Swinging Single Representing Sexuality in the 1960s

Critics and defenders alike connect today's widespread anxieties about sexuality and culture to the political activism of the 1960s and the counterculture's preoccupation with the individual pursuit of pleasure/ In contrast, the essays in Swindling Single attribute the new sexual mores of that era not to its political upheavals but to a confluence of social, cultural, and economic factors that encouraged personal gratification and altered traditionally defined gender roles. Contributors analyze a broad range of topics: the commercialization of avant-garde and exploitation films; new visions of female sexuality in That Girl and The Avengers; the social context of such cultural icons as Hugh Hefner and Charles Manson; the intersection of race and sexuality in Eldridge Cleaver's Soul oil Ice; and depictions of sexual pleasure in pornography and scientific films.