Unable to escape the claws of that particularly heavy brand of depression, I did what I knew would help: I switched gears from the mental to the physical. Getting on the treadmill and running has helped chase many a demon away in my life, and now I was desperately in need of a shift. With two miles down, and three still to go, I turned the TV on that was mounted in front of me. Mindlessly watching the shows and the commercials, I was grateful for the distraction until, what’s this?
I watched hot fudge being poured in slow-motion over mounds of ice cream as a female voice-over chirps,
“Come into Friendly’s this weekend for our free Happy Endings Sundae!”
What? Wait a minute…what did she just say?
Friendly’s? The family-friendly ice cream parlor chain, evocative of Norman-Rockwell-esque family get-togethers, everyone leaning into a table mirthfully sharing a gigantic banana split? That Friendly’s?
Is Friendly’s daft?
Or are they messin’ with us?
Can double entendres be slathered into a hot fudge sundae commercial?
Should I give them the benefit of the doubt?
Nah, if my sicko relative is right, you’d have to be living under a rock to not know these things nowadays. And I can’t imagine the big ad-exec that has the Friendly’s account, not knowing.
Well, that just pisses me off. Big-time! Who do they think they are, anyway, shoving their barely-camouflaged “jokes” down unsuspecting families’ throats? What kind of twisted despots are they anyway? They think they’re going to get away with trying to conceal sexual euphemisms under melted chocolate sauce? Who do they take us for?
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Who do they think they are, anyway, shoving their barely-camouflaged “jokes” down unsuspecting families’ throats?
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Whipping on my imaginary Crusader cape, I hop off the treadmill and run out of the gym, and I keep on running till I get back to my apartment where I’ll turn on my computer and Google Friendly’s Ice Cream.
I need to find some really good reason they’re co-opting this term from the sex-for-sale trade, for an ice cream. “Happy endings” is a term mainstreamed from the dubious world of massage parlors that cannot quite advertise their real business: providing sex. A happy ending is a couple of oiled strokes to the body followed by the customers’ choice of attaining an orgasm, with the price varying with the amount of effort required by the, um, masseuse.
Call me humorless; call me shrill. Call me a hopeless pedant. I don’t care. But all this raunch culture seepage into our everyday language is surely a step towards madness.
♦◊♦
On the way home, endorphins pumping from my run, I compose a missive in my head to Friendly’s telling them just what I think: that since they couldn’t possibly be that daft, that they must be messing with us, and that I will therefore never eat at Friendly’s again. That should get their attention. That I’d never eat there anyway due to their Muzak and bad lighting seems rather beside the point right now.
Finally I arrive home and I’m online now….Googling….Googling...There!
Third listing down, tucked in between something about desserts and saving money, in bold print and there it is: The Happy Endings Sundae!
I open up the link and see it’s not the main Friendly’s flagship homesite, it’s a website featuring the awesomely wonderful free sundae with the offensive name. The link is to a woman’s, named Julia Scott, website and pictured on her homepage is her latest bargain find:
A brand new Friendly’s all lit up and welcoming, with a perfectly PhotoShopped azure sky behind it. Facing this bucolic image from the side bar, is a chipper looking, widely smiling woman with large, suburbanized hair. Julia?
In cursive, girly-girl lettering like in Barbie ads, right across her photo, it says: Bargain Babe!
It does. I swear it. Google it yourself if you don’t believe me.
Oh my God, suddenly I cannot stop laughing.
The homemaker remade, as Bargain Babe! The hotness factor has officially rolled through suburbia, leaving no housewife unadorned and un-hot! Wow. Everyone’s jumpin’ on that bandwagon.
Julia, aka Bargain Babe, is heralding the latest bargain she’s dug up and shares it with us by writing:
“Get a free sundae when you buy any chicken strips entree. Choose from Friendly’s Signature, Honey BBQ, or Kickin’ Buffalo Chicken Strips. Each entree comes with coleslaw and a dipping sauce. The free sundae is called Happy Endings, which comes with two scoops of ice cream and one topping. I’ll take mint and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup, please!”
