The Hite Report on Shere Hite by Shere Hite

on the porch and make fun of me, or force me to go down the hill. The same things happened to me when, as an adult, I was learning to ski in Switzerland.
    I used to go on my bike to the Saturday morning movies downtown. They were at an old theatre which let kids in for ten pop bottle tops, or 14¢. The films were ancient cowboy movies with Roy Rogers, Tom Mix and others. But I liked them. The heroes were very active, and cowboy times were not out of human memory then in St Joseph, so the characters seemed very real. The horses, the outdoors, the trees, the hills and the smallhouses on the big landscapes, with lots of life lived outdoors was all familiar.
    The only thing I could never get used to was that when the hero, like Roy Rogers, was in the final fight with the ‘bad guys’ – Dale, his girlfriend, always close – had to just stand there looking agitated. Clearly she could have picked up a pan or a brick and hit the bad guy over the head. After all, she was a good cowgirl, smart, active and forceful. They never showed her cooking in the kitchen (there was Gaby, a man, for that). Dale was one of those who rode the range and kept the ranch together. But she wasn’t allowed to fight. The whole audience of kids always went wild at those scenes, screaming at her to ‘Do something, Dale! Hit him from behind, Dale.’ But she never did.

    At least once a month there would be a birthday party at one of my schoolmates’ houses.
    Day-of-the-week underpants were popular presents at these birthday parties. A high point of every party was the gift-unwrapping spectacle. As everyone came in, they put their present in a pile with the others, and then after the cake, the birthday celebrant sat in front of all the presents, the guests all around on the floor watching, and she opened them all. At some point, at every party, there were squeals of laughter, as one box (or more) turned out to be underpants.
    I remember being confused and shocked about these underpants. First, I was shocked. I had been taught never to show my underpants. Why were we doing ithere? How was I supposed to react? On the other hand, they were adorable, feminine and colourful. I liked the texture of the satiny materials. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought it was obscene to give a present like that to an unsuspecting girl to open, and suddenly display them to everyone watching. It was as if she were standing there forced to expose her privacy. But everyone else thought it was fine, and laughed, so I guessed it was OK too. After all, someone’s parent had bought them. I was also envious of the attention the ‘birthday girl’ would get at such a moment. I wished someone would give me day-of-the-week underpants.
    I don’t think I was ever invited to a boy’s birthday party at that age, so I didn’t know if they got day-of-the-week underwear, but I was almost positive they only made such an item for girls, because I saw them sometimes in stores, and they were only for girls. I didn’t really understand what the message was supposed to be, but I was getting a message. It was that it was appropriate to point out ‘girls’ bottoms’. The ruffles on the backside exaggerated the area to suggest, ‘take note, here is a part that sticks out’. Also, the position of the name of the day of the week on the back would indicate that it was intended that this is where someone should look.
    In the 1950s films I used to see, a common scene was when the male hero would take the girl he was trying to get to marry him over his knee and spank her. Sometimes this was justified by being in a Western, so supposedly those things happened on the ‘rough and ready frontier’. The last film I remember it in was the JohnWayne movie with Maureen O’Hara in which they are supposedly both Irish, and she is rather independent, and wants him to prove his serious intentions. He refuses and spanks her bottom, then slings her over his shoulder and takes her home. Carried