us feel superior to the past as we give ourselves that "look-how-far-we've-come" pat on the back; we'll feel so smug that no further critique seems necessary. The promo from the European Women's Lobby (EWL) Laura Agustin directs us to is a hoot; I'll have to check your site more often, Laura! The thing invokes in me not the urge to enjoy oral sex (that's already present; not intended I'm sure by the producers!) or to man the barricades of sexual revolution (intended by the producers), but to satirize. Like all purity movements, the promo tries to mobilize disgust and contempt (the building blocks of hatred) by wallowing in that very phenomenon they hope to exterminate (after they've had their way with it). The promo's disgust is based not so much on prostitution itself (as usual, that's only a self-righteous cover for the puritans' real obsession), but oral sex. Kinsey's data from the 1930s on and subsequent interviews indicated a US attitude from disgust to strong ambivalence about oral sex at least into the mid to late 1960s (an informal remembrance; don't quote me). This anxiety is perhaps one of the bases for the rise and institutionalization of The Facial in sex videos, appearing occasionally in the late 1960s and becoming more of a standard feature through the 1970s and beyond to today. I've been meaning to start a separate thread on this... More specifically, it's the repugnance and outright fear over bodily fluids that figures here. The man in the vid is seen wiping his mouth several times, not with pleasure but in contempt-for both his clients and for himself as the narrative suggest. Coupled with that is that the man, according to some popular sexual scales, is placed in a submissive role: kneeling, lower on the subject's body, and covered with the juices of the dominant (opposed to the male giving the facial in heterosexual sex vids). Well, enough. Y'all are just too inspiring! David David Sonenschein sonend@yahoo.com
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