Wow! You go right ahead and do that, Bargain Babe. I’m imagining Julia or Bargain Babe or whoever she really is, dragging hubby and the kids to Friendly’s to show off her expertise in sniffing out the free ice cream deals. When the waitress arrives to take her order, Bargain Babe, ever buoyant, will chirp, “I’ll take the Kickin’ Buffalo Chicken Strips with a Happy Ending, please!”
Will there be a straight face on any male in the establishment when that invariably happens? Will hubby be snickering subversively behind his menu?
Erase, erase, erase, I tell myself. I try to expunge this weirdness from my mind, to remember that there are still people who do not know about such things. People who have never been exposed to porn and have happy, sane lives.
What does my creepy relative know, anyway? He thinks about having sex with his relative, for God’s sake. With me! Ewwww.
Clearly, he needs help.
Wait! I’ve got it! Maybe the solution is to move to the country. People like the Amish have done that, and they seem pretty happy and none too disadvantaged. Even when deranged gunmen open fire in their schoolrooms, they live by their principles and do not resort to baser impulses.
Yeah, I could get a nice little wood cabin in the woods like they do, cut off the Internet and the TV and purge the incessant media images and concepts that perpetuate the message of: Bigger, Better, Faster, Hotter and More Sex, Sex, SEX all the friggin’ time!! And don’t forget to look HOT while doing it. Recent pregnancy is no excuse!
Yes. That is what I will do, move to the country and then allow my brain to rewire itself so that I’ll begin to take my sustenance from the birdsong and the wind in the trees. I will quit my gym membership and I will wear only comfortable clothes. My life will simplify. That can only be good.
Right.
The feasibility of that solution providing gratifying results is about equal to my chances of winning the lottery and buying one of those 20 million dollar penthouses. And then to keep up with all my friends from the Fabulosity Club, I’d still have to read those glossy magazines… with the ads for MILF gyms in them.
My fantasy fades into the stark reality that mere escapism will not be enough to buffer me from coarse, porn-derived terms being bandied about in my everyday life. No, I am a Manhattanite, this is where my work is, my roots are here, this is where I belong. I will not be driven away by crudeness.
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No, I am a Manhattanite, this is where my work is, my roots are here, this is where I belong. I will not be driven away by crudeness.
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♦◊♦
So, although I am a witness to both advertising’s and popular culture’s glib use of terms and concepts from porn and raunch culture, I need to remember that porn is an imitation of life (at its very best). And I commit to living a real, fully-dimensional life in defiance of the inanity of what I see around me. There is no acronym or euphemism for that, but maybe it will catch on. I can only hope.
In the meantime, maybe right outside the door of the incredible penthouse apartment I’ll move into, there’ll be a nice, big rock in Central Park I can occasionally hide under.
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—Photo hashmil/Flickr
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About Lili Bee
Vocalyze
Everybody is free to use the language they want.
Yet if I was a woman and somebody called me a MILF, I would probably head butt him (meaning hit his nose with my head in an attempt to break it and cause pain and confusion).
Then I’ll probably go and get some ice, say sorry for the pain and explain that sometimes we need to make bad things for the greater good and one day he will understand.
Unless he is really big and not a friend/relative. In that case I would probably calmly get my heels off, hit it on the knees with a big stick, and start running.
Wow! This article is SOOO incendiary. It just makes me broiling mad! Porn with it’s images, innuendos and slithering euphemisms, has become so virulent in our everyday lives we barely even notice it. Just as women took off their bras in the 60’s and 70’s to proclaim their sexual freedom and emancipation, I want to put mine back on to reclaim my sexual dignity and be appreciated for my good deeds, my heart and my intelligence.
1. There is nothing wrong with sex.
2. Therefor, your fear of its becoming involved with aspects of your life outside our bedroom is invalid.
3.
