Hooking Up: Even Older Than Plastic!
The hooking-up phenomena has been traced back to the 1960s and the 1970s, when male and female students were thrown together in apartment-style dormitories, and there was a revolt against strict rules on having a member of the opposite sex in your dorm, lights out and curfews.
— NPR
But consider this:
BEN: Well how did it happen?
MRS. ROBINSON: How do you think.
BEN: I mean did he take you up to his room with him? Did you go to a hotel?
MRS. ROBINSON: Benjamin, what does it possibly matter?
BEN: I’m curious.
MRS. ROBINSON: We’d go to his car.
BEN: Oh no. In the car you did it?
MRS. ROBINSON: I don’t think we were the first.
Hmmm. This seems to predate the NPR estimate of when hooking up began. And hey, maybe there are even earlier examples of casual sex sometime in human history…
UPDATE: In case you’re curious, it was a Ford.
I had to read this four times before the headline clicked. Funny!
The NPR story remind me of Mariel Hemmingway jab at Woody Allan and in Manhattan “You think I’m unaware of anything pre-Paul McCartney.”
Also this
Cars help. Before that barns. Having spend sometime in remote agricultural and fishing communities, I’ve come to suspect that gathering featuring dancing are held, and have always been held, for the purpose of promoting hooking up
— Tony Comstock · Jun 9, 09:14 PM · #
Listen especially for the appreciative and impressed whoops of the young womenfolk. What I wouldn’t give to have a crack at being young again for just one more week!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 9, 09:27 PM · #
The last thing I expected from Tony was “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers”!
— nicholas · Jun 9, 10:04 PM · #
This is what I don’t like about euphemism and delicacy. Not that it really keeps anyone at the time from understanding what’s going on, but that future generations without the context are liable to take things at face value and form an “understanding” of the past on that basis.
Like, those flower girls and matchstick girls in Victorian England? Occasionally invoked as symbols of so-pure-they-die-of-consumption purity? Overwhelmingly child prostitutes, using their merchandise as a pretext to strike up conversations with strange men in the street.
Or back in the good clean ’50s, when there was still a distinction between “dating” and “going steady”, where that wholesome scene of a girl wearing a guy’s class ring/fraternity pin/letterman jacket often as not signalled that she had chosen him as a regular sexual partner from among the stable of boys she had been trading orgasms with in various backseats every Friday.
And how attempting to read doo-wop and motown and early rock ‘n roll as zeitgeist markers makes you think postwar teenage life and culture was unbearably goofy, until you realize that the subtext of every single song is “And We’re Having Sex”.
— Senescent · Jun 9, 10:20 PM · #
Well, “The Graduate” was a great movie. Never was there a better description of youth unsure of their future and confused by the dysfunction of the adults all around them, yet finding their own way all the same. It’s good to be thinking of it again.
— nicholas · Jun 9, 10:33 PM · #
(Oh, and the famous Victorian association of virginity with value, even to the point that young widows were considered substantially less appealing partners than fresh girls? And what now strikes us as the ungodly amount of medical attention devoted to upper-class ladies’ genitals and uteruses, and all the incredibly vague diagnoses and vague causes of death? Had a lot to do with the rates of STD infection you’d expect from an urban population where the men regularly share the same pool of streetwalkers and then come home to infect their wives. cf., y’know, Africa and AIDS. So there’s that.)
— Senescent · Jun 9, 10:47 PM · #
For Ben to realize that Mr. and Mrs. Robinson actually were having sex together before they were married was such an expansion of his view of the world, it had to make you smile. Of course, there were harder truths instore for him as well.
And you’re right, Conor. Ben could not believe that this eye opening tale actually occured in the back of … a Ford! :) Great movie!
— nicholas · Jun 9, 11:10 PM · #
There was a book written for Christian women which I first picked up and skimmed in the early 80’s when I was in high school. I was absolutely mystified by some of its content especially the chapter revealing there were many ways to spice up a marriage, including wrapping one’s naked body in Saran Wrap and meeting hubby at the door when he returned home from work. This particular use of plastic would ensure that those who hooked up in the happy era of plastic were sure to remain fresh well into their later years.
— Joules · Jun 9, 11:46 PM · #
“many ways to spice up a marriage, including wrapping one’s naked body in Saran Wrap and meeting hubby at the door when he returned home from work.”
I think ideas like this are absolutely charming. There’s nothing more wonderful than knowing that while you were away your beloved has been thinking of way to delight you.
I also like the barrier/no barrier aspect — plastic wrap, sheer fabrics, leg warmers and a sweat shirt — anything that plays with covered/not covered, available/unavailable, false modesty. All very good stuff!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 10, 12:01 AM · #
The idea that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is a popular one, but does it really hold water?
Yes, illicit sex has always been with us, but it still seems clear that social patterns have changed and are changing. The rise of unmarried cohabitation, the decline of marriage and the rise of illegitimacy are measurable factors. I doubt that teenagers in the 1950s were having fewer babies outside of wedlock because they made greater use of contraception and abortion.
— SDG · Jun 10, 03:16 PM · #
I’m guessing casual sex, in its current form, is a product of effective contraception—probably really started with latex. Recently, I read in the Autobiography of Malcolm X about the 40’s swing dancing scene, and how everyone always made sure to have a “rubber” on hand. Oh, and part of the reason for fewer out-of-wedlock births in the past was greater use of shotgun weddings and other devices for concealing out-of-wedlock conceptions.
— The Uncredible Hallq · Jun 10, 05:55 PM · #
“Oh, and part of the reason for fewer out-of-wedlock births in the past was greater use of shotgun weddings and other devices for concealing out-of-wedlock conceptions.”
Which, to whatever extent this is true, reinforces my point that patterns really have changed.
For one thing, a culture in which shotgun weddings are a likely outcome of an out-of-wedlock conception is a culture in which casual “hooking up” is much less socially accepted, and is very likely less prevalent. Social expectations and acceptability do influence behavior.
For another, a guy who knows that he will be expected to marry a girl if she gets pregnant will likely regard sex less casually than one who isn’t worried about that.
— SDG · Jun 10, 06:18 PM · #