I put up the post you responded to more or less because in my mind it was clearly just another way of saying "You guys are sweet." Because culturally speaking, the message sent by those ads hasn't really changed much at all. It's just encrypted differently. For most people, it's probably not any more recognizable than it was back when those ads were contemporary. A norm is a norm a norm, and it wouldn't be one if it were a lot more noticeable than gravity.
And you know what, OP ED? For some mysterious reason, we're still not living in a world where just happily running through one lovely garden or field after another, enjoying both the scenery and the general atmosphere of masculine love for a lady's private parts is what you'd exactly call the norm, to any very much greater degree than anyone was thirty-five years ago. A lot of effort goes into keeping people uptight about what might be lurking down there. It's really endlessly baffling how it keeps working as well as it does. Not to mention a very beautiful thing that it continues failing to work universally.
Hey! Wanna see some excerpts of the book all the girls in my school got in sixth grade after we finished watching the same facts-of-life film that the boys (who didn't get any book, poor things) were watching in another room, when that hotly anticipated sex-ed day of health class finally rolled around back in 1972? IIRC, the explicit teaching of facts became part of the sixth-grade curriculum roughly around 1969. When it must have seemed totally logical to the school board to buy texts that were written in by lunatics in the 1950s.
I am speaking, of course, of the legendary On Becoming a Woman, by Mary McGee Williams and Irene Kane, whole passages of which I can still quote from memory. Or anyway, most of one whole passage:
It's not possible to sum up, easily, what makes one particular boy like one particular girl. It's a complicated combination of their personalities, their needs, their tastes, and sometimes the state of the weather. But it is possible to sum up, in general terms, the generally true things that make girls appealing to boys. Here's a list you might want to read several times; there may be a tip or two for you.
A boy likes a girl who ...
listens ...
meets his eye ...
walks with a spring, not a swagger ...
has a bell in her voice ...
makes inexpensive clothes look cheery ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
puts make-up on her face, not on his collar ...
isn't self-conscious about her figure, and doesn't advertise it ...
wears a flower, but not the whole Botanical Garden ...
draws a line between slang and profanity ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
smells like spring all year 'round ...
is prudent, but not prudish ...
smokes at home, drinks nowhere ...
improves on nature, but in moderation ...
sits like a lady, even in jeans ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
appreciates football without looking as if she could play it ...
laughs, but not too loudly ...
doesn't knock the rock, but admits there's room for Bach ...
would rather bite her tongue than her nails ...
has opinions, but doesn't think they're the only ones ...
doesn't call him on the phone for no good reason ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
likes him more than she likes his car ...
thanks the donor for small favors ...
neither spreads nor inspires gossip ...
follows the crowd, but not blindly ...
doesn't go to the beach dressed in a pocket hankie ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
acts herself, instead of aping movie stars ...
doesn't load his pockets with her compact, overshoes and hairbrush ...
has read a book ...
dances instead of yakking when she's on the dance floor ...
enjoys a movie and a hamburger as much as she enjoys night-clubbing ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
walks in the rain, and doesn't fuss about her hair coming down ...
gets up early to go fishing ...
appreciates his jokes (even the bad ones) ...
cares about his hobbies ...
A boy likes a girl who ...
looks good ...
sounds good ...
feels good ...
walks good ...
and talks good ~ but not too much ...
OMG, it's just like Sex and the City, except without gay men and product placement! Am I right????
To be fair, I only just thought of and started tracking it down recently. So I don't yet have a whole copy on which to pass judgment. I easily found the above by searching for the part of the text that I still know by heart, plus another one that I guess wasn't so clearly hilarious to a twelve-year-old as to be unforgettable. Plus, it's about how fabulous getting your period is, which I'm sure I regarded as a lie too blatant to bother mocking. I mean, everyone who read magazines already knew that it was, in fact, totally icky. But fwiw, briefly:
So what's so joyful? Well, let's stop and think what menstruation means....[F]or perhaps the first time in your active, tomboy life, you must accept that you are a girl!
For most girls, this acceptance is an exciting, who-wouldn't-want-to-be kind of thing, something you've looked forward to since you saw your mother nursing a baby brother, or dreamed about a kitchen of your own, or imagined yourself a well-loved wife....The girls who resent menstruation, who talk about "the curse" and the bother of "being sick," who get all mixed up about this time in their lives, are those who may have emotional doubts about being a woman....Here's a time for some real soul-searching, if you find yourself deeply disturbed about being "stuck with" the role of a woman. It's a time for re-evaluating the role of women in the world.
Gee. Ya think? They don't really mean that, though. It turns out that they're just fucking with you, since they immediately start blathering on about learning to sew and cook and, in summary, get ready to act "the role you were created for" as a wife and mother, before wrapping up with the news that it is now time to start "practicing your newly discovered womanliness on boys your own age."
I probably stopped paying attention after that.
Okay. I'm done now. Pussy-loving as usual may now resume. Assuming that it hasn't already.