I had an insight today. As wrong as porn is in terms of its insensitivity, its occasional degradation, and its usual misunderstanding of sexual physiology, we probably like it some of the time because it summons something which is true about good sex– it’s dyonesian. Its excesses, its anti-sociality get us past “reasonable” sex and into realms of real sensuality. To me, good sex has an element of uncontaindness, even if it occurs within the context of a monogamous relationship. I’m not very fetishistic in the traditional sense, but I like sex that breaks social rules, even if I don’t practice it currently. So I often like porn that shows three-ways, interracial fun, and so on. The rule breaking is a turn on, and I think should be one.
One of the problems with the way sex is often said to be desired here is that it’s too apollonian. It’s too reasonable, too contexualized within monogamy, with too much “right thinking” demanded. It’s probably a good idea for most of us to live this way (believe me, I’ve tried many of the pleasures I allude to above, and they weren’t all that comfortable.) But I think good erotica, not the poirn we have now might point the way to deeper, wilder, more fullfilling sex.
To put it another way, Henry:
We live in an age wherein companionate monogamy is the ideal. Even serial relationships expected to be outwardly monogamous. We don’t exactly denigrate polyamory, but it’s clear we’re not about to teach kids that such is “where it’s at.” And the former ethic of coupling for social reproduction first is seen, in the Western world, as quaintly anachronistic.
Oddly, though, we’ve joined companionate monogamy to the idea that lasting love is achieved only through work. Previously, efforts to attain and manitain what the Romans called ‘concordia’ centered on remembering given precepts. Now, couples, often with outside paid help, are enjoined to put ongoing effort into fulfilling each other’s emotional needs. It’s become one’s second job. Laura Kipnis hit this nail on the head in “Against Love.”
This is the context in which sex has been Apollonized. This is why you’re right to point out that porn is where Dionysianism is found for the majority of us. And it’ll continue to be that way for a long time to come. Why? That ‘right thinking’ you allude to. The essence of that right thinking is that no demand from women for “emotional availability” is unreasonable. And lots of men quite correctly see that not every sentiment is emotion. They’ll chafe, women will withold and lots of porn producers will go to the bank as a result.
I liked your use of Nietzsche on another thread, S. It’s possible that, paralleling Geneology of Morals, women have self repressed in order to repress men. Many women operate with what seems like a sexual governor (such as found on fleet-purchased gasoline engines) even when they are having sex that’s orgasmic. One woman told me on another board (when I suggested the sensual effects of cannibis [which I don't currently use]) that she didn’t want to lose her personhood. Men probably do this too. We live in such a productionistic and bureaucratically defined society. I see much of feminism and some of eroticism as the bureaucraticism of gender. It all seems to serve very middle-class sensibilities (in a bad way.) I’ve resisted postmodernism up till now (being a social scientist) but I’m pretty much onboard with Foucault at least in terms of sexuality.
While I agree with much of what you say, I do get nervous when people talk about “erotica” vs”pornography”. So often the difference is defined as “If it turns women on, it erotica; if it turns men on, it’s pornography” (I wish I could attribute the quote, but I’ve forgotten the author). Pornography is a element of fantasy. Fantasy is very often the mental expression of things that we KNOW are bad ideas in real life.
I think people also need to be realistic about the mismatch of libidos between men and women. I know it’s politically correct to insist that women are just as sexual as men but survey 100 married men and 99 of them will tell you it isn’t so for them. So men in committed relationship have to do something with the sexual energy their wives/girlfriends can’t or refuse to handle. In the 19th century it was considered “normal” for men to meet their excess sexual needs with postitutes, so which is the greater evil?
This writer makes a very big mistake. Too many women think that having a child ends their sexual life. Mom is not supposed to be sexy and a practicing sexual being. Heretofore that was the cultural message to get men to work harder enslaved in the frustration of a sexless or nearly sexless marriage.
I thought GMP articles weren’t a place for “man-haters”, but it looks like I was wrong (Lili, you really sound like one).
And, BTW, if you despise so much that person, why meeting him? Just because you then can talk bad about men?
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To all the men: please, stop being ashamed because you like sex or porn, or you would like having sex a lot. That’s totally natural, that’s the way we are “built”, and it’s ok feeling that way. Feelings are never “wrong” (OTOH, behaviour can be).
