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Tag: sex

My Crisis of Comedy

 

Katie Goodman

In unfunny era, comedian talks me off the Ledge of No Laughter

All I ever really wanted to do was to make people laugh: Strangers in the PTA meeting at my son’s new school. Colleagues in a supposed-to-be-serious work meeting. The poor lady doing my mammogram. I especially love it when readers tell me they snorted so abruptly at the local café while reading this column that latte foam spewed from their nose. Propriety be damned, I sincerely believe it’s always the right time for humor.

Except … maybe … right now? Lately, in the face of political, social, and environmental crises, my life’s goal feels sort of futile. And worse than futile, it feels indulgent. Who wants to giggle and guffaw when every day’s news is more sobering than the last and the Amazon is burning, you guys? What could possibly be the value in wisecracking and wit slinging when we could be (should be!) phoning our senators, marching in the streets, shoveling money to sane candidates, maintaining a consistent “self-care” wine buzz and educating the shizz out of the next generation so they don’t wind up screwed and humorless like us?

How Not to Raise a Sexual Assaulter

You Never Really Know If You’re Raising Good Kids … Until You’re Long Done

The political pandemonium of the past two years has left me extremely confused about a lot of things. But of one thing I’m now certain: It’s an assaulty world out there, ladies.

Since #MeToo erupted, the number of women who’ve come forward with accounts of handsy, tonguey, thrusty dates, bosses, strangers, and celebs is shocking. We saw our favorite sitcom dad and pudding peddler sent to jail over such accusations, and a volatile frat boy sent to the Supreme Court despite them.

So I wasn’t surprised when, in response to these reports, parents began expressing dire concern about the world their kids will inherit. However — I was surprised it was their sons they were worried about.

This Is Not Your Parents’ Sex

Women Share Stories About Sex After 50

Nobody wants to think about their parents having sex. Or their parents’ friends. Or, really, anyone their parents’ age. Because old-people sex is not hot.

We know this because countless magazine covers, soda commercials, music videos, and romance flicks tout taut-skinned hardbodies and shiny newness as indisputable turn-ons. Society is very clear: Gray hair ain’t no aphrodisiac … unless it’s on a guy … who’s charming a significantly younger woman … in a Viagra ad … as nature intended.

But then something freaky happens while you’re busy worshipping at the Church of Titillating Youth: You suddenly become your parents’ age. Gray hairs and all. And you realize that while you and your somewhat slack-skinned softbody are not likely to nude up in a music video anytime soon, you’re still fiendishly hot ​— ​and have oodles of sexin’ left to do.

So you write about it.

Are All Museums Sex Museums?

Tour a museum with a mathematician, and she’ll point out the angles built into the artwork, the proportions of the figures. Tour one with a painter, and she’ll fixate on techniques, brushstrokes, and palettes. No surprise, then, that when I toured the Santa Barbara Museum of Art last week with a feminist studies professor and former bondage museum curator, well, the whole place smacked of sex.

Thought museums were sedate and sterile, did you? Take the arm of Jennifer Tyburczy, assistant UCSB professor and author of the new book Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display, and you’ll discover they’re actually dirty dens of debauchery — in, like, the really good way.

Sex Talk

We modern parents are so enlightened. Unlike our Dark Age ancestors, who whacked through the child-rearing jungles with dull old saws like “curiosity killed the cat” and “children should be seen and not heard,” we encourage kids’ inquisitiveness.

We quench their thirst for knowledge by reading them books about disgusting insects and having long talks about thunder: “I have no idea where it comes from. Good question, sweetie! Let’s look it up!” My son’s favorite PBS cartoon always seems to be explaining why mold grows on sandwiches.

Because our generation applauds children’s curiosity. We reward it. We even brag about it. Until the day it turns toward our underpants, and then we freak the flip out about it.

That happened to a friend of mine last week. Another parent in her son’s preschool brought a newborn baby into the classroom, and the tots began asking her questions. One piped up with the inevitable, “How did the baby get in you?”

While curiosity may not kill a cat, it can do serious damage to a postpartum female. Caught off guard and loathe to decide for other families when — and, dear god, how — this delicate topic should be broached, the new mom explained that she and her husband had engaged in strategic “hugging.”

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