But, underwear ads excepted, it’s still not quite as commonplace to see a scantily-clad man in a national publication. Just imagine what uproar there was back in early 1972 when actor Burt Reynolds posed in the nude for the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine. Advance word was that Reynolds had a prop placed in a strategic place in the photo, but still…A Hollywood actor? In the nude? In a national magazine? It was absolutely astonishing!
I was 21. I thought Burt Reynolds was pretty cute. So I was one of thousands of temporarily-deranged females scouring the newsstands of American cities to find a copy of Cosmo. I shared the news of my search in a letter to my Uncle Gaither, who was 75. He was taken aback, to say the least.
April, 1972
Dear Peggy,
After reading your last letter I was tempted to lop you off our family free but following days of ruminating, cogitating and praying, I decided to give you another chance. I’m going to try to REHABILITATE you.
I had no idea that you are a pornography addict who would search the city of Dallas for a magazine’s centerfold picture of a nude Homo sapiens male. I am shocked to learn that you and Jack, after four months of marriage, are still concealing from each other the basic physiological differences between male and female. No wonder our educators are pressing so hard for pre-kindergarten sex education! This rehabilitation program may take longer than I figured. There’s a considerable time lag between the day I learned about females and your belated attempt to catch up via the purchase of a Cosmopolitan centerfold. Let me tell you how I learned all about the opposite sex at the age of about four. Ha! How well do I remember that Sunday day of discovery!
Our family lived just across a narrow dirt road from the Methodist preacher’s parsonage, and about 5 Sundays a month my mama would fix a chicken dinner and invite the preacher and family over to eat. Which it did, gobbling all the white meat at first table for the elders and leaving gizzards and necks for us kids at 2nd table.
Then, one Sunday—whether by chance or Divine guidance I’ll never know—we went to the preacher’s house for dinner. The preacher had a daughter about my age and, as usual, we had to wait for 2nd table gizzards and necks.
Lois and I were put in a closet-like cubbyhole adjoining the dining room and told to play. We sat our little butts on the floor, facing each other, but I could see nothing to play with until I noticed that Lois had on a very short dress and that her mama had neglected to supply her with a fig leaf. I then noticed that she seemed to be physiologically different from me. I tried to explain to her that she was some sort of freak, but she wouldn’t believe me until I unbuttoned my pants and showed her what a person ought to look like.
We were still giggling about our discoveries when our mamas opened the closet door, and their faces got as red as our two little bottoms did a few seconds later. Lois and I were never allowed to play together again. Her father was soon sent to harvest the grapes in another vineyard. But right there in that lil old closet waiting for my chicken neck, I learned all that I’ve ever wanted to know about sex that mama hadn’t already taught me…
Love, Unk
I loved Uncle Gaither’s story. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t bought the magazine in order to satisfy my physiological curiosity (my brother’s birth when I was nine kicked off my birds-and-bees education), but rather to satisfy my Burt Reynolds curiosity.
Today, after 35 years of marriage, grown daughters, and grandchildren, I’m asking myself why I’ve hung on to that magazine for so long. It’s been tucked away in my cedar chest, and I haven’t looked at it since shortly after I bought it. What am I saving it for? Who am I saving it for? (Even Burt himself probably hasn’t kept a copy all these years!)
I know why I’ve kept it. One day each of us wakes up and realizes that life has raced along and we’re a lot closer to our old age than we are to our youth. We all need tangible reminders of who we used to be. That magazine represents the 20-year-old that still exists in my heart, in my memory, in my soul. I know full well that my daughters can’t truly imagine what I was like at 20. Maybe I should try more often to give them that glimpse of the “me” that existed before I was Mom, and grandmom, before I had grey hair and reading glasses and middle-age spread. One of these days, I’ll tell them about my search for Burt. I’ll remember for a few minutes what it was like to be 20, and that will be long enough.
And maybe someday I’ll write to a great-niece or a granddaughter, and I’ll say “Let me tell you about the time I searched all over town for a magazine…”
