Absolutely fascinating current affairs programme from 1972 looking at advice columnists - Dr Stephen Black talks to Marjorie Proops of the Daily Mirror, Evelyn Home of Woman, Claire Rayner of Petticoat and Jane Firbank of Forum, who between them "deal with more than 100,000 letters a year". Most of these columnists have multiple assistants helping them and an office full of reference books and box folders stuffed with pamphlets and newspaper cuttings to do with physical and mental health, sexual problems, etc etc.
Dr Black puts some sticky questions to the ladies about responsibility and authority (do they have any training?). They reply earnestly, self-deprecatingly, but ultimately persuasively about their role in relieving anxiety and loneliness, especially for readers who don't live in cities with counselling services readily available.
Probably the most interesting for me was Jane Birbank of Forum, in part because of her astute comments about sexual misery and sexual ignorance, but also because it reminded me of the very existence of Forum, "the journal of human relations" aka "the international journal of human relations".
Despite the lofty title and the journal-style format, Forum was a publication put out by Penthouse, so an extension of Bob Guccione's porn empire. You might then be forgiven for suspecting that this "journal" was actually a reversion to the days when prurient reading matter would mask its salacious purpose by pretending to be simply in the business of being "informative" - even posing as an expose that all righteous-minded decent folk should read to keep abreast of wrong-minded behaviours.
But looking at the contents pages below, there seems to be mostly material intended to be enlightening and therapeutic: articles about erotic optimization, body knowledge, marital health, the need for legal reform, for a changing of attitudes and opening of minds. The great post-Sixties drift towards permissiveness and relaxation of the super-ego.
So Forum was equal parts erotica and sexology (about sex but not exactly sexy).
It was also a commercially shrewd move into the burgeoning market of self-help literature, books and periodicals dedicated to personal growth and spiritualized sensuality / sensualized spirituality.
C.f. The Joy of Sex. But also not so far from Our Bodies, Ourselves.
I don't remember ever opening a copy but I knew of its existence and could probably have benefited from the information contained within.
One thing, though - there is something rather unsexy about the lugubrious color palette: all those dingy purples, mulberries, ochres, musty oranges and mossy greens. Kind of similar to the Biba fabric palette.
The drawings are not very aphrodisiacal either.
When they went to glossy photographs on the cover, though, it was even more off-putting
"Is Your MP Good in Bed?"
I'd never heard of this magazine before. Some of the cover lines do belong in a Tom Sharpe satire - The Painless Guide To Masochism, Down With The Age Of Consent?
ReplyDeleteIt looks as though it would have been a useful mag in its time but no doubt became obsolete as sex advice found it's way into more mainstream discourse.
The cover images are poised at that immediate post sixties level - A balance of frankness and coyness tilted as much as they can get away with towards the former. Such images wouldn't have been permitted ten years earlier, but basically tame compared to the ultra glossy soft porn of many magazine images by about 2000.
I assume this was UK only, because in the US 'Penthouse Forum' was the name of the mainline magazine's letters section, which quickly became infamous for obviously fake house-written porn with a very identifiable style ('I never thought I'd be writing to you/I never thought your letters were true, but...' 'I'm a sophomore at a small Midwestern college....', descriptions of women as 'tawny' or 'pert') - eventually it did spawn a seperate spin-off publication, but that was just the letters
ReplyDeleteOh right, I did not know that! Forum as the name of magazine instantly evokes a sort of dignity and seriousness that becomes shakier when you consider the origin story!
DeleteI feel like I know someone whose job was to write the letters, or maybe I just read about a renowned writer who in their early struggling to get by days did this a quick earner.
I did know a journalist at Melody Maker who worked for the women who founded the Sex Maniacs Diary and its various sideline manifestations. Which for all its cheeky / cheesy framing seems to have been in part intended to be liberating, part of the great loosening up.
Tony Blair press secretary and ex-Daily Mirror hack Alastair Campbell wrote letters for Forum in the early days of his career.
DeleteOn a related topic, in 1973 Nancy Friday published My Secret Garden, where she had collected anonymous women's sexual fantasies. In 2024, Gillian Anderson (a massive teenage crush of mine), after reading My Secret Garden whilst researching a role, decided to revisit the subject and published Want, a collection of anonymous women's sexual fantasies.
ReplyDeleteA number of curiosities emerge when comparing the two. Firstly, the 1973 book has few, if any, qualms about subject matter; rape, incest and bestiality are themes explored. The 2024 book did not include any fantasies that broached criminality. Secondly, the 1973 book adopts somewhat a heteronormative stance, with lesbianism essentially concentrated in one chapter. The 2024 book has a far wider, more inclusive stance regarding sexual orientation. Thirdly, there is more of an academic, polemical agenda of the 1973 book, with discussions on transgression and guilt. I believe the 2024 book, though it clearly has a desire to liberate, is meant to be read more straightforwardly for pleasure.
Never heard of that one!
DeleteNames of that era I do recall in this approx zone are Alex Comfort and Shere Hite (who I blogged about here https://shockandawesimonreynolds2.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-hite-of-fashion.html )
Hite sent out questionnaires to a great number of women but I think the material she got back was not fantasies but facts about fulfilment and unfulfillment, the mechanics of orgasms, unorthodox desires etc etc. The revelations were incendiary, she sold millions, became a media sdtar.
Anonymous is me by the way
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