Roar of the 20s--finally we're sort of okay with sex

The roaring twenties sound like a fantastic time to be living. An age of sexual innocence and exploration, the twenties is where it was at. Especially the lack of stigma, watchful eye, or malevolence against homosexuality: Gay Balls were thrown with great extravagance and homosexuality was not as much as an issue as it even is today. I think if there were one decade I would like to live in (besides this one—I love the new millennium!), it would definitely be the twenties. I would be some fantastic flapper, wear short dresses, attend petting parties, and be an all around new American woman (this is considering the fact that were I to live in another decade, I could be another biological sex).

There was a little bit of sexual detestation, as displayed by the Hayes code. The Hayes code was a list of do’s and don’ts for the motion picture industry: married people couldn’t be shown sleeping in the same bed and the origin of where babies come from couldn’t be revealed. I remember that question being very elusive when I was younger: answers usually consisted of a cartoon bird who delivered children to parents, I suppose whenever the parents decided it was time. Even now we still feel the reverberations of the history of sexuality.

As we learn about the more modern view of sexuality, it’s very interesting to see how we have been affected today. It seems almost impossible to define sexuality today, as we have influential voices saying different things. Lady Gaga preached the Greco-Roman view of sex equating to power and a queer theory view of not defining orientation and appreciating its fluidity. At the same time, Taylor Swift preaches back to the Madonna-Slut complex, to virgin queen symbols of the Medieval age. Opinions are readily different and widespread. If there is one constant in today’s sexual society, it’s that everything is talked about: whether through jokes or sex education or the news or books or the internet (especially the internet). Information for every sort of obscure sexual idea can be obtained and no one is in the dark about where babies come from.