Sex really was hotter in the 1960s: It was fun, terrifying and men were grateful, says LIBBY PURVES (but FLORA GILL disagrees) By Libby Purves and Flora Gill Published: 02:05, 1 July 2024 | Updated: 02:06, 1 July 2024 e-mail View comments Was sex really better in the 1960s, as Marianne Faithfull insists? In an article in this month’s The Oldie magazine, the 77-year-old singer says: ‘Art was more intense, purer. Sex was hotter, too — more repressed.’ So has she got a point — was sex forbidden fruit and more thrilling than today’s all-you-can-eat buffet? Or are her rose-tinted spectacles fogged with misplaced nostalgia? Two writers argue across the generations.
.. Yes, says Libby Purves , 74 A French kiss was an event thought about for days Libby Purves says when, as the 1960s saying was, they ‘went all the way’, there was power in its ancient capacity to bond people together emotionally Marianne Faithfull is on to something when she says, defiantly, that ‘sex was hotter.
.. more repressed’ in her heyday.
She was talking more widely about the hippy world she knew then, being a muse for painters like Francis Bacon and swinging with the Rolling Stones . But that line about sex has certainly got a bit of shocked attention from a 21st-century generation which thinks ‘repression’, or even moderation, is an antique concept. Nobody wants to go back to harsh moralities and slut-shaming, but I have to say that groovy old Marianne has a case.
The difference is obvio.
