Naughty Nicole: Erotica... It's Not New, You Know...

On Today’s episode of Big Trouble in Little Vagina, we’re talking about something near and dear to my own little black heart… Erotica. I know, I know, reading is so yesterday and passé, but every now and then you can find true happiness in the book store, and today we’re going to focus on that for a bit. You know why? Well, I’ll tell you why: because, long before movies and television, there was the written word. It was here long ago and will be here long after we’re gone. Novels have often controversially transcribed both subtle and graphic sexual acts in all their amusing, erotic and sometimes even disturbing forms.

This isn’t true only in contemporary novels; authors were blazing trails and breaking taboos during those times in history when candid conversations about sex — let alone detailed stories about them —were critically shunned or downright banned. Since magazines like Hustler and Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl challenged the laws on what is obscene and what is art, however, a whole new world has opened up in mainstream literature. Although some authors always wrote erotic novels, now the average person is no longer afraid to indulge in the more juicy, and usually unexplored, aspects of human relationships through their reading material. Of course, the anonymity of the e-reader has undoubtedly helped the erotic genre grow to become a dominant player in the world of literature. But erotica has always been, and will always be a legitimate art and as you will soon hear, has a rich tapestry of history.