It’s time to end the shame of being attracted to partners who fall outside the range of who our society tells us we should be attracted to. In a recent interview (L) Miley Cyrus discussed her sexual fluidity. (R) Vintage Love Comics
The selling of who we may love has finally reached its expiration date.
In a country that long prided itself on endless choices of toothpaste, breakfast cereal and shampoos, for far too long there really was only one choice when it came to who you could love.
You stuck with the brand you knew and trusted.
Heterosexual – It’s the right brand. Time tested, dependable , AMA approved, loved by millions. Don’t accept substitutes.
Don’t Box me In
Vintage Romance Comics
Today there is a cultural shift as we slowly begin to shrug off the need for definitions and labels in how we conceive gender or who our society has told us we should be sexually attracted to.
From Facebook and its 50 shades of gender to Miley Cryus discussing her sexual fluidity, the choices are widening, encouraging those who are uncomfortable being slotted into a gender binary.
Vintage Romance Comics
Appearing in an interview in Paper magazine the 22-year-old agent provocateur discussed the fluidity of both her sexuality and her gender identification stating :
“I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age.”
Cyrus’s comment is in line with an approach to sexuality that is gathering momentum among her fellow millennials and a departure with the conventions of the past.
The Normal Heart…Love Honor and Obey
Vintage Romance Comics
With the media obsessed with defining and exaggerating gender codes of masculinity and femininity, never was the insistence that everyone fit into a heterosexual cisgender model stronger than in mid-century America.
The media was obsessed with defining and exaggerating gender codes of masculinity and femininity.
Images of the nuclear family and happy heterosexuals as the norm permeated popular culture, scattering its potent assumptions of family, marriage and who we should love deep into our collective psyches.
Girls Romance
In the late 1940s and early 1950s romance comics were aimed at teenagers and young women in their 20s but they appealed to a younger market ranging from 10 to 17.
Vintage Love Comic
When it came learning about love, mid-century teen girls turned to romance comics, ground zero of mid-century hetero-normative love. The wholesome advise offered was more akin to Hannah Montana than Miley Cyrus.
With names such as Young Romance, Girls Love and Secret Hearts , the colorful, pulpy pages were filled with heart throbbing stories about the rocky road to love in the quest for Mr Right.
Interestingly enough romance comics were written and drawn primarily by men. Even the advice columns with bylines attributed to women were written by men
The formulaic stories were instructive, telling the readers how to find a man, how to keep him, how to be beautiful for him and most important how to get him to put a ring on your finger.
Skating on Thin Ice
Vintage Love Comic
There was only one path to true happiness and anyone who veered from that was headed for trouble. . Fast girls who got pregnant got the shame they deserved but could be redeemed, but a girl who wasn’t boy crazy? Unthinkable!
Vintage Love Comic
No one wanted to be thought of as being “That Kind of Girl!”
Let’s follow the instructive story of “Liz” the non too subtly named Tomboy who queerly shows no interest in boys .Despite the taunts leering comments and shaming pointed our way our hero er …heroine stands firm.
That is until… she meets the Right boy, in a story entitled “That Strange Girl!”
That Strange Girl
Vintage Romance Comics
Failure to conform to these confining roles meant there was a whole lot of shaming going on.
The Key to Femininity
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
She Doesn’t Go For Boys!
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
What Do You Think I Was…?
Vintage Romance Comics
Vintage Romance Comics
This story appeared in a romance comic from the early 1970s. Still grounded in the morality of the 1950s’s, the Love Comics genre could never adjust to the new changing morality despite trying to deal with contemporary themes, eventually dealing a death knell for romance comics.
Today’s changing morality has likewise signaled a death knell to limitations on love.
By the end of June, the month long associated with love and weddings, the Supreme Court will issue a milestone decision about the right of two men or 2two women to exchange marriage vows, extending same sex marriage to all 50 states, making it the law of the land.
(©) 20015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved
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Envisioning The American Dream 
Thanks for posting. Never saw these.
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Me, neither. I was too old for comic books in the 70s — and much preferred Famous Monsters of Filmdom as a teenaged girl. Of course, mainstream magazine fiction and movies also told us that a happy ending equalled marriage — (a plot dating back to Plautus, at least) — but not for James Bond. Hmmmmm.
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OMG, the Liz comic.
WOW.
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Coincidentally, a post about a real-life father who taught his daughter how to do “man’s work” appeared as a fathers’ day tribute at https://rememberedsummers.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/remembering-my-father/
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As a child of the 70s I vividly remember the notion that girls who weren’t attracted to boys must suffer from low self-esteem. Eegads! Thank you for sharing yet another amazing post!
