Entertainment

‘Sex’ changes

Sally Field (above) as Gidget couldn’t show her bellybutton (
)

Ever notice how newspapers and other media outlets that are so proud of staying out of the muck of sex and scandal manage to sneak their way into it by reporting on how other outlets shamelessly get down and dirty?

Sunday night’s TV Guide Channel two-part special, “Sex on TV,” does pretty much the same thing. It talks about how sex and nudity have evolved from the “no bellybutton rule” and separate beds to full frontal nudity and steamy not-so-soft porn.

With hilarious and serious clips and an array of talking heads, “Sex on TV” takes us from the 1951 National Association of Broadcaster’s “Production Code,” which forbid “profanity, obscenity, smut and vulgarity” (which I always thought were more or less the same thing), and its total ban on “anatomical detail” to today’s everything-goes (and also comes off) shows like “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos,” “True Blood,” “The Tudors” and “Hung.”

Even back in the Swingin’ ’60s, content was very restricted. Shows like “Gidget,” starring Boniva’s own Sally Field as a surfer girl in a giant two-piece swimsuit, and “I Dream of Jeannie,” featuring Barbara Eden in that midriff-baring dancing girl outfit, would only show just so much and no more. No more included, yes, bellybuttons.

Although broadcasters could show a two-piece bathing suit and later even a bikini, they were forbidden from showing bras — on living, breathing breasts, that is.

In fact, a bra either had to be shown on a mannequin or, if a woman were wearing it, she had to put it on over a leotard! It would be enough to make Victoria’s Secret models commit mass suicide.

Then, there were those naughty things under the bras. Breasts. They only began being “shown” in the 1970s on “serious” medical dramas and historical mini-series.

So, yes, it was OK to show boobs if the bared breast was in serious medical straits or if they were bouncing around some “indigenous peoples” in a public television documentary. This was somehow considered “real.”

With tidbits and factoids and funny and ridiculous “experts,” including one professor who takes all the fun out of naked, this special gives new meaning to the term, “boob tube,” with its history of skin, sex and sleaze on TV. Oh, and, in case you forgot, they also show that American pioneer of TV yuck, disgusting, naked, fat guy Richard Hatch, who did nothing but sit around scheming and inventing the “alliance” without benefit of clothes during most of “Survivor” Season 1. I still wish a crocodile would have bitten him where the sun don’t shine.