http://blog.janehaddam.com/2008/09/30/twits-withokay-maybe-not-in-a-headline/ Jane Haddam’s WordPress weblog Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:27:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 http://blog.janehaddam.com/2008/09/30/twits-withokay-maybe-not-in-a-headline/comment-page-1/#comment-5 robert_piepenbrink Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:22:08 +0000 http://blog.janehaddam.com/?p=21#comment-5 We may be exagerating the uniqueness of the situation here. Pretty girls without much else going for them tend to display their assets to get attention. They'll go exactly as far as they think they can get away with. (Notice these "starlets" never violate Hollywood's political or religious orthodoxies. They know crossing that line would get them the kind of attention they don't want.) This is not new. We just don't have photographs of Caro Lamb c. 1812 with a dampened gown in the Regency's first wet T-shirt party, nor of the court ladies of Elizabeth I and "friends"--male and very good-looking, I am assured--of James I. But already in James' day the puritan ministers were preaching in the Fenlands, and visitors reported families with boys named Hezekiah and Obadiah, and girls named Mercy and Prudence. In a few years, the theaters and the bawdy houses would close, and the fleet will hang sailors for behaving like James' pretty boys. While Caro Lamb was strumpeting her way across London, the Methodists had already gone through Wales and the indistrial north. Victorian fashion was less than a generation away, and Bowdler warming up his pen. I'll miss--not the pop tarts, but the girls in tight jeans and maybe my collection of James Branch Cabell. But if I live to my father's age, I expect there will be less to see. It cycles. That's why they call it the sexual revolution. We may be exagerating the uniqueness of the situation here. Pretty girls without much else going for them tend to display their assets to get attention. They’ll go exactly as far as they think they can get away with. (Notice these “starlets” never violate Hollywood’s political or religious orthodoxies. They know crossing that line would get them the kind of attention they don’t want.)
This is not new. We just don’t have photographs of Caro Lamb c. 1812 with a dampened gown in the Regency’s first wet T-shirt party, nor of the court ladies of Elizabeth I and “friends”–male and very good-looking, I am assured–of James I.
But already in James’ day the puritan ministers were preaching in the Fenlands, and visitors reported families with boys named Hezekiah and Obadiah, and girls named Mercy and Prudence. In a few years, the theaters and the bawdy houses would close, and the fleet will hang sailors for behaving like James’ pretty boys.
While Caro Lamb was strumpeting her way across London, the Methodists had already gone through Wales and the indistrial north. Victorian fashion was less than a generation away, and Bowdler warming up his pen.
I’ll miss–not the pop tarts, but the girls in tight jeans and maybe my collection of James Branch Cabell. But if I live to my father’s age, I expect there will be less to see.
It cycles. That’s why they call it the sexual revolution.

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