Published in 1972, Dr. Alex Comfort’s illustrated manual The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Love Making was a cultural phenomenon that brought frank discussions of sexuality into the mainstream. During the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, “Armed with feminist manifestos and the contraceptive pill, wives challenged the prerogatives of their husbands in the bedroom […] Though feminists would later question who was actually liberated by the sexual revolution—and who was harmed—to many, it was a time of freewheeling sexuality” (“‘The Joy of Sex’ is a Book for the Ages.” The Economist. 20 Sep. 2022). In this cultural moment, The Joy of Sex challenged traditional norms around marriage, monogamy, and pleasure, and became a massive bestseller, “selling tens of millions of copies, spawning five sequels and inspiring numerous spin-offs” (The Economist). signaling a growing cultural shift away from the repressive social codes of suburban American life.

Unlike previous, more clinical texts, such as William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson’s Human Sexual Response (1966), The Joy of Sex used a playful, accessible tone, modeling itself on Irma S. Rombauer’s popular cookbook, The Joy of Cooking (1931), with sections like “starters” and “main courses” to destigmatize sexual exploration for heterosexual couples. Its explicit, non-clinical illustrations were revolutionary. Journalist Cordelia Hebblethwaite reports, “The images were graphic—they showed genitals and countless sex positions—but they were also artistic, and tasteful” (Hebblethwaite, Cordelia. “How the Joy of Sex Was Illustrated.” BBC News, 26 Oct. 2011). To balance the explicit illustrations, Joy of Sex art director Peter Kindersley also included erotic historical images from Japan and India, noting that “In a way, we were relating ourselves to the past. We wanted to make the book feel as though it was related to a great tradition of explicit pictures” (BBC).

In Lake Effect, the copies of The Joy of Sex that Bess buys for the neighborhood women’s group act as a catalyst for personal and social change within the conservative, suburban Catholic community. Nina notes that “Bess had arrived not only with The Joy of Sex but with a list of questions for everyone: ‘How would you describe your sex life? […] How many times a week? […] What have you not done yet that you’re curious about?’” (27), which disrupted the group’s staid conversations about curfews and recipes, forcing them to confront their own unexamined desires and marital dissatisfactions.

The book symbolizes a world of pleasure and personal fulfillment that stands in stark opposition to their lives of duty and quiet conformity. The contrasting reactions to the book, from the bookstore salesgirl who deems it “basically pornography” (2) to Bess’s own belief in its empowering message, highlight the cultural tensions of the era. The Joy of Sex acts as a vehicle for Nina’s awakening, prompting her to confront the lack of passion in her own marriage and consider a life outside conventional expectation. In response to Bess’s questions, she realizes “that people counted their sexual encounters not over the course of a month, a year, a decade, but a week? […] She wanted to have an affair. It started as a tiny gnat of an idea and wouldn’t let her go […] She wanted to transgress” (26). These scenes position The Joy of Sex as a manifesto for a different kind of life, one in which individual desire is not just acknowledged but prioritized.