Bluebook For Men

 The early seventies were a magical time - on the one hand they represented the beginning of the modern world, with the hard edged reality of energy shortages, oil crises and the like displacing the wild wooliness of the 'swinging sixties', on the other, they represented the last time that the world still seemed wide and exotic enough that we were prepared to accept any load of old bollocks as if it might be fact.  Mondo movies were still feeding us tales of strange sexual practices in remote and unexplored parts of the world, while their literary equivalents, men's pulp magazines, were still turning out tales of macho heroism in World War Two, weird foreign sex and lustful suburban women.  This September 1972 issue of Bluebook For Men is typical of this 'Indian Summer' of the exotic, before affordable international air travel opened up virtually every corner of the world - even if you didn't visit it yourself, you could see it on TV - dispelling any lingering hint of mystery.  

It isn't clear whether the cover is illustrating 'Mission Fantastic: Bring Out the 1,000 Condemned Maquis' - while the crashed plane looks to be of World War Two vintage, (the use of the term 'Maquis' implies a tale of the French resistance), the rifle being wielded by the topless girl freedom fighter is clearly a post war Soviet AK-47 - one of the other girls seems to have a more era appropriate 'Tommy Gun' slung over her shoulder, though.  Elsewhere, it is sex, sex, sex and crime.  The latter in the form of 'Lethal Tricks of the Hot Car Racketeer'.  'Exposed: Shocking Passion Rites Around the World' sounds to be pure Mondo movie subject matter and doubtless included lots of photos of topless dusky tribes women for readers to be shocked by, (not to mention lust over).  Closer to home we have 'Sex Spas for Single Swingers', not to mention 'Lust Orgies of Frustrated Wives' - suburbia was, if one is to believe these magazines, a hot bed of lust and passion in the early seventies, if only you knew exactly which front door it was all going on behind.  Knock on the wrong one and you's find yourself in the middle of a tupperware party rather than a swinger's party, though.  Which could prove something of a disappointment.