Family Planning Made Tasteful
Goodman, Walter
"Family Planning Made Tasteful" sexuals know that powerful social pressures may induce behavior otherwise not freely chosen. Yet no social system completely determines behavior, and in any healthy social system there must be room...
...IF:The/mina Washworth The American Spectator October 1978 17 noses fall off, we forearmed ourselves with never a thought for the aesthetic dimension or a prospective partner's feelings...
...WIFE: Gee, it sounds like the closest thing to nature's way yet...
...And as my — with -- fills, I bless the-liberating pills...
...Once heralded as the liberator of women's randier instincts, unlocker of the heart, unchainer of the libido, uncrosser of the legs, estrogen has now been associated with too many side effects for comfort, and young women are backing off...
...BOTH: It's Suprema for us from now on...
...she is lying on her stomach, and over her is a man, his expression reverent as he reflects, one presumes, upon the profound womanly satisfaction he has just accorded her...
...In time, refinement caused us to drop the adjective, but it was not until we actually went to do commerce with druggists that we got much more elegant...
...Intercourse was an abstraction until Harry and I switched to Suprema Sheath...
...When the hour did finally strike, it meant something of a scramble through pants pockets and wallets only to find, as often as not, that the latex, purchased at the height of adolescent expectations four years earlier, had turned to dust...
...But it is also good for all of us to lighten the burdens of homosexuals, as we would have them lightened for ourselves...
...One girl of the neighborhood was reputed to keep a supply in her night table, but hers was not a wholesome reputation...
...Turn the page to the ad from the Population Planning Association, for THE MOST SENSUOUS CONDOM IN THE WORLD...
...TOUCH, "so thin it's the closest thing to nature's way yet...
...But is it reliable...
...There will be Paris openings...
...FRIEND: Just watch this...
...Fade in Thelma and Phil in bed...
...There was always an elderly lady being waited on when you went in to make a purchase, and it sometimes took ten or fifteen minutes of studying laxative labels before conditions were right to step up and murmur, "a pack of Trojans...
...PHIL: It's like having nothing on at all...
...Say, you been giving at the office...
...The possibilities of togetherness extend beyond the bedroom...
...Yet no social system completely determines behavior, and in any healthy social system there must be room to experiment and to live in many different ways...
...You can get it from a post-office box in North Carolina...
...Not much like my generation's approach...
...It was kept under the counter along with, we imagined, the opium and Spanish fly...
...ANNOUNCER: Suprema Sheaths have earned the Seal of Approval of Planned Parenthood, the Disease Control Center, and Screw magazine...
...Walter Goodman Family Planning Made Tasteful A note on the latex revolution...
...FRIEND: Textured for greater vibration, snug fitting, and available in packages of three, twelve, and the 144-pack economy size...
...Laurent will give of their talents or at least their names...
...But, no, that kind of coverage is too special...
...Anyhow., at the appropriate occasion, if it ever came, who was in a state to reflect on whether powder blue seemed more in the spirit of the encounter than shocking pink...
...The tailor politely pretends to be impressed...
...Close up.] [Movement.] ^ 18 The American Spectator October 1978...
...Yeah, some blades and a dozen condoms...
...WIFE: Is that S-U-P-R-E-M-A...
...Listen...
...Drugstores turned into boutiques and druggists into extremely interior designers...
...And since babies are not popular among the nubile these days, recourse is being had to old-style birth-inhibitors...
...Just dropped by to ask whether you and Phil want to join Harry and me tomorrow night for a rubber...
...Not much along these lines can be done for the diaphragm or the intrauterine device, but our admen have discovered potent aphrodisiac qualities in the common condom, or, as one firm has renamed it, the Conceptrol Shield...
...And, setting the machine on "spin," I doffed my tim'rous sense of sin...
...WIFE: And the polka dots are so elegant...
...Not inviting enough...
...Most likely, the merchandise would then be placed in the least accessible niche of one's wallet, there to remain while the need for its services, alas, kept not arriving...
...We didn't know for sure whether the condoms were better as prophylactics or as contraceptives, but being equally terrified of babies as of having our I laundered, lonely as a crowd That bloats the pages Riesman fills, When pharmacology endowed My life with contraceptive pills...
...With luck, the druggist would be sharp of hearing and the transaction would be speedily consummated, three for a quarter...
...This brand, the Stimula Sheath, is really something...
...I am in favor of a tolerant and open system...
...FRIEND: I know what you mean...
...In this position further protection may not actually be required by the Population Planning Association, but the product is too much fun not to use, "a Scandinavian best-seller...
...How...
...He uses them because we like them," says the pretty girl in the Playboy ad as she caresses her Jim's chest...
...Fade out...
...Our introduction on the streets of the Bronx, some years before we could possibly have found any use for the things, was not to contraceptives or prophylactics, but, forgive me, to scum bags...
