Thirty years of joy
`The Joy of Sex': From an age of innocence to one of too much experience, the classic how-to returns
Just over 30 years ago, a pregnant woman arrived at the office of Alex Comfort sobbing in fear of what her neighbors would think of what she and her husband had been doing in the bedroom. Horrified by the general public's lack of sexual knowledge, the English physician quickly turned out--by some accounts, in two weeks--a guide to the turn-ons of the big toe, the armpit, and just about every other part of the human body. It rode bestseller lists for six years, becoming a staple of '70s culture.
Guess who's back. The hairy hippies who graced the pages of the original erotic how-to are missing from the sleek new 30th-anniversary edition of The Joy of Sex, "fully revised and completely updated for the 21st century." Still, "the basics of sex remain the same and so has the message," says Nicholas Comfort, whose late father penned the classic 1972 guide to eroticism that steered more than 8 million baby boomers through the appetizers, sauces, and main courses of advanced lovemaking.
Comfort and Joy. Back in those days, the vestiges of Puritanism were just beginning to make way for experimentation and excess. So when Joy came onto bookshelves, the Earth moved. "People's variety of sexual activity expanded," says June Reinisch, director emeritus of the Kinsey Institute. Before, "many people felt that things like oral sex were not normal behaviors." Now, they could read about rear entry, dominance, and G-strings. "The Joy of Sex came out in a world with no sex manuals," notes syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage. "Talking about sex was something respectable people didn't do."
Today, of course, that's all we talk about, from Will and Grace to news coverage of sex scandals to Maxim and Cosmo. But that does not mean Comfort's original vision has been realized. Sex expert Betty Dodson (author of Orgasms for Two: The Joy of Partnersex ) says the elder Comfort, whom she befriended in the 1970s at Sandstone, "a sexual country club" outside Los Angeles, would be appalled by the current state of sexuality. "I'm surprised at how conservative everyone is again," she says. Today's sex icons like Britney Spears may bare their flesh, but they still proclaim their virginity. Playboy is even considering dressing some of its models. And although The Joy of Sex' s revival is greeted with fond nostalgia, More Joy of Sex --Comfort's treatise on group sex penned a few years later--would most likely not receive a similar response. "You think Puritanical America is going to allow that?" Dodson asks.
Perhaps this rising conservatism is what makes recent versions of vintage sexcapades so appealing. Debbie Does Dallas, the phenomenally popular skin flick of the late 1970s, has now been reborn as an off-Broadway musical (this time with only minor nudity, all of it male). Paul Schrader's current film, Auto Focus, starring Greg Kinnear, adds a bouncy 1960s sitcom vibe to a story of the early days of home video porn. And in its first six weeks, New York City's new Museum of Sex has welcomed more than 15,000 visitors--running 50 percent ahead of projections--with objects like antique condoms, pinup posters, and racy pulp paperbacks on exhibit.
Visitors at the museum on a recent Friday afternoon looked like the crowds at any tourist attraction. "We came to New York for a Broadway show and we thought we would see it," said Jenny, 69, who was there with her 30-year-old daughter. After walking through the exhibit featuring the brothels of 19th-century New York, the Happy Hooker, the Stonewall riots, and the extensive video work of porn diva Vanessa Del Rio, Kim Mitseff, 44, said she wouldn't have even had a problem bringing her kids--ages 6, 12, and 13. "There's nothing in there they can't see. It's kind of shocking, but that's not a bad thing," she says.
Still, even with additions on topics such as Viagra and AIDS, it's unlikely that the younger generation will find the new Joy of Sex as, well, stimulating. "I'm wondering if the people who'll read it aren't just going to be 70-year-olds doing it out of nostalgia," says Savage. "If The Joy of Sex wants to reach kids, they should put up a Web site."
This story appears in the December 2, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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