The Naughty Nineties

Starred review from May 29, 2017
In-your-face sexuality goes mainstream in this rollicking history of a lubricious decade. Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change) surveys charged developments in the culture and politics of the 1990s, including the first stirrings of the gay marriage movement, seminal gains in feminist empowerment and the backlash against them by conservatives and panicked men (embodied by Michael Douglas in movies such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct), the eruption of internet porn, and the introduction of Viagra. He wonderfully illustrates how an increasingly sensationalistic media paraded high-profile scandals, most notably Bill Clinton’s affairs with Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky, and how Clinton became a symbol of a new style of “perpetually horny, ever-prevaricating, irrepressibly optimistic” masculinity. Friend’s thoughtful and entertaining account of the era—he discusses “larger societal forces” behind the Brazilian-bikini-wax craze, for example—includes his own vivid present-day interviews with Anita Hill and John Wayne Bobbitt, among others. Ultimately, Friend presents an insightful and compulsively readable overview of America’s hormonal coming of age. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary.

July 15, 2017
How multiculturalism and sexual liberation shaped a distinctive decade.Emmy Award-winning documentarian and Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11, 2006) meticulously captures the libidinous 1990s through the milestones that made the time period so indelible--and sometimes cringeworthy. The author casts a wide net over the entire decade and encapsulates political shifts and social changes, including the tabloid sensationalism of Donald Trump's divorce from Ivana, an event that marked the beginning of this heady "high-living, free-spending, balls-out era." Through key interviews and focused cultural analysis, Friend brings to life the "seismic shifts occurring at society's core," such as the rise of Viagra, medically enhanced fertility, the narrowing window of puberty for young women, Camille Paglia and third-wave feminism, the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, gay marriage equality, and the fascinations with breast augmentation and the Brazilian bikini wax. The multifaceted world of entertainment was graced with the outspokenness of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, the antics of Howard Stern, Hollywood psychodramas, and the normalization of perennial plastic surgery. The author also discusses the brave sensuality of Demi Moore's magazine cover and Ellen DeGeneres' self-outing as having as much popular culture clout as the surgical precision of scorned wife Lorena Bobbitt and the courtroom circuses involving Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, and Anita Hill. Friend also shows how the mainstreaming of sex and the prevalence of and reliance on the internet for entertainment, pornography, and rapid-fire information (and the conservative, morality fueled backlash) played influential parts in swaying the masses toward less puritanical attitudes about eroticism. The author's field studies include joining a Manhattan bus tour of Sex and the City filming locations with anthropologist Helen Fisher and enlightening, contemporary interviews with Bobbitt, Jones, Heidi Fleiss, and others. Friend's clever afterword dovetails the political sins of the 1990s with how their eventual forgiveness ushered in the age of the billionaire as presidential candidate. A witty, comprehensively researched time capsule from an unforgettable age of excess, scandal, and sex.

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July 1, 2017

Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change) offers up a gossipy retrospective of a decade most, though not all, of his readers will remember firsthand: over 600 pages chronicling the sexual politics as well as the pains and pleasures of the 1990s. Each of the 31 chapters focuses on a particular subject related to gender and sexuality with some narratives--the winding political and media fortunes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example--woven throughout the text. In rapid succession, readers are introduced to diverse subjects such as Sex in the City, Viagra, The Vagina Monologues, "don't ask, don't tell," virtual sex at the dawn of the Internet, plastic surgery, third-wave feminism, and the cultural significance of the man cave. Source notes at the end provide a list of books, articles, and interviews by the author that informed each chapter. Lengthy discursive footnotes, meanwhile, supplement the main narrative with additional details, anecdotes, and commentary. VERDICT Those wishing for in-depth analysis or historical contextualization will be left feeling winded by the pace of this cultural tour. Will most likely appeal to readers wishing to revisit Nineties cultural touchstones, deftly escorted by a somewhat insouciant tour guide.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc.

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