Obviously there can be abuse or addiction (and that’s a problem for sure), but porn in itself is just tailored to our male sexual imaginarium (and that’s why is so effective). It’s “unreal”, sure, just as much some female romantic fantasies (and books and movies…) are. They are both fantasies, and playing with fantasies can be good and healthy.
Regarding MILF: I see it as a getting rid of an old chauvinist cliché (“Only young women are hot”), and as such it can be positive for both genders.
If you feel offended by it, just ignore it; I dislike some kind of women (shallow or gold-diggers) and I just ignore them… I don’t go around trying to bash them. To each their own.
Thanks for clearly articulating a very disturbing problem. Though I agree with some of the other commenters that sexuality for both men and women is important through-out our lives, that doesn’t mean that the crass, objectifying, and sexualizing of non-sexual things should be accepted.
I remember a few years ago when my sister told me that her then boyfriend told her that she was going to be a MILF. She, like you, did not know what the term meant. Even though I am wont to believe that he was trying to say that she will continue to be attractive as she is older, much along the lines of the explanation your relative stumbled over. But I didn’t have the heart to explain to her what t he term meant. But it deeply disturbed me, to have my sister be referred to as such.
It’s not that I don’t want my sister to have sexuality as a part of her life, or for her partner to not be attracted to her. But within the context of the world that MILF came from, it absolutely disturbs me at a deep level. My sister (and all women) deserves respect and dignity. I can think back when I was married and I would never have described my wife’s and my intimate acts as (ugh, I can’t even type the word) the f-word or whatever. It was much more special and intimate and mutually connecting. Not crass and only self-gratifying.
But I fear that this leaking of the porn mindset into popular culture is only warping our mindsets of how our relationships, our sexuality, and our lives can be. Everyone can have dignity. Everyone can be sexual and have pleasure in their own way. But it isn’t degrading.
If a raunchy acronym upsets you to the point where you feel it’s “warping our mindsets,” one can only ask two things. First, how do you get out of bed in the morning? Second, what would you make of a writer like Henry Miller?
S. Gallo- to have written this to Travis just underscores the lack of empathy evident in many comments posted on so many sex and porn-related articles on GMP. Why would Travis, using examples of his own wife and sister, have trouble getting up in the morning? I think he probably gets up with his head held high. A mature man with a conscience can do that. As JFK Jr. rightly said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”.
If some people want to spend their lives in a non-stop rave, girls-gone-wild type of Peter Pan mindset, enjoy yourselves and hope that fulfills you, but I see no need to tarnish those who do not want that. If we felt secure in our beliefs then we would not feel the need to convince others that ‘my way is the best way’, which is a need to validate an insecure-immature belief structure.
As for Henry Miller, I’ve read a couple books and respect his work, which is quite often lurid. I visited his odd bookstore/museum near Big Sur. To my knowledge Henry has not coined any acronyms such as MILF which have saturated our society. I suppose this is due to the medium of literature not being as pervasive and influential as film, especially film targeted for a teenage audience such as American Pie.
I’m sorry but I can’t believe you followed the phrase “a mature man with a conscience” by a quote from JFK Jr. in response to article about porn! LOL LOL
Yeah, he was part of the solution as soon as he finished banging the two girls in the swimming pool. Not that he wasn’t a good president, but that was pretty ironic.
Agreed Jeni. I’m unaware of that one in the pool but I do know that we have many parts of ourselves, some wise, some not. We can’t always toss out one for the other or we’d be running pretty low on heros. For instance, Mahatma Ghandhi is notably one of the heros of the last century yet he was known to have beaten his wife on occasion. I can’t prove this but it is what I’ve read. If true then it was likely acceptable domestic rules of that culture. That wouldn’t fly at all today, in the USA anyway. JFK, for that era and power status, it was likely common place for such things as those swinging pool parties. And among his peers he was probably normal. I’m not condoning it, just pondering.
JFK Jr. wasn’t president. His father was. He was the one that banged two women in a swimming pool.
You’re right! My bad!