...Movement...
...Society has a strong interest, in private and in public, in encouraging heterosexuality and in discouraging homosexuality...
...We are talking, remember, about formfit...
...How many blood clots is an orgasm worth...
...Women's Wear Daily will put out a special supplement...
...Friend enters.] FRIEND: Hi, Thelma...
...While she selects the fabric, he, perhaps with the assistance of a paraprofessional, gets himself into a condition to be measured—length, girth, eccentricities of shape...
...It is "made with a new 'nude' latex that transmits body heat instantaneously...
...This is a product for the people, mass marketing stuff...
...Jim doesn't use them because he has to...
...It is "supremely sensitive" as well as "anatomically shaped...
...The one thing none of us thought to do when it came to condoms was discuss them with the girl of our dreams...
...Well, its "delicately ribbed surface gently massages the woman, while the contoured formfit provides the greatest sensitivity for the man...
...Innumerous as the golden sands That sift and shift on Nilus' banks, Repairmen, each with wrench in hand, Arrived to probe my clunks and clanks...
...And here is the coming TV commercial: [Young wife, disconsolate, at kitchen table...
...It's like making love to a galosh...
...I can hardly wait to surprise Phil...
...Pharmacal Laboratories in Chicago you can get four new sheaths: MAN-FORM PLUS, with its "scientific shape for greater freedom of movement...
...It features a picture of the top half of a woman smiling the smile of contentment...
...But I just bought a dozen last week and it wasn't exactly a record-setter for us, what with you working late Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday...
...The future depends on it...
...THELMA: Madge sure knows her rubbers...
...For the good of all of us, homosexuals included, it is well that society should prefer heterosexuality and specially nourish it...
...textured to provide maximum pleasure for both of you...
...The pill, super-weapon of the revolution, is no longer in favor...
...Do fashion designers need contraceptives...
...Yet the joys of sex once experienced are not so readily put aside...
...not to mention PASSION PLUS, a special "sexual aid used by the male partner...
...Individuals (and societies) can make their own moral vision clear without undue coercion upon those who do not, or who cannot, share it...
...I must check my tobacconist, a Hispanic-American on West 38th Street...
...Close-up of condom with coffee grounds.] See how it retains its shape...
...At the drugstore, the merchandise was not out there among the cosmetics...
...WIFE: Speaking of rubbers, Madge, the ones Phil uses sure do get in the way...
...MARDI-GRAS, "unusual and exotic colortones for a new sensual experience...
...And as they showed their Sears ID's I welcomed them with open knees...
...Lest this prove a downer to those who emerged from puberty at a time when the Chairman Maos of sex were preaching spontaneity at all costs, merchandisers of old favorites have taken to pushing not their contraceptive but their romantic connotations...
...Well, there goes the little lady, off to Pathmark: "You need anything, dear...
...Oh, occasionally a wag would blow up a bag at a party and the girls would giggle and pretend to blush and the boys would guffaw and try not to blush, but by and large this was man's business...
...What wonder that sales of condoms will reach $150 million this year, with all those young folks just starting out, color-coordinating their contraceptives with their bedroom drapes...
...The young folks enter the tailoring establishment...
...Geoffrey Beane and Calvin Klein and Bill Blass and Yves St...
...There will be drapings and fittings and finally a proper showing for the trade...
...Today, with a spirit of equality and fair play in the saddle, enlightened young persons figure sex out together beforehand...
...I am not in favor of one that treats heterosexuality and homosexuality as equals, or as matters of indifference...
...From Federal Walter Goodman is a writer in New York City...
...To do so without injuring those homosexuals who are without choice, and to establish conditions in which their lives may be tolerably creative and satisfying, is an important social task...
...She whips a condom from her carryall, goes to the stove, and fills it with coffee grounds...
...Certain boys were suspected of actually discarding one of the package-81/3 cents' worth—so they could find a pretext for showing off the remaining two with a smirk...
...Now oft when on my couch I lie In sensuous and receptive mood I murmur what I can't deny: There was no bliss in solitude...
...Our introduction to Homer...
...Groans, moans, and small screams.] THELMA: Mmmm, that body heat...
...From a firm called World Population Control, situated inside a post-office box in Newark, you can get "gossamer-thin, super-sensitive condoms" in unmarked wrappers...
...Consider the firm called Horizon, which seems to be an international philanthropic institution: "Throughout the world, we serve one overriding principle—to make the act of love as easy, exciting and as satisfying as possible....Look for Horizon products in food, drug, liquor, convenience and tobacco stores...
...Late dispatches from correspondents on the erotic front report that the sexual revolution has entered a postrevolutionary phase, and appears to be taking a detour into domesticity...
...Saturday afternoons given over to holding swatches up to the light, testing for durability, checking, out Consumer Reports, together...
Vol. 11 • October 1978 • No. 10
