Naughty Books for Girls

By Sarah

Porn for women. It's the title of a very successful book written by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative which also came out with Porn for New Moms and The Porn for Women 2009 Calendar, bless them. The underlying joke, of course, is that real women get all excited seeing half naked men only if they're doing the dishes. Or the laundry. Or diapering at 2 a.m.

But having just come off my third Romantic Times Convention hot and bothered, I'm here to witness otherwise. Porn for women is not about seeing men, albeit handsome and built men, in the midst of domestic servitude. Porn for women is about reading.

And that simple quirk of feminine wiring just might be the ticket to the survival of publishing as we know it. Women have always read naughty stories, starting from when we were pre-teens and went snooping under our parents' beds for racy material. If RT is any indication, we can't seem to get enough.

My very unscientific study of what sold at RT and has sold in the past comes down to this: women want porn as long as it's presented in stories of desire. We want lusty, strong male characters to eye the female protagonist with lascivious thoughts they cannot possibly enact initially because the female protagonist is about to be married/a nun/or captive to the Lord Vampire. (That one's obvious, no?) Either way, she is definitely a virgin. Preferably, a quivering, under educated and oversexed fertile female who desires the man who desires her, though, being innocent, she's not exactly sure why. But she'll soon discover!

After that, we women readers just want a lot of nakedness and thrusting and caressing this and cupping that. Things rising and swelling and going in and out. We like a mix up of atmosphere and situations and gazing. We even like new men, though our female protagonist has to be loyal to one special guy. Not her fault she was carried off by virile bandits and forced to submit to the Lord Vampire's will for the sake of her family/country/financial security.

I'm halfway through Bertrice Small's classic Skye O'Malley, a story with great potential and historical importance if Bertrice had cared about great potential and historical importance. Heck, it's about a woman in the 1500s who becomes a pirate between having crazy sex.  What a tale! However, Bertrice mostly cared about thrusting and heaving and things rising and swelling. It was embarrassing reading it on the Pittsburgh to JFK Flight because, even though I knew it was bad, I absolutely loved it. But occasionally I had to hide the words from the proper widow sitting next to me.

This brings to mind all the naughty books we girls used to pass around in grade school. Actually, the books themselves weren't naughty. It was that they contained naughty chapters. Our favorites were, in no particular order, a druggy rape scene in Rosemary's Baby, Coffee, Tea or Me, Sidney Sheldon's The Other Side of Midnight and, for some inexplicable reason, a lunch scene in Jaws. Go figure.

We were in junior high school in the 70s and the dirty parts were so dog eared it was not uncommon to finally get hold of the verboten book and find the juicy parts missing. Alas, those days are gone. These days publishers are fulfilling teenage girls need to know by handing them The Gossip Girls and Rainbow Party (about oral sex). Library Journal refused to review the latter, though editors at Simon & Schuster, which commissioned the book, claimed they wanted it as a cautionary tale for teens.

Whatever.

My take is that you can publish racy books for girls, but they will never replace the adult books for women which are meant to be hidden under the bed - until they're found, naturally, by a snooping daughter. Some things never change.

So what was the book you passed around? And don't claim you didn't have one or two. This is The Lipstick Chronicles. We know how it is.

Sarah

 

Comments

[Josh]

Gee, and on my drive home, I thought it was me--not the 1,000 or so bodice-rippers, dozen or so scantily-clad cover models, or one guitar-strumming Mr. Romance 1996, who is also apparently an author. Another opportunity in my life gone by the wayside.

[Abbe]

While not pornographic in nature, I recall passing around Flowers in the Attic with my junior high friends.

[Katie]

I can't recall any books, but a copy of Playgirl made the rounds until it was discovered (and confiscated) by the music teacher!

[Mary Storyteller]

My junior high students were very taken with _Flowers in the Attic_ and there are more books in the series, too, if I remember? (so this discussion is going to place us historically, just as the high school question places St. Louis residents geographically and sociologically).
_Peyton Place_ was a big deal "in my day" and some steamy scenes in some of the Bond novels. A friend had an _Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex_ book, and I babysat at a house with Playboys (interesting topics in the Forum and a prescription for feelings of inadequacy in the photos). Mom had an "Everything a girl needs to know" book, which she never gave me, but it was neatly hidden where I could easily find it. . .oh yeah, and _Gone with the Wind_, can't forget Scarlett (what a bad role model!)