Michael, my riposte had nothing to do with tarnishing Travis because he adheres to sexual continence as an ethic. He would have been doing fine if he’d just stuck to being offended by what I admitted from the outset was a crude acronym, directed at his sister. Instead, good little Puritan that he apparently is, he put forth the inanity that this trope of garden-variety demotic crudeness is “warping our mindsets.” That crosses a line for some of us, in ways that his inability to utter the word “fuck” doesn’t.
As for your opening contention: why do I get the feeling that the ‘empathy’ you refer to consists solely, in this case, of agreeing that raunch, porn and racuous bonhomie constitute the Moe, Larry and Curly of societal decline?
S. Gallo, my main course of thought is targeted for the future generations of mankind. I look at how the raunch generation(s) may be able to lead humanity as leaders, parents and role models into the future. As a father I feel this concern with every cell of my body and as a native American I am concerned with how all of our actions may affect our World.
And what I believe to be a keynote of empathy is the way we afford others common courtesy, regardless of their stance (in communications and not in French fencing terms) but more in the true spirit of the term ‘bonhomie’.
We’re not going to slide off any ethical precipice because a few people casually use expressions like ‘MILF.’ We’ve had more than one generation of youth for whom “mother” is half a word, if you get my drift. Crime is down, despite the dearth of “role models” that supposedly plague these kids, and the seeming—repeat, seeming—aggregate rise in crudity. It’s even down in this, the worst economic climate in the US since the Great Depression. That certainly isn’t the entire explanation, but it’s enough to cause the prudent to take the word of Travis and Lili Bee as something approaching bargain-basement histrionics.
Cosign. And I’m extremely suspicious of attitudes and comments that imply that sexuality is the opposite of dignity or leadership. Lying at the bottom of this, I think, is the sex is taboo/dirty business. It’s amazing how many of the comments here seem to be rooted in ultimate sex=bad assumptions. With Alex Comfort, I think this is fairly wrong. Sex can and does complicate and problematize relationships. There’s much spiritual energy there and this shouldn’t be made light of. For a great treatment, see Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. It (and the science fiction novel The Day after Tomorrow) predicted a world where para-sexual representations would be used to sell products but at the same time to deny real sexuality. It’s here.
sex is over rated but its fun nice stuff throw ps im a bad spiller.
Intersting topic. I don’t see this as man-hating. Disliking porn is not the same as disliking men. Pornography and sex are not one and the same. People can be pro-sex and anti-porn. Heck, people can even be pro-porn and not think it belongs in the mass media (the stuff our children are exposed to).
I was also wondering why you would continue meeting with this person. Especially, if you can not set clear boundaries with him about what you are comfortable talking about.
We are helping each other by rubbing up against one another….pushing each other’s buttons big-time. He allows me a look at any places in me I might be compulsive, and I hope his takeaway (from time with me) is a look at his own inner yearning for intimacy, which he’s expressed finally being able to recognize.. That said, I am going to be setting a few boundaries….starting with, “You can share whatever you like about your own life and experiences but leave any direct references to me, out of it”.
Thanks, Tatyana
The term doesn’t come from porn. It wasn’t even popularized by porn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MILF_%28slang%29
I was going to say that I first heard MILF as a reference to Stifler’s Mom in the movie American Pie. Porn just reflects society, not transforms it. I wonder if there is as much problem to the word “Cougar” in the same context. In the vulgar sense they are synonyms (and porn uses them interchangeably). Yet it appears on mainstream TV.
This author should have taken a few minutes to peruse google to find the actual origin of MILF, which she of course immediately thinks is from porn. The first usage of this word in any mainstream media was in the film American Pie which was a teenage raunch-comedy that came out nearly a decade ago. The proliferation of the word after this movie only served to allow the porn community to rebrand a genre of porn (younger men with older women). Not everything is porn based, sometimes it’s just a dirty joke that’s been co-opted. When I see the acronym actually used in an ad I merely roll my eyes. It’s offensive, it’s stupid, but it’s not a symbol of male dominated porn culture invading every aspect of our lives. Chill out.
“Happy Endings” is a term I just learned from reading this article. Who would’ve known?
sex is over rated but its fun