Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Sex education and Murphy's Law
The first edition of The Joy of Sex – apparently – is illustrated throughout with the same, extremely hirsute man. I can vaguely recall extreme (male) hairy-ness being briefly fashionable in the early 70s. The misfortune of The Joy of Sex to have been published during this brief window of fashion error is, I theorise, doomed to be replicated whenever well-meaning sex education is attempted.
Hence, these pictures from Victoria’s “new” sex-ed program for years 9 and 10 classes, “Catching On”. Oh lordy lord. To be fair to my scientific premise – let’s call it The Joy of Sex curse – the hilariousness of the images from “Catching On” can be at least partially explained by their having sat on the shelf for six years or more. But still, even if the images were freshly-minted, I’m convinced that the JoS curse would have resulted in something at least as bad as the Two Built Poofs Mills-and-Boon cover, or the very non M&B chicken-chested man – replete with the inevitable surfeit of hair – in the Ordinary Man and Woman photo.
Hey, I’m 40 and I’m still sniggering at the pictures as I write this. I wish the poor schoolteachers who are going to have to use them the best of luck – if they can suppress their own giggles, then they’ll be 1% of the way there.
The first edition of The Joy of Sex – apparently – is illustrated throughout with the same, extremely hirsute man. I can vaguely recall extreme (male) hairy-ness being briefly fashionable in the early 70s. The misfortune of The Joy of Sex to have been published during this brief window of fashion error is, I theorise, doomed to be replicated whenever well-meaning sex education is attempted.
Hence, these pictures from Victoria’s “new” sex-ed program for years 9 and 10 classes, “Catching On”. Oh lordy lord. To be fair to my scientific premise – let’s call it The Joy of Sex curse – the hilariousness of the images from “Catching On” can be at least partially explained by their having sat on the shelf for six years or more. But still, even if the images were freshly-minted, I’m convinced that the JoS curse would have resulted in something at least as bad as the Two Built Poofs Mills-and-Boon cover, or the very non M&B chicken-chested man – replete with the inevitable surfeit of hair – in the Ordinary Man and Woman photo.
Hey, I’m 40 and I’m still sniggering at the pictures as I write this. I wish the poor schoolteachers who are going to have to use them the best of luck – if they can suppress their own giggles, then they’ll be 1% of the way there.
