Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts
What they saw in their motel room
It was one of those small motels along the highway. There were two beds, a dresser, a night stand, a lamp and a mirror. They took the mirror off the wall and propped it against one bed so they could see themselves from the other bed.
Merry Christmas!
 |
| Bettie Page, 1955 |
Colorado Cowgirl
It doesn't get any sexier than this.
Emily Dickenson
Emily Dickinson, regarded as one of America’s greatest poets, is also known for her life of self-imposed social seclusion. Her lifestyle created an aura, often romanticised, and frequently a source of interest and speculation. But ultimately Emily Dickinson is remembered for her unique poetry. Within short, compact phrases she expressed far-reaching ideas, questioning the nature of immortality and death. Amidst paradox and uncertainty, her poetry has an undeniable capacity to move and provoke.
Emily Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a child, Emily proved to be a bright student. She delighted classmates with her original writings of rhyming stories. Emily’s father was strict in bringing up his children. Emily said of her father: “His heart was pure and terrible.” He censored household reading materials; Walt Whitman for example was considered “too inappropriate” and novels had to be smuggled into the house.
At a young age, she said she wished to be the “best little girl.” However despite her attempts to please and be well thought of, she was also independently minded.
Because of her discomfort in social situations, Emily gradually reduced her social contacts, going out less and less into society. By her late twenties, this led to an almost complete seclusion; she spent most of her time in the family house. Still, she maintained close personal relationships through letters, and penned more than 1,700 poems, which were published after her death. She had instructed her sister to burn all her letters. Not specifying poems, those, luckily, were spared. There are only a few known photos of Emily. No doubt many of her secrets were kept from history.
Unfinished Music, Two Virgins
In October, 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released, “Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins.”
Staying up all night at John’s home studio in Kenwood, John and Yoko created the music by recording tape loops of John on different instruments (piano, organ, drums) and sound effects (including reverb, delay and distortion). Yoko ad-libs in response to the sounds. At the end of the session, the story goes, they made love.
The title came, John said, from feeling like they were "two innocents, lost in a world gone mad."
John and Yoko used a camera with a self-timer to take the nude photographs of themselves for the album's cover; the front showed them standing naked facing the camera, the back cover showed them from behind. (The photos were taken at Ringo Starr's basement apartment at Montagu Square, where Lennon and Ono stayed later that year.)
Paul McCartney provided a note on the album cover, which read: "When two great Saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint."
The cover provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper. Copies of the album were impounded as obscene in several jurisdictions (including 30,000 copies in New Jersey). John commented that the uproar seemed to have less to do with the explicit nudity, and more to do with the fact that the two of them were rather unattractive and the photo unflattering; Lennon described it later as a picture of "two slightly overweight ex-junkies."
John Lennon and Yoko, you are my heroes. You bared it all for each other and your art. Thank you.
We miss you John.
Flower Power!
Perhaps where the original term flower power came from.
1950s Housewife
Breaking rules is so much more fun than following them. It's no surprise that the height of cocktail culture was during Prohibition. Modern pornography (as in photographs and films depicting sexual acts) was born in the prudishVictorian Era, and wife swapping and nudism entered the American vernacular in the repressed 1950s.
As Senator McCarthy was trying to call out communists, and as TV and magazines depicted perfect nuclear families, with father knowing best and mom pulling a hot ham from the oven, and the two kids studying at school and playing sports, there was just as much sexual libido as any other generation. Perhaps suppressing it only made it that much more exciting.
As any reader of this blog knows, I'm a huge fan of the flower power hippies and back to earth kids of the late 60s and 70s. Those skinny dippers at Woodstock and beyond really knew how to be natural out in nature, and are all the sexier for it. And while I completely advocate for an open and honest acceptance of human nudity in nature (see my other blog Naked Outdoors), I have to admit that a world without censorship and prudes would be a little dull. Some of the fun of stripping off clothes is the thrill of it being a little "inappropriate."
That's why I find this image so erotically charged. Just her nude body could belong to any era, but with the hairdo and cat-eye glasses, this is clearly the 1950s. She's maybe late 20s, early 30s? For the time period, she's probably a housewife somewhere in a new American suburb. Her husband has a steady 9-5, and in this post-war boom, they own a home. A nice white one-story ranch. And the home has a front yard with a driveway for their new chromed Chevrolet, and a big backyard.
Perhaps when her husband is at work and she's finished the dishes and laundry because she owns new washers and dryers and housework is done by modern machines and not by hand, she has more time for herself and relaxation. Perhaps she takes a towel and paperback novel into her big backyard, and in the sun, lays out, buck naked. It's something neither her mother or her husband would approve of, but that makes it all the more empowering.
Back in the Day
Oh the sex they had back in the day, when they were young and freshly married. He's glad he has at least these three snapshots to remember.
SHOW AND TELL
When Jennifer was old enough to go to the lake cabin by herself with her best friend, she found some things her parents had hidden. One was a condom with funny bumps on the tip. Another was a large rubber dildo. And the third item was a magazine with explicit image, suggesting how the rubber dildo might be used. Jennifer had a fun time showing her find with her friend. They spent hours inspecting the images, and it made her turned on. She was eager to try the dildo herself, and wondered if her friend would want to try, too.
GIRLS SHOWER, BOYS WONDER
In high school, we all wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in the girls' gym shower. We spent so much time and energy and creative powers imagining.
DODGE IN YOUR GARAGE!
Have you noticed the new Dodge Challengers and Ford Shelby Mustangs have a distinct retro re-issue look?
I say bring back Motor City! And Dodge, while you're at it, can you bring back more ads like this...
Have you noticed the new Dodge Challengers and Ford Shelby Mustangs have a distinct retro re-issue look?
I say bring back Motor City! And Dodge, while you're at it, can you bring back more ads like this...
.gif)
