A content analysis of best-selling novels and films from 1959 to 1979 revealed the persistent message that sexual participants must be single, attractive, physically healthy, and young (i. e., the SAPHY constellation) (Abramson & Mechanic, 1983). Furthermore, Abramson and Mechanic found that, no matter the time, place, or circumstance portrayed in the media, common sexual occurrences such as sexual dysfunction or need for lubricants were absent. Contrasting this with the realities of sexuality in the clinical literature, the authors voiced their concern over unrealistic sexual scripts promulgated through the enormous appeal of popular fiction and movies. Have things changed in the last 20 years? The answer would seem to be both yes and no. A more recent example of these entrenched views is the successful novel and movie The Bridges of Madison County. In this story a mid-life farmer’s wife has a З-day affair with a roguish, itinerate photographer. The emphasis is on how attractive she still is, yet sexual awakening and fulfillment eludes her until the sexual prowess of the male protagonist magically and wordlessly provides the key. Her passivity is contrasted with the unending activity of the older, middle-aged man:
He was an animal… A graceful, hard, male animal who did nothing to dominate her yet dominated her completely, in the exact way she wanted that to happen at this moment… But it was far beyond the physical, though the fact that he could make love for a long time without tiring was part of it… she had whispered to him, “Robert, you’re so powerful it’s frightening” … It was almost as if he had taken possession of her, in all of her dimensions… But he simply took it away, all of it… She who had ceased having orgasms years ago, had them in long sequences now with a half-man, half-something-else creature. She wondered about him and his endurance, and he told her he
could reach those places in his mind as well as physically. (Waller,