 | Back before the World Wide Web spread porn across the world, and into every feverish adolescent boys bedroom, we who are old enough to remember had the mail-order catalogues that would land on our doorsteps very summer and winter. The unbridled excitement of waiting for your parents to go out, so you could sneak it upstairs so you could flick through the underwear section was more than many boys in the 70s and 80s could bear. Here in the UK the top catalogues were Kays, Grattans, and Littlewoods. In the US, I understand it was Sears or J.C. Penney's, I guess Victoria Secret's was a bit to racy for most home. Boys would furtively flick through, hoping for a bit of nipple peaking through a bra. They were much more innocent times, and paradise of nylon and polyester. Quickly flicking over the "older ladies" support and gusseted underwear section of course. |
Getting caught with a mail-order catalogue in your bedroom wasn't so embarrassing either, as you could always claim your were looking at the "toy section". Obviously your parents didn't believe you for a minute, but it kept the mutual embarrassment of the truth unsaid. The semi-clad models, who looked like ordinary ladies kept the dirty young minds of 70s and 80s kids imaginative and grounded in some kind of perverse reality. Rather than the all-out-there porn that the availability Internet porn brought youngsters of the 90s and 2000s. Obviously the catalogues days didn't last long for us guys that grew-up in that era, as eventually we all came across our parents porn stash, and moved onto the likes of Playboy, Penthouse and the equivalent of the times. Then as VHS video players became more and more accessible in homes, we moved onto grainy copies of Swedish Erotica and Electric Blue. After all one absolute fact of life as a teenage boy was, you learned how to become an expert hunter of jerk-off materials. These days it's literally handed to them on a plate. And they are missing out on the joys of discovering that post-Internet gem, that anyone growing up in the pre-Internet age had as an key rite-of-passage in their adolescence.
