drawing by Julie Seyler

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Being a young male means never having to say you’re sorry because you can’t get it up. For the rest of us, there’s now Viagra. I will admit to relying on it occasionally since my prostate surgery. But I resent having to use it, and I especially hate the television commercials that promote it.

We like to think about the 1960s as the time of the sexual revolution, but it was also a much more innocent time. The “Greatest Generation” was greatest at seeing to it that their Baby Boomer offspring were shielded from ever hearing about how babies were made. Sex education was minimal or non-existent. Playboy was sold in a brown wrapper. Despite the “free love” attitude of the ‘60s, no one discussed sex on television, even obliquely.  Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds.  There were no condom ads. Midol commercials never identified the purpose of the product. Even cutting edge shows aimed at young people like the Smothers Brothers and “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” never referred to sexual intercourse.  The most that Arte Johnson’s dirty old man said he wanted to do with Ruth Buzzi was kiss and hug her.

This was brought home to me recently when a Viagra commercial came on television.  I can imagine the fun the writers of “All in the Family” would have had with Viagra commercials.  Archie would have turned 50 shades of red, and Edith would have dashed off to the kitchen. Yet here we are in 2012 with commercials about erectile dysfunction on prime-time television.  Now I could accept that, and even embrace it as progress, but what adds insult to injury is the fact that we Baby Boomer men now sometimes actually need these drugs to have sex. Of course, the combination of drugs and sex is an ancient one. But in the ‘60s the drugs were needed to loosen your inhibition; now the drugs are needed to stiffen your exhibition.

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