Pop Culture's Sexiest Decade

Every decade is remembered for a particular brand of sexuality.  There were the flappers of the 20's, the pinup girls of the 40's, the hippie chicks of the 60's.  (Notice that the sexual energy of every decade is carried by the women?  Fodder for another article, I guess).  For me, the sexiest slice of time were two halves of two decades: the mid-60's to the mid-70's.  Brazen young adults were hatched from the repressed 50's.  Sex was everywhere.  Of course, it always had been, but now it was out there in plain sight.  Even as child, I felt it.  It was all around me.  I knew what "sexy" was, even if I didn't understand the specifics of sex. 

Having been born in 1961, I was in my formative years during this period.  Serious things were happening.  There was the Civil Rights movement; the Women's Liberation Movement; Viet Nam.  I remember Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. being assasinated.  Kent State.  Anti-war protests.  Watergate.  I processed these events as a child would.  These events were happening in a world far from mine.  They were adult concerns, not mine.

What did concern me was Pop Culture.  It drew me like a magnetic force field.  I was fascinated by hippies and their funny clothes and love of flowers.  They were dreamy and happy.  They had sex whenever they wanted with whoever was available.  They sang about loving one another.  I didn't understand why their very existence was so upsetting to my grandparents.  I liked everything about them.  I remember my father and I were gathering wildflowers for my mother in the fields near our house.  He put a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace behind my ear and called me a little hippie.  I remember welling up with happiness at the notion.  I had already fantasized about moving to San Francisco when I grew up to become a hippie.

Just as appealing to me was the beach culture.  I remember seeing kids hitchhiking with their surfboards in the summer.  At the ice cream stands there were usually car loads of teenagers who were on their way home from the beach.  They were always laughing, always beautiful.  The boys were shirtless and tan.  The girls wore bikinis or gingham halter tops; short shorts; big hats.  I longed for the day when I would also be a teenage girl with long hair and sunglasses, headed to the beach in someone's car.  When I was about six, I begged my grandmother for a pair of sunglasses so I could look a little bit like them.  She delivered, bless her heart; however, my new sunglasses were bendable and sported brightly-colored clowns at both corners.  They were shamefully childish.  I never put them on.

I remember sitting in our car at a drive-in pizza place one evening, the kind where the girls used to come to your car and hitch a tray to your window.  My mother and father were in the front; my sisters and I crowded into the sofa-sized back seat.  Next to us was the ubiquitous carload of teenagers.  they were so casual and confident; boisterous, but well-behaved.  I became mesmerized by the girl who sat in the front passenger seat.  She was the quintessential 1960's-style Goddess.  Long dark hair with fringey bangs.  False eyelashes that made her look like Bambi.  Her smile was dazzling.  Whenever she spoke, the others laughed.  She was, at least for that moment in time, completely in charge of their happiness.

From the darkness of the back seat, I watched as she raised a compact mirror and a lipstick to her face.  In two efficient motions, she slid a pale pink--almost white--lipstick across her lower lip, then snapped the compact shut.  Lipstick and compact were dropped into an unseen bag.  I was mesmerized.  Perhaps she felt my eyes on her, because when she looked up, her eyes fell on me.  What she saw was a chubby eight year-old girl gazing back at her with pure wonder in her eyes.  I don't know why, but she felt I was worthy of her attention.  Before I looked away, she gave me a quick, secret wave.  It was meant for me alone.  As a Goddess, she understood that I wanted to be her, and that I had been watching in order to learn how to become her.

As I moved out of childhood into an awkward pre-pubescence, I dreamed of becoming a a go-go dancer.  They wore mini skirts and had long, swinging hair.  They danced in cages that usually hung aloft.  Everyone watched them but no one could touch them.  Again, so Goddess-like.  Best of all, they wore white go-go boots, which was a particular obsession of mine.  I think it began when Nancy Sinatra's hit song "These Boots Are Made for Walking" came out.  I remember leaning on the kitchen counter in front of the radio, listening intently to the lyrics and processing them into my developing sense of sexuality.  I asked my mother for go-go boots but she denied me, saying they were inappropriate for children.  Clearly she too understood their allure.  She knew what they represented.

My obsession with go-go boots led to a two-fold plan.  I bought a baton and practiced twirling in the back yard.  The high school majorettes wore white boots, you see.  Additionally, the girls who worked at the drive-in wore cute blue uniforms with (what else?) white boots.  My goal was rock-solid.  I would be a majorette in high school and work after school as a car hop at the drive-in.  I would practically be living in white go-go boots. 

My best friend was my cousin Valerie, who was just three months older than me.  She and I shared two dreams.  The first dream took hold when we broke into my grandfather's desk and discovered his cache of Playboy magazines.  We devoured them, page by page.  We would go back to them many times and find our favorite pictures.  As little girls, we thought all women looked like that.  We assumed we would soon look like that, too.  Once we did, we too would ride in sports cars with men.  We would gather with beautiful friends at cocktail parties.  We would stretch in the sand of the California beaches at sunset.  We longed for childhood to pass quickly so we could get there.

Our second dream was more enduring.  We wanted to become models and live in New York City.  Toward this aim, Valerie procured a book called So You Want to Be a Model.  We studied it like an instruction manual.  We quizzed each other on the particulars.  We learned about "go-sees" and "assignments." 

As luck would have it, we discovered a perfect vehicle for our fantasies.  My uncle had a decrepit VW Beetle in his back yard, just inside the woods.  It was a restoration project that he never quite got around to starting.  It had been sitting there for so long that the woods had begun to wrap around it.  It smelled of mildew.  No matter.  Valerie and I spent hours in the VW Beetle pretending to be models driving to our go-sees.  We talked on an imaginary car phone to our agent.  We got the assignment.  We're headed there right now.  OK, bye!

Soon after, we found some abandoned cinderblocks in the woods.  With them, we constructed chairs and vanities.  We laid twigs in the recesses of the blocks.  These were our lipsticks and eyeliners.  Once we were done applying our makeup with the twigs, one of us would announce, We've got a go-see downtown!  We'd jump into the Beetle and off we would pretend to go.  I would jerk the wheel back and forth, maneuvering through Manhattan traffic.

Had my mother allowed me to own white go-go boots, I would certainly have worn them during these sessions.  It's probably best that I didn't have them.  I'm sure I would have lost all sense of reality.  Instead, she kept me in Keds and sensible polyester shirt and short sets.  She made me wear my hair in a low-maintenance pixie cut.  My mother did what she could.  There was a turbulent, sexually atomic world out there, a world from which she held me back with an iron hand.  That was her job.

As it turns out, I did grow up.  Not surprisingly, I did not become a Playboy bunny.  Nor did I become a model or a majorette or a go-go dancer.  I have never owned white go-go boots.  By the time I was old enough for them, it was the late 70's and that look was gone.  The swinging chicks of the 60's had not waited for me.  They were gone, along with their spirit.