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Ships from: JACKSONVILLE, FL
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
A new edition of Nancy Friday's classic book makes available, once again, this searingly honest analysis of the deeply rooted, often hidden, human emotion that distorts our most intimate relationships.
Nancy Friday: It's great to be here.
Nancy Friday: I don't think, necessarily, that people's erotic fantasies go back to necessarily difficult childhood issues. I think the most powerful influence is that of any sexual feeling or a part of the body being forbidden.
Nancy Friday: I have included in my books on sexuality thousands of people with whom I've spoken or who have written to me. They are of all ages, all ethnic backgrounds, and from all over the world. But I must say, for women, that the interest in talking or writing to me about sex, alas, tends to spiral down after the mid 40s.
Nancy Friday: I have always been interested in jealousy and envy from the time I was a tiny child. I felt them deeply. All these years later, I can fully understand that I grew up in my home feeling like the left-out person. Now, lest you begin to feel sorry for me, let me say that that desperate feeling of being left out fired me to go out into the world and make myself lovable and/or interesting.
Nancy Friday: I have never heard from the literally millions of people who have read my books -- be they on sexual fantasies, mothers and daughters, jealousy or beauty -- never heard of deeply adverse reactions after reading the book. I think my books on sex absolutely give people permission to feel human and not quite so guilty at simply thinking about their fantasies. Forget behavior; I think most of us label ourselves and knock ourselves off more for our feelings and emotions than for any act.
Nancy Friday: I think the appropriate word here is not "jealous" but "envious." I think all of us, during those periods in our lives when we're not in love, feel envious of people who are. But given Valentine's Day, or any holiday that celebrates love, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, when you're alone, you feel it deeply, because from the time you were a little person, you knew these holidays were meant to be spent with the people nearest and dearest. So go out and get someone to spend Valentine's Day with. And if you're a woman speaking, take initiative into your own hands and call that person up.
Nancy Friday: I would imagine that encouraging people to get in touch with their very private, erotic images that excite them would absolutely be a good therapeutic tool. In fact, if I were an analyst, I'd very much like to know what sexually excites my patient. Sexual fantasies are a fascinating blueprint of the person who has concocted them -- in part from their own subconscious and in part, perhaps, from something recently seen or heard. Let me quickly say this -- because you get excited in a so-called rape fantasy, that does not mean at all that you want to be raped. More often than not, women with fantasies that they describe as being raped, these women don't want to be hurt or forced, they simply want to give themselves permission to relax, let go. Inserting a big, black man into the scene tells the world, including the woman, "It's not my fault, he made me do it."
Nancy Friday: Wow. Today, I would say that one of women's most popular fantasy scenes is that of imagining themselves with another woman. When I wrote my first fantasy books 20 years ago, the so-called lesbian fantasy was barely discernible. We don't have the time tonight, but I love to talk about my own views on why women today really get high imagining sex with other women.
Nancy Friday: That's a very interesting question. In my own marriage, I am far more understanding of Clinton's latest predicament than my husband is. I recently did a roundtable discussion with eight other women for The New York Observer newspaper, and we had a wonderful time dissecting the situation. I think the men present, both technicians, thought we'd all gone 'round the bend.
Nancy Friday: If you read my latest book, THE POWER OF BEAUTY, you will find that the entire last chapter is devoted to women over 45. But I'll say one thing pertinent to your question, and that is that we have begun to change the idea of women's sexuality as ending at, say, age 30. I think it would be the most helpful and healthy and happy thing if women could accept that we're born sexual and we die sexual.
Nancy Friday: I don't advise people to share their fantasies with anyone. In fact, I advise that you consider it deeply, because once you've spoken your very private erotic fantasy out loud, it will never quite work for you as well as it did when it was totally secret. Also, don't necessarily expect your partner to love your fantasy. Again, I advise that you lead up to your own fantasy in a very thoughtful, circuitous way. If you begin to suspect that bondage isn't your partner's happiest wish, you might make up, invent, an erotic fantasy that you know would turn him or her on. It's one of the biggest mistakes people have: "Love me, love my fantasy." That's blackmail.
Nancy Friday: Oh, yes. [laughs] But when you're looking at fantasies in the light of "What does it all mean?" you do distance yourself from the material. You have to. I will have thought about the material in these books for many months before selecting those that I want to print. I select the themes that are either the most prevalent or the most fascinating. And my job, the one that I enjoy, is to speak from a perspective of 25 years of thinking about men's and women's sexual fantasies. I can see certain themes going out of style, as it were. And suddenly, as with the new lesbian fantasies, here is something I hardly saw 25 years ago. So I begin to ask why.
Nancy Friday: I wouldn't know. I wish I could comment, but I don't feel qualified. But let me add one thing, on second thought. I would think, if I'd gone through a hysterectomy, that I would want to prove to myself that I hadn't lost any of those feelings in the operation. But that's just me.
Nancy Friday: Oh, yes, absolutely. I have so much wonderful material on men, and it is so different from what I used to hear from the men in MEN IN LOVE. Because women have changed so much in the past 15 years, men clearly have a new gut feeling about the power of women, not to mention women's very visible lust and sexual initiative. At least on TV.
Nancy Friday: Yes, it's a fantasy acted out. It's no longer, obviously, a secret fantasy. But the two of you now have little balloons over your heads, and that can be fun if, say, you're at a party and you simply mention in your partner's ear a few clue words that tells him or her what you're thinking about.