[Joyce Tremel]

When I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, I remember everyone reading Summer of '42. Not too racy, but there was an illicit affair between a twenty-something woman and a teenage boy.

[William Simon]

I, THE JURY by Mickey Spillane, and the Infamous Panty Dropping Scene is still the standard for males of a Certain Age; collars and cuffs matched, and who had ANY IDEA?!?

That and an incredibly romantic description of the female orgasm in Fleming's novel THE SPY WHO LOVED ME; that single page caused that particular novel to be hidden in the laundry basket in the basement. When I discovered it, and read it, and got caught reading it, my mother went ballistic. She calmed down when she realized I was reading for the car chases and the exploding briefcases (the first two movies had been released, I was 9 or so.... kissing was 'mushy stuff', much less anything else. And there wasn't ANY of that in TSWLM, none, not even a Death Defying Leap or anything. Talk about feeling gypped....), but made me promise to never ever EVER tell anyone I'd read that particular escapade. Evidently, anyone outside the house finding out that Young William had read this would have resulted in stoning, burning at the stake, shunning, and all around bad nastiness.

Sorry, Mom, but the people here are nice, it's okay for me to tell I read that one...:)

[Becky Hutchison]

Ahh. I remember Coffee, Tea or Me. I read my sister's copy. I was pretty amazed at how sexed-up stewardesses were (no flight attendant then). The scene I remember most was one of the characters having a Coca-Cola by the bed to shake up and use as an aftersex contraceptive. I always wondered if that really worked.

We also had National Geographic at our house...scandalous pictures!

And Josh, you mean you weren't one of the Mr Romances? I can't believe you weren't given that title this year!!

[Becky Hutchison]

I forgot about Valley of the Dolls. It was a book that was shared among my friends...again courtesy of my older sister.

[bea]

The book I remember being passed around, and hidden from adult eyes because it was "not for your age group," was The Exorcist. Around 7th/8th grade. The story scared me, and, had the book not been "forbidden," I don't know that I would have been so interested.

I don't remember porn/erotica, or even romance, making the rounds. But, I grew up in western NY, close to the Canadian border, and, late at night, we could get a Canadian television station, which ran racy programming. Or at least it was racy by our standards. There was swearing (!), and they showed movies that would not be shown by American stations.

[bea]

Just remembered! The Other Side of Midnight, by Sidney Sheldon. That book made the rounds, and we all dutifully read the book and then puzzled out what had happened in the sex scenes.

[Becky Hutchison]

BTW, I saw at copy of Coffee, Tea or Me on the shelves at B&N the other day. I thought it was long out of print.

[Harley]

The Godfather! Sonny Corleone is going at it with his sister Connie's bridesmaid very early on. Page Whatever. Oh, my! (shudder of pleasure.)

And Rosemary's Baby too.

There you have it. Gangster Sex. Satan Sex. What could be better literature for a 10th grade virgin?

[Nancy martin]

My friends and I read the Angelique series--a historical bodice ripper written by a French couple long before Kathleen Woodiwiss came along. A beautiful French girl has sex with just about everybody in pre-Revolution France, then gets kidnapped by pirates and sold into an Arab harem. The auction scene was breathless. I just pulled the book off my shelf now and re-read the auction scene, which is now utterly tame, but in 1968-WOW!

Also The Crazy Ladies, which I read along with all my fellow lifguards one summer---even reading aloud to hysterical laughter. The book ended in a huge orgy on a Thanksgiving buffet table, if I recall. Otherwise, the plot was forgettable. But it made a summer for 6 bored teenagers.

Off to the polls! Go, Hillary!

[Sheila Connolly]

Mary McCarthy's The Group. I don't recall it as being particularly graphic (I still have a copy from the 60s, so I could check), but I was so impressed by this group of friends going off to the Big City and having lives! And sex! I swear that book was one of the reasons I went to a women's college (and never regretted it).

[J.D. Rhoades]

ISTR the girls on the bus passing around Marilyn French's THE WOMEN'S ROOM. The guys in my high school class weren't much for passing books around, but I do seem to remember Joseph Wambaugh's THE CHOIRBOYS making the rounds, which briefly resulted in the word "scrote" being a popular insult for several months.

[SarahS]

The Group? Really? Shoot. I don't remember that....and my mother recommended I read it.

Definitely the Women's Room, though.

