A Boomer’s Look at Changing Sexual Attitudes
Hush-hush and fear, a blossoming interest, and beyond
Perceptions of sex have morphed significantly during baby boomers’ lifetimes, from unspoken to revolutionary to the attitudes of contemporary youth. In From Our Readers, Molly Engelhardt shares her experience as a boomer and through our changing culture.
In high school during the ’60s, most of us with boyfriends played around with sex — we didn’t want to be “prick teasers” — but we were terrified about getting pregnant. We knew the consequences of “going all the way” from the movies we watched — Splendor in the Grass, Fanny, Home from the Hill, Love with a Proper Stranger, Summer Place, Peyton Place — sexual desire oozing from these teenage protagonists who paid the price for acting on it. Not only could you have a nervous breakdown after trying to commit suicide, but you might also have to marry an old man, or get an abortion in a grimy house, or be a topic of scandal. While we absorbed these messages, we didn’t talk about sex amongst ourselves. What we did with our boyfriends was kept secret, unless he talked, and that was always a risk. You wanted it, you were afraid of it, you were ashamed if you did it, and you lost your social standing if he talked — pretty much a lose-lose situation.
Messages that nice girls don’t feel desire and must always put the clamps on their pushy boyfriends started to lift in the late ’60s with all the movement politics cropping up around the country. Status quo was on the chopping block being replaced by consciousness raising, protesting the war, and fighting injustice. As freshmen at SMU in Dallas, we read the Greening of America and The Medium is the Massage in our liberal arts classes, but I don’t remember reading anything about women or sexuality. Stokely Carmichael had proclaimed in 1964 that the “only position for women in SNCC is prone,” meaning that black women could participate in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but only as sexual objects. But such sexism within the movements started to change when feminists began to talk back in public space and publish articles and books about the interworking of patriarchy and how it infiltrates and determines everything in society, every institution, every value and idea, every ambition (much like the 1619 project and race). The personal IS political, meaning that how we know our bodies and use them is not inherent but something learned.
But I didn’t know about any of this because I wasn’t paying attention; I was too embedded in the old way — drinking, partying, finding and keeping a boyfriend. In the sorority house my friends and I would get into circles and talk about the meaning of life, our insecurities and fears, but we didn’t talk about our sex lives or our position in society. I knew the term “women’s liberation” but hadn’t read (or heard of for that matter) Friedan, Jung, or Kate Millet. Gloria Steinem came to the SMU campus in 1970, but I went to a keg party instead. When I expressed my confusion about women’s rights to my boyfriend, he said it would be a terrible thing: “what would happen to men if women entered the workplace and take their jobs?” I agreed.
I missed the sexual revolution during the ’70s because I got married when it was just gearing up. I had finished my degree in elementary education (the illustrious MRS degree) and had no idea what to do with my life other than to get married, teach for a while, and have kids. I took birth control pills, and abortions were soon to be legalized, but I believed in the sanctity of marriage and didn’t stray (although my husband did, but that’s another story).
I read about what was going on and saw all the movies, so I knew what others my age were doing. It was no big deal to have sex with a date or with someone you had just met at a bar or party. Marijuana was a big part of it, as was, later in the decade, discos and cocaine. It was a time for being outrageous — skinny-dipping, dropping acid, going on impromptu road trips without a plan. People didn’t think that much about careers, or at least my group didn’t; it was a decade of partying and playing and not growing up to be like our parents. Boob jobs weren’t around yet and women were proud of their nipples showing through their sheer blouses. For those of us who got married right out of college, we had soap operas to entertain us while our babies napped; we watched Erica in All my Children prick a hole in her diaphragm to clandestinely get pregnant, and Luke in General Hospital rape Laura in the abandoned discotheque; we figured that they loved each other so the rape didn’t really matter.
I think the rigidity against women being sexually active during the ’50s and most of the ’60s is what made it so exciting during the ’70s. We know from Freud that if you suppress something for too long, it’s going to expand and eventually burst, sometimes in unexpected places. Sex became the venue for acting up, being true to oneself, being outrageous and decadent. So when I finally got a divorce in the early ’80s, more self-aware but not yet politicized, I wanted to jump in and join the fun, or whatever was left of it. My friends and I now talked openly about sex. We shared personal anecdotes, we read books like the Joy of Sex and The G Spot, we laughed and gasped and learned from each other. The disco scene was still limping along, but nothing like the Studio 54 heydays in Manhattan. Cocaine was everywhere — open at parties — and ecstasy had made its way out of the labs and into the streets. It was found to increase sensitivity and enhance communication between partners — dangerous indeed! — thence justly banned in 1985. It was still around but was now cut with things like horse tranquilizers so that rather than an emotional glow you felt tense, on edge.
Herpes flared for a while — the virus that never goes away — but it wasn’t too scary, especially if you were in a monogamous relationship. I remember the day I got a call about one of my high school friends dying mysteriously in DC from some kind of virus — maybe meningitis? The funeral was well-attended and my friend’s partner from DC and all his gay friends came into town for it, but no one said a word about AIDS. It was hush-hush, scary and confusing, and parents were ashamed. We all have AIDS stories — some more than others — and continue to feel the tragedy to this day. But for my purposes, the epidemic not only took the lives of over 100K people in the US during the ’80s, but it pretty much took the zap out of the sexual revolution. Caution can curb one’s sexual activity and fear can kill it.
The sexual revolution has been over for 50 years, give or take a decade, but I think baby boomers still feel its effect, something our gen x and millennial kids don’t. True, youngish couples call each other, “babe” and they research and buy the best mattress, and they go on lots of trips, but I can’t help but wonder if sex is as important to them as it was to us back in our 30s and 40s. A shift in attitudes certainly makes sense considering how different our histories are with sex. In the new film No Hard Feelings, the Jennifer Lawrence character — hired by helicopter parents to seduce their college-bound son — barges into an upstairs bedroom at a high school party looking for her ward and finds kids messing with their phones rather than each other. Astonished she shouts out, “Doesn’t anyone F – – K anymore?!” Is it possible that young adults today use their apps, their porn, their fantasy football to satisfy their desires more than they do sex, the acts of watching and consuming replacing intimacy? Interestingly, the divorce rate is up for baby boomers, which seems odd; if you’ve been married for 40 or 50 years, why get a divorce in your 70s? It’s perplexing, and I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with sex — once it’s gone is there nothing left to sustain the relationship?
My husband and I are in our mid-70s, and while our sex life has diminished considerably, it’s still with us, and date nights can be surprisingly fun. We would never talk about this with our children because we know the idea of old people being intimate is gross. When my daughter tells stories about scandalous behavior in nursing homes — old people found coupling! — resulting in STD outbreaks and locks being removed from all the rooms, I can’t help but smile. I mean, why not? It’s not against the law, and it might possibly be that sexual intimacy is an acquired skill, something remembered when everything else has drifted away. Or maybe it’s a form of free expression, using the body to act up when you’re supposed to be docile and content to play bingo. For boomers, the ’70s might still be with us.
Molly Engelhardt earned her PhD in English from the University of Southern California and was a tenured professor at the University of Texas A&M—Corpus Christi. Her book, “Dancing out of Line: Ballrooms, Ballets, and Mobility in Victorian Fiction and Culture,” was released by Ohio University Press in 2009. Her published articles range in scope from Austen, Wuthering Heights, the language of flowers to cheerleaders in the 1970s popular press. Engelhardt retired from the university in 2016 and concentrates today on getting good ears on her sourdough bread and not bobbing when she swings her golf club. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Gary.
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