Define the “typical” modern woman. Go ahead: Give it a shot.
It isn’t easy, is it? Since the advent of the “sexual revolution” and the so-called feminist movement, women’s roles in western society have evolved to a point few people could have foreseen two generations ago. No longer consigned, barefoot and pregnant, to the kitchen, women these days can and do perform almost any task their male counterparts perform—often backwards and in high heels.
Not long ago, someone emailed me a copy of an article from the May 13, 1955, issue of Housekeeping Monthly. Called “The Good Wife’s Guide,” it offered what must have seemed like quintessential advice to women of the day about how to ensure a happy home. (In those days, few women worked outside the home, and the ones who did were considered defective in some way: They’d been divorced or widowed, “hadn’t been able to catch a man,” were afflicted with “loose morals,” or harbored dangerously subversive ideas about a woman’s “place.”) From my perspective, the writer’s advice seemed both humorous and offensive. “Have a delicious meal ready [when your husband comes home from work], touch up your makeup [and] put a ribbon in your hair, be a little gay and a little more interesting for him, [and] arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes,” the author wrote, adding that “Catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.” The article also advised women to “show sincerity in your desire to please him” and to remember “his topics of conversation are more important than yours.” The clincher might have been “Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment. You have no right to question him.” Above all, “a good wife always knows her place.”
“Holy Donna Reed!” I thought. “So that’s what was up with June Cleaver and the pearls.”
I showed the article to my mother, a dear, 75-year-old Southern Belle (who’s about as tough as they come), and she responded with a wistful, “Yes, that’s pretty much what life was like back then. Things certainly have changed. You and your sister have sunk significantly below ‘ideal,’ haven’t you?” The last line was delivered with a mischievous grin, which I’m fairly certain is not an approved facial expression for women of a certain age.
I also showed the article to my other half. “I’m posting this in the kitchen,” he said, filled with masculine awe. “That would be a safe spot,” I told him. “I’m least likely to see it there and find renewed enthusiasm for burying you in the backyard.”
While I certainly can’t speak for all women, I think I can say with some degree of authority that most women no longer view making a man happy as their most sacred mission. Even in the adult entertainment industry—the primary (but not sole) focus of which is men’s pleasure—women don’t function solely as soulless sexual automatons who have to be kept in line by authoritarian men who know what’s best for them. That’s part of the fantasy sometimes, but as the women featured in this special salutatory issue very ably demonstrate, it’s seldom the reality. Many of the women in adult entertainment—both in front of and behind the cameras—are wives and mothers in addition to being “career girls,” and it’s tough to lump them all together under any umbrella definition of a woman’s role. Some are outgoing and love the spotlight. Some are cerebral and prefer to spend their time creating trendsetting products. Some, like Epoch Chief Financial Officer Esther Martinez, prefer to remain in the shadows and let public attention focus on their businesses. All are more than the sum of their erogenous zones, culinary skills, and child-rearing abilities; none is a helpless waif waiting to be saved from a life of spinsterhood by a man on a white horse. These women—like countless others within and outside adult entertainment—are the architects of their own destinies.
Maybe June Cleaver’s pearls were a prescient metaphor: A man’s home may be his castle, but the world is a woman’s oyster.
