Those of us who came of age during the height of the Sexual Revolution, otherwise known as the Best Times in American History, Like Evah, looked upon the 1950s with disdain. The 1950s were scorned as puritanical, uptight, and repressed. Breastfeeding was frowned upon, open breastfeeding was unthinkable, and we spoke of menstrual periods in coded language like “a visit from Grandma.”
The Sexual Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s rebelled against that with vigor, and rebel, did we ever. Pushing against sexual repression together with the rising feminist movement, we propelled the United States into a realm of liberty and free personal expression that it had never seen before.
And then came the 1990s.
What Happened?
Concession by tiny concession, Democrats in legislative chambers began surrendering that newfound love of sexual and expressive liberty in a misguided effort to placate a nascent social conservative movement. In a shocking betrayal of the Sexual Revolution, President Bill Clinton fired the incomparable Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for merely stating a simple and obvious fact about masturbation. And American culture began to body-shame men who merely showed the amount of skin that the 1950s considered normal for males.
By the year 2000, any male who dared show as much skin as Lloyd Bridges in the 1960s TV series Sea Hunt suffered brutal ridicule and shaming that was heretofore never dreamed possible.
The Fifties, only Worse
But today, nearly all men wear long pants in the pool or at the beach, euphemistically called “board shorts,” and many wear shirts in the water as well. Any man wearing Lloyd Bridges’ trunks is safely assumed to be visiting from overseas. What in the hell happened to the body acceptance of the 1970s?
Today, American culture has become so Puritanical that even the 1950s appear liberated in comparison. The only demographic today that seems to be keeping body acceptance alive is … wait for it … we in the Pride community.
Liberty is like muscle; neglect it, take it for granted, and liberty will atrophy and fall into disuse. Over the course of a few decades liberty will not be valued anymore. Liberty becomes casually disposable.
And that’s where we’re at.