Nancy Friday: I guess I get a little blown away -- if you'll excuse the pun -- with some of the larger animal varieties. [laughs] WOMEN ON TOP had a very extensive, minutely detailed fantasy of a woman in a cage with a gorilla.
Nancy Friday: If you liked GARDEN, I think you'll find a sister volume in FORBIDDEN FLOWERS. But for something more recent, get a copy of WOMEN ON TOP. It is very much about the New Woman.
Nancy Friday: Actually, I don't know what Betty Friedan thinks of my books on sexuality. But let me be very clear about one thing: She is a sexual woman. That is very clear. And while there is a schism between her and Gloria Steinem, Betty has always struck me as far, far friendlier toward men, and far, far more sexual than that group of women who are most represented by Ms. magazine, a publication never friendly to men or sex. I read THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE well after it had come out. But I think it reads really well today as a historical document. Maybe you will laugh in disbelief, but it will give you a very real idea of how feminism began.
Nancy Friday: Well, girls and boys, I am in Key West, and this is the perfect place to wake up with your loved one. We are going to several parties and plan to be up very late, dancing, drinking, and getting in the mood.
Nancy Friday: I would love to write fiction next. Yes, I think I have a decided fascination in turning into a story all the ideas that have been swarming through my head during 25 years of writing about why people do the things they do.
Nancy Friday: Oh, I can remember vividly just where I was standing when that title, MY SECRET GARDEN, came into my head. It had nothing to do with plants. I simply knew that the powerful motivations and urges and desires and fears expressed by the women in MY SECRET GARDEN, that they had come from childhood. None of us wants to really accept how much is laid down regarding how we feel about our bodies when we are little. And I'm not even talking adolescence. I'm speaking of the prohibitive emotions we have picked up from within the family, along with the fact that we are taught to believe that our sexual parts are dirty and forbidden. This is laid down so early, and is laid down by the people we love and upon whom we are dependent, that as good little children, we "forget" where we learned to think that what lay between our legs was ugly and dirty. Everything else is in reaction to this. FORBIDDEN FLOWERS, which came a few years after MY SECRET GARDEN, was for me still very much involved with the fact that the adults' most powerful erotic images were born out of something so long ago. Flowers. Hmm. They sound so innocent. One of the covers of FORBIDDEN FLOWERS actually had been designed by someone who drew a few beautiful flowers seemingly growing out from between a woman's legs. All very abstract. [laughs]
Nancy Friday: I don't think you're alone. And I certainly don't think you should feel overly sensitive about it. In fact, pity those poor women who are as dry as the Sahara. Your lover should appreciate you. Think of the Fountain of Youth.
Nancy Friday: Not automatically. I think that until women start genuinely encouraging other women, and meaning it, we are not empowered. Most women really do not support other women. We say we do, but we really are envious of women, even women we love, who get more than we do. It's all about competition. The great undiscussed, forbidden topic.
Nancy Friday: Not rich men. Men who really look at me. And I suppose you know what I mean by that. I like men who are sure of themselves. But not corporate men. I used to only go out with writers and painters. Because I liked men who could talk and also listen.
Nancy Friday: You are jealous of something that has taken him away from you. That's the meaning of jealousy, though the third agent is usually another person. Off the top of my head, I guess you also go online. Or learn to do the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Nancy Friday: I think that the women's movement over the past 25 years has happened so rapidly that it's almost too difficult to navigate a heterosexual relationship. It's easy with women, being close, touching, lying in each other's arms. It's what we've done all our lives. Sleepovers. On college campuses, many women say when they graduate they'll find a nice guy and get married and have kids. But college is just too demanding to try to make it with a guy.
Nancy Friday: No. I've found out years later that someone I know was a person who wrote to me under a different name. But when I wrote MY SECRET GARDEN, I interviewed almost every woman I met. You won't believe it, but in 1973, women, as well as the rest of the world, didn't think women had sexual fantasies.
Nancy Friday: I think that masturbation in the dark with all the doors closed is very difficult for a lot of women. So don't be too hard on yourself. Think of yourself as the head of the pack. And since you've gone this far, why not close your eyes and imagine, while you're masturbating, precisely what excites you when you masturbate alone. Even if it's another man. It is your husband for whom you are arousing yourself. I don't call this adultery. In fact, most people fantasize about someone other than the person they're with.
Nancy Friday: I have published a book on male's sexual fantasies, called MEN IN LOVE. It's at Barnes & Noble. And I would love to do another book on men, precisely because young men today have very different fantasies than men used to. I think the constant image of women as powerful, nowadays, has made its mark on men's subconscious.
Nancy Friday: The controversies come from the conservative right wing, which I'm sure doesn't surprise you. In fact, less than a year ago, a Canadian Mountie in full regalia walked into a library in Toronto and demanded that my books be removed. The librarian was a true heroine and refused.
Nancy Friday: Education! It's extraordinary that children still grow up as any adult present tonight, pretty ignorant regarding how our sexual parts work, and probably in total disgust as regards our private parts. Liberated? Not until we think of our bodies as elegant.
Nancy Friday: So long, everyone. And thank you very much, Mr. Typist.
Overview
A new edition of Nancy Friday's classic book makes available, once again, this searingly honest analysis of the deeply rooted, often hidden, human emotion that distorts our most intimate relationships.