Advantages of geezerhood

I read an article on Salon recently that made me realize (again) just how lucky my generation was. The article, "How not to make love like a porn star," described some of the perils of living in a time when porn is everywhere. Some people can watch porn and recognize it for what it is: pure fantasy. Other people apparently view porn and think they're watching a reality show. This can have some strange and depressing consequences, like young men being foolish enough to believe that what they see on the screen is what women actually want in the bedroom.

The author of the article points out some of the bizarre behavior that is common in porn, such as the man grabbing his hardened penis and beating it on the woman's body, an exercise that serves no discernible purpose (as far as this disinterested commentator can tell) other than to show the world that, yes, the male actor's dick is indeed hard enough to cut diamonds and that it is also large enough to be a serviceable substitute should someone require a baseball bat. This is the type of behavior that from a woman's perspective elicits baffled looks and exclamations of  "What the hell? Are you deranged?"

That, however, is not primarily why I say we aging baby boomers are lucky.  No, we're lucky because we geezers who are now in our 60s and 70s hit adulthood just in time to enjoy a decade or two of relatively carefree hedonism minus today's unrealistic expectations about body types and athletic abilities. There was porn, i.e., explicit photos and stag films, but when smut started going mainstream, films like "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green Door" featured actors who looked like ordinary human beings. Both men and women still had body hair, men did not look like they spent endless hours at the gym, and women were not expected to have identical genitalia. The word "labioplasty" was unknown.

If someone had told me 40 years ago that vaginal cosmetic surgery would someday become relatively common I wouldn't have believed it. In fact, I'm not sure I'd believe it now if I were a little less well-read. Apparently just as men are being indoctrinated by bad porn into believing they should wield their penises like wiffle bats, thanks to the pornification of society young women increasingly believe that the labia minora should never be visible, i.e., women are all supposed to have a crotch similar to that of a Barbie doll. This goes beyond bizarre -- feminists and human rights advocates are campaigning globally to end female genital mutilation in third world countries while at the same time supposedly well-educated middle class women in the United States are paying to have their genitalia mutilated. And, just like any other genital mutilation, they're experiencing the same risks: infection, loss of sensitivity, and months or years of pain. If it's barbaric when a young woman has her labia minora removed in Ethiopia for quasi-religious reasons, isn't it equally barbaric when a young woman has her labia minora trimmed because she thinks that men expect all women to look like a Mattel product? Why no feminist outrage and/or protest marches outside the cosmetic surgery clinics in Beverly Hills or Manhattan?

In short, thanks to what is aptly termed the pornification of popular culture, we have increasing numbers of men and women making themselves miserable and falling for sales pitches for "male enhancement" products or unnecessary surgery because what they see on the screen does not match up with what they're seeing in the bedroom. I am so happy I am old.