1980s

On January 1st, 1980, CNN began the first 24/7 news program. This station, to pad out its time, filled American homes with fantastic tales of serial killers, **** cults, conspiracy theories, and satanic ritual ****. The media frenzy was sparked by the book Michelle Remembers which invoked forgotten memories to inspire fear of all things deemed ‘occult’. The Church of Priapus, always a bastion of conservatism and cock-worship, changed its sexorcism policy to yield to secular medicine. This change, even for protestants, seemed to signal a defeat in the battle against Satan, renewing fears and interest in the fight. What momentum the Sexual Revolution had gained, stalled out, and was replaced by a new kind of hysteria.

This tv time also helped to get former actor Ronald Reagan into the Whitehouse. His campaign focused on the cold war and family values, believing that sex ‘belonged in the home.’ This move indoors coincided with air conditioning becoming widespread across the country. The pro-business ‘Reagan Revolution’, rather than replacing free use, temporarily changed the course of its expansion. The new form of free love that his administration promoted was one where it was the familial responsibility to address nymphomania in the sexes. A tradition emerged of all households becoming partially free love, at least to all other members of the household, within its walls. Furthermore, that parents were ultimately responsible for abolishing their children’s virginity on their 18th birthday teaching them about sex, inciting a wave of resistance to sex education in public schools.

Nancy Reagan, known to ‘give the best blowjob in town’, struggled in her new role promoting public chastity. Her ‘just say no’ campaign, urging American women to resist peer pressure to have sex, failed spectacularly. So badly in fact, some began to speculate the Reagan administration was secretly drugging people with the pill in order to make democrat-voting demographics appear sex-crazed. He signed bills returning women to ‘sex worker’ and ‘non-sex worker’ status and granted permission for businesses to enforce a non-nude uniform. Despite hopes of rolling back the gains of the previous decades, Reagan instead appointed Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to the supreme court, who was sympathetic to the free love movement.

In the 1980 census, a quarter of women self-identified as free love. In that same year, in San Francisco, the Folsom Street Fair, the first free love festival, was founded. The area was proliferated with free love as the final stop in the westward migration of many hippies and radicals. The ‘miracle mile’ of Folsom Street was home to more than 30 sex shops and clubs. Here the marches and protests of the previous decade didn’t die out and instead changed from advocation to sexual solidarity and celebration. The city of San Francisco had long championed free use as the home of the first free love admitting college and now to pass a public ordinance permitting public sex for the duration of the fair. The festival was immediately compared to Mardi Gras, which New Orleans had granted the same privilege many decades prior.

The fight over what fashion was most fuckable was split between nudity, skimpy costumes, and lingerie. Anti-clothing advocacy groups emerged at this time such as the Naturist Society and Nude and Natural. These groups managed to obtain a national ‘No Panty Day’ holiday and, more importantly, the outlawing of swimsuits at public beaches or swimming pools. For lingerie though, following the success of Victoria’s Secret, most retailers now marketed their selections as fetish-wear also, meant to indicate sexual availability. The thong came out at this time but was slow to gain traction. Instead, women wore bold bright colors in diverse materials. Women’s fashion changed in part due to same-sex peer pressure. Political Lesbianism, the extension of free love to interactions between women, as an academic term and theory, originated in 1981 with the publication of ‘Love your Enemy?” by Sheila Jeffreys.

Fashion is about lifestyle, of which clothes are only one part and sex icons abounded at this time. Jane Fonda released a series of popular sexercize videos in the wake of the success of ‘Let’s Get Physical’ by Olivia Newton-John of Grease fame. This fitness craze stands in contrast to the emergent feeder fetish that spread at the same time. Hooters opened its doors in 1983. It marketed itself as the first ‘breastaurant’, in the vein of Victoria’s Secret, that both its staff and customers were privately free love. The policy was to permit customers to grope waitresses and female customers as well as for waitresses to take their masturbation breaks in full view of customers. Its sexual success led to many supposed copycats as waitresses that lived by tips embraced the principle that sex sells. Door to door selling declined due to television but home maids saw a return thanks to their renewed sexualization. Other uniforms such as nurse, secretary, and especially the schoolgirl, all businesses classified as ‘sex work’, grew popular. Outwear would have disappeared for women if not for its new role as a sexy costume to be stripped out of.

Another sex icon, Carrie Fischer, was initially desexualized and the mega-popular movie Star Wars. She demanded director George Lucas change her role as she that “nobody could tell [she] was a woman.” In the sequel she was made a sex **** to whole gang of aliens and an incestuous love interest. The next year such icons would be awarded as such at AVN, alongside movies like WSEX and writers and directors such as Steven Spielberg. Movies often addressed the growing goth and **** obsessions at the time. The legendary Nina Hartley began her career that year. But of all the icons, none embodied the sexual empowerment of the modern woman more than Madonna. The rockstar popularized a sexual image of rock and many women copied her leather, fishnets, and heels. Her provocative performances championed a Priapan anti-chastity message such as her breakout single, ‘Like a Virgin’. Rock music proliferated greatly at this time, as a cornerstone of the gothic subculture and mainstream glam and Christian rock. It would be criticized though, mostly metal bands such as Metallica, would be especially targeting for criticism, esp. after spurious claims of secret satanic messages on their records.

Burning Man began ostensibly as an art project but soon the annual free love festival became the annual Mecca of free use because of its orgy dome. The eight-day long fuck-fest helped to popularize annual free love events such as the University of Michigan Naked Mile and Sex by Southwest in Texas. On the other hand, the right to public nudity was scaled back with the introduction of school uniforms in Maryland and the Capital. These uniforms were updated version of the traditional Priapan style with a tartan miniskirt and sheer, unbuttoned or tied blouse. Underwear was also required and for some to be plain white and others made to match. Women’s History Month was created the same year for students to learn about the history of sex. Those out of school learned about it informally through practical experience and from the first free love talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, as she candidly discusses the daily dealings of the lifestyle. This interest in candid viewing coincided with the popularity of gonzo and mocumentary, paving the way for a cheaper and more accessible film in

In 1985, in the middle of the Satanic Panic, a possible free use vividly imagined by Margaret Atwood in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ as a Christian Pornocracy. The widely popular book was one of the last to address the subject of how consent might be overcome as more recent other would presume free use to coincide with sexual proliferation, addressing the problem biologically. Other works of erotic art at the time such the fantasy pieces of Clyde Caldwell inspired lustful imaginations while the incestuous works of John Currin captured the daily realities of **** in late 80s America.

Throughout the decade sexual freedom stalled out in public perception and practice but grew strong as ever in the commercial domestic spheres. The pro-business presidency of Reagan gave in to corporate sexuality, even so far as signing off on giving employees the right to masturbate on their breaks in 1986. But he considered the highlight of his career to be the fall of the Berlin Wall, which he sold as the ‘end of the cold war’. Throughout his presidency many walls fell, namely the wall between church and state, but also in business and the home. One wall that still remained was against the public as fears of **** kept sex off the streets and free love as a fantasy, one that by this point only 29% of women participated in.