November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Love TimeLine

(Page 4 of 5)

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1895, April 30

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Oscar Wilde, on trial for "indecent acts," says:

"`The Love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect."

1896

John Rice gives May Irwin the first movie kiss--a pretty passionless one. But the press harrumphs that the "unbridled kissing, magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated thrice, is absolutely loathsome."

...

1897

Cyrano and Roxane look beyond the physical in Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac.

1901

Japanese poet Akiko Yosano publishes Tangled Hair, a book of poetry that replaces the traditional Japanese poetic approach to love--all emotions, no body contact--with a frank sensuality that is immediately popular among young lovers in the rapidly Westernizing nation.

1910

Hallmark is established in Kansas City, Missouri.

1914-20s

Tongues are loosened and voices are raised in support of women's sexual freedom. Margaret Sanger publishes birth control information in a New York newspaper called Women Rebel, arguing that love and happiness are hindered by the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Four years later, Marie Stopes of England salutes the female orgasm in her startling book Married Love. The 1920s see a flowering of sexual liberation. With jaunty jazz babies, flappers, and vamps frequenting speakeasies and petting parties, the twenties roar.

1931, Dec. 5

Anais Nin meets Henry Miller and soon brings him and his wife June into her erotic worlds, both real and fictional. Nin's repeated challenges to the concept of monogamy dismay her husband.

...

1942-1946

The Rev. Canon Bill Cook and his fiancee Helen exchange 6,000 love letters while separated for four and a half years. This love act makes the Guinness Book of World Records for Longest and Most Letters.

1953

Playboy hits the stands, encouraging men to "enjoy the pleasures the female has to offer without becoming emotionally involved."

1960s

Scenes from a sexual revolution: On May 9, 1960, the FDA approves the first birth control pill. Matchmaking hits prime-time with The Dating Game in 1965. The U.S. Supreme Court voids all laws against miscegenation in 1967. In the fall following the Summer of Love in 1968, feminists crash the Miss America pageant, proclaiming "women's liberation" and urging women to throw fake eye-lashes, dishcloths, Playboys, Vogues, and even their bras into "freedom trashcans."

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