Songs, slogans, jingles, posters,
Porn Hub, magazines, yoghurt ads,
labs, bad TV,
good TV,
movies,
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube,
kids’
books
and adults’ too,
under the table in your local pub,
school loos,
car boots,
car parks and cinemas,
airplanes, ice-rinks,
patches of grass,
Noah’s Ark,
on T-shirts,
socks,
in daylight or pitch dark,
and on stickers and in crisp packets (salt and vinegar or sour cream and chive?),
your parents’ sofa,
your neighbours’ cupboard,
in the locker rooms at the local pool, and in the showers, above those pealing pink plasters, in baths, puddles, on posters and highways and —
But how many people know what the Fuck they’re even doing?
In August of 1991, iconic American hip-hop trio Salt-n-Pepa released their epochal single, “Let’s Talk About Sex“, which achieved nothing but success globally, notably in Australia, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and Zimbabwe where it blew out all competition in the charts, thrusting itself to number-one position[1].
So why, in 2018, are we not all marking Mr Salt-n-Pepa’s prophetic lyrics more closely?
Ladies, all the ladies, louder now, help me out
Come on, all the ladies – let’s talk about sex, all right
[Yo, Pep, I don’t think they’re gonna play this on the radio
And why not? Everybody has sex
I mean, everybody should be makin’ love
Come on, how many guys you know make love?]
S+P can here be seen to subtly draw upon the significant lack of positive sex and relationships education men, women, non-binary and gender queer people receive during adolescence, which later magnifies and manifests itself as a socially shared phobia of open discussion in adulthood, here represented by the reluctance of the radio stations to play a song relating to the act of consensual coitus.
It’s clear that The Media is saturated with sexiness, with hyper-sexualisation, yet refuses to openly talk about what sex is, what it means, what the risks are, what fun it is, what age is best to take the clunge plunge, to try bum stuff, how to practice on yourself[2], how to be respectful, how to be religious and enjoy sex, how to have sex with multiple people, how to have sex with the same sex, with sex toys, how to ask someone politely if they want to have sex, if it’s okay to use slang, kinks, have drinks first, double dip, can you twerk, what are the perks of waiting to be really ready first, how do you flirt, what is illegal, how to be dirty, stay stiff and/or chirpy, is thirty too-old, is four inches too short[3], is it okay to stop short of finishing, arriving, coming, cuming, jazzing, jacking, dumping, splurging, sploging, shooting one’s load?
I’ll be Fucked if I know.
All together now:
Let’s talk about sex, baby (sing it)
Let’s talk about you and me (sing it, sing it)
Let’s talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let’s talk about sex (come on)
Let’s talk about sex (do it)
Let’s talk about sex (uh-huh)
Let’s talk about sex
[1] Writing of no.1 position, in an extremely legitimate undated survey, Dr Ed found doggy style to be the preferred position of two-thousand boinking Brits.
[2] Especially if you’re a person with a vagina.
[3] Most men’s penises are somewhere around 3.75 inches long when not erect, but it’s normal for them to be shorter or longer than this.
To Be T4bb 