Nancy - Is this Skye O'Malley you're referring to? Because it sounds oh so similar.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

Sidney Sheldon. I can't remember which one, but I do remember discovering that if I found the right-sized books, I could switch the book jackets, and then boldly walk around with the naughty books.

Which is why one of the things they always give away at RT is a book cover - sturdy and re-usable. So you can read on the bus or the train and not offend anyone. Hah. I hope no one thinks they're fooling their kids - that would have been like a bulls eye for me.

[Sue]

I don't remember any racy novels, but I do remember Boccaccio's "Decameron"....priests and nuns.....oh heavens! Made senior year interesting for a few of us, for sure.

[Anna C.]

I definitely remember Flowers in the Attic being passed around. But I was too much of a nerd to be included in that circle ... oh well, I'll just stay nerdy and say that the sexiest writing I ever saw for women is some 17th-18th century French "forbidden books." They were so popular that they got read literally to death and only a tiny number of practically shredded copies have survived. When I encountered passages of them in a secondary text I had to leave the library and go for a brisk walk.

[michele]

I never got passed these books by friends, but I found all the same ones on the bookshelf at the local drugstore. I would go there and sit on the floor and read them all -- Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins especially. Nobody stopped me although they must've known I was there.

I also have vivid memories of that scene with Sonny Corleone and the bridesmaid, although The Godfather is in a different category altogether. That's literature, not smut.

[Josh]

My senior year, when I was on the school newspaper, I bought a porn book from a local newstand. No photos, just racy text. I would read it aloud to the assembled staffers during our otherwise wasted study halls. One thing I remember was being in mid-sentence when our advisor walked in, quickly hiding the book behind my back, and finishing the sentence, which ended with "turgid veins." Our advisor looked around at us, shook his head, and turned tail. Good times.

[Tina]

Ah! Flowers in the Attic. I couldn't read that series fast and often enough. But the one I remember being passed around at school was Judy Blume's Forever. I was only 12 at the time. My mom said she had to read it first. It was about an older guy and a teenager having sex. Thats all I remember about it. I learned at lot from Judy Blume when I was a teen.

[Karen in Ohio]

Sarah, this is a great topic, especially since I'm currently reading Bubbles in Trouble. My husband demanded to know what the hell was so funny last night--I was at the geography lesson of Whoopee, halfway between Intercourse and Paradise. I have never laughed so hard while reading, not even at Evanovich.

My mother used to hide her written porn under the bed or in her underwear drawer. Does anyone else remember Candy? She also had Valley of the Dolls, and there was another one around the same time called The Carpetbaggers that was pretty racy.

When I was a young mother, a friend who was also housebound with no car and a small child lent me books from her stash: The Story of O, The Secret Life of a Victorian Gentleman, and some others that have been lost in the fog of time, most written by the same person: Anonymous. I have no idea where this friend got these books, by the way. Years later, another friend recommended Men in Love, by Nancy Friday, who also wrote porn thinly disguised as "research". Princess Daisy had some eye-opening scenes, as well.

Anais Nin's books are wild, and so is her diary, called Fire: From a Journal of Love. She was quite a rebel in her times.

When I was in high school, you could still buy really raunchy magazines with short stories in them, sort of an Ellery Queen of porn. I never did buy any, but found one hidden in the basement once at my aunt's. Could never decide if it was my uncle's, or if it was hidden by one of my boy cousins. I suspect the latter.

Flowers in the Attic, the entire series, was disturbing.

[William Simon]

Harley, the door scene in the GODFATHER ... marrone....

Nancy, the Angelique series by "Sergeanne Golon", a husband and wife team. If I remember correctly, they were Paperback Library books (who also did the DARK SHADOWS series; at that age, Barnabas and Quentin were much more important, but still....) which became Warner Books eventually. Holy mackerel.... that was some major MAJOR stuff back then.

Harold Robbins. Jacqueline Susann. As Spock said, "Ah yes.... The Giants." Sections of THE CARPETBAGGERS are still the standard.

[Nancie aka Gun Tart]

Gossip, I can’t remember the author, but I do remember the elevator scene. The Godfather, Jaws, Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins also made the rounds at my high school.

It was great to meet everyone at the Omni for drinks and fabulous conversation. A big thanks to Kathy, Nancy and Sarah for hosting the gathering and providing the flashing lips for us to wear!!