Funny Story. SLATE recently ran an interview with Peggy Orenstein, the author of GIRLS AND SEX, a meditation on the messages young women, especially educated young women from at least relatively affluent backgrounds, receive from popular culture today. At one point in the interview, Orenstein is commenting on how mainstream Hollywood movies -- not porn, not even necessarily R rated movies -- treat sex. There's a standard scene in many romcoms where the male and female protagonists rip half of each other's clothes off, then they have (under covers) simulated sex for a few seconds, then the point has been made and the movie moves on. Orenstein then says, "maybe 30, 40 years ago, that shorthand would have been seen less often. Probably, actually, you wouldn’t have seen it at all. You would have seen kissing, and then you get the Hays Code or whatever." Or at least that's what she tried to say. Here's the funny bit. In the first transcription ...