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It’s amazing to think that in the shadow of the gay rights movement these notions were still very much alive and well, well into the ’80’s and beyond. Glad you enjoyed the post
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As a famous soothsayer and shaman once said, “The times they are a changing.” I work with college students. One thing is for sure, they are a lot more tolerant than my generation was. To think only 45 or so years ago, they made “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”. At that time, you could be thrown in prison in sixteen states if you married a person of a different race.
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As St. Bob said:
“Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’”
But being a tomboy isn’t a sure sign of “lesbianism”, and a girl who likes girls doesn’t have to be a tomboy – or “buch” – or a man-hater. Also, being a gay woman doesn’t mean that she disapproves of ‘pin-ups’ or sexy pictures – or, is a moral crusader against “objectification of women”. A Facebook friend who is a girl who likes girls, as she prefers to be described, posted lots of pictures on the very verge of FB censorship that almost made me blush – and made my GF jealous. She seems to have “tagged” me, I don’t really understand what tagging means – those pictures were presented on FB as “pictures of me”! But I think she was “banned”, and she’s now FB-ing under a new alias with a lower profile. No ‘bimbo’, she speaks 4 or 5 languages and has had university studies. Has a managing position on her job. And looks like a movie star… 🙂
The golden rule for a man who wants to stay friends with a girl who likes girls seems to be: “Don’t offer to cure her from her ‘affliction’!” 🙂 And don’t pass her pictures around without her permission.
Out of topic – Dylan uses a southern accent in spite of not being a Southerner. That seems to imply that ‘ng’ is pronounced as ‘n’. And that ‘a-xing’ – is that called a gerund verb, or what? The English I was taught in school was British English, but my recent exposure to the language is about 99 per cent American these days…
Recent buzz: IBM Punishes Louisiana For Governor’s Anti-Gay Executive Order
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/06/21/3672257/ibm-ribbon-cutting-jindal-executive-order/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3
Texas pastor threatens to set himself on fire to stop gays from marrying
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/06/19/texas-pastor-threatens-to-set-himself-on-fire-to-stop-gays-from-marrying/
“Now it turns out that the Malaysian government is blaming the quake on a group of tourists who stripped naked while climbing the sacred mountain, thus angering the gods. You can see the offensive picture that was posted to social media here”
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/06/08/naked-tourists-caused-deadly-earthquake-in-borneo/
Canadian, Dutch and German tourists who posed naked on top of ‘sacred’ mountain are blamed by Malaysian government for causing earthquake that killed 16
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3114759/Malaysian-government-blame-naked-tourists-causing-deadly-earthquake-violated-sacred-mountain.html
Pairin: Naked tourist brought on mountain’s wrath By JULIA CHAN
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/pairin-naked-tourist-brought-on-mountains-wrath
A Group Of Naked Tourists Is Being Blamed For A Deadly Earthquake In Malaysia
The Malaysian government says the foreigners will face charges and are barred from leaving the country.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/naked-tourists-malaysia-quake?bftw&utm_term=4ldqpgc#.rwNPW5G01R
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amei essa figura
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Blocking “the Male Gaze”?
Quote: “Liberty University’s Guide to Female Modesty
SUBMITTED BY Josh Glasstetter on Friday, 5/11/2012 2:39 pm
[This is part of a series of posts on Liberty University’s student handbook, “The Liberty Way,” which governs what students can say, do, read, and watch – both on and off campus – and sets out a regimen of reprimands and fines for violators]
Liberty students are “expected to dress modestly at all times,” and the Liberty Way sets out guidelines for both men and women. However, in the long tradition of religious conservatives the world over, most of the focus is on women – and covering up their sinful bodies.”
This screenshot from the Liberty website circa 2005 shows an example of how female students should dress:
– See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/liberty-university-s-guide-female-modesty#sthash.Ewnh3bjw.dpuf
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/liberty-university-s-guide-female-modesty
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I’m enjoying reading your blog, but I have one piece of constructive criticism; have someone else review each post before its published so that they can help you catch errors; like when you repeat sentences that you already posted, verbatim.
That makes the articles needlessly redundant and harder to read.
Hope that this is helpful, and please keep writing.
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Thanks for reading my blog and glad you enjoyed it. I appreciate your input. I do strive to have original content, and occasionally posts are re-purposed and I apologize for the redundancy
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