Sex and the Soap Opera: Tell or Show?

A Literal Literary Loser Gets Scandalous

I just finished reading Sex Scene: Media and the Sexual Revolution by Eric Schaefer (Duke University Press), a book tracing the evolution of sex scenes from the early days of movies through to the 1970s X rating, foreign films, soft-core and hard-core porn, and what you could and could not show on television. (My husband makes fun of me. He says I have turned watching movies and TV into reading. Yes and….?)

What I found interesting about this well-researched, well-written book, is that the authors (it’s an anthology with a different one for each chapter) completely avoided the subject of how sex evolved on soap operas.

This is a peculiar oversight (though very common in the world of media analysis, in another book I read, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, author Jason Mittell waxed poetic about how much better television was now that it was serialized, but regularly stopped to explain that he didn’t mean soap operas; soap operas were still trash, no matter how complex) due to the fact that, as far back as January 12, 1976, TIME Magazine ran a cover story, no less (see post image) entitled: Television: Sex and Suffering in the Afternoon. There was sex on daytime long before it became acceptable on primetime!

In my May 1, 2025 upcoming historical fiction, Go On Pretending, the 1950s heroine, Rose Janowitz, is a protege of the legendary Irna Phillips, during the heyday of radio soaps. There, the two formidable women do battle with the show’s sponsors and the network censors about what they can and cannot say on the air — including about sex — as this exclusive excerpt demonstrates:

Money was the source of some of their greatest conflicts. Not among the staff, but among those who created the shows and those who controlled them. Sponsors loved getting into the act, demanding characters use their products, orate about using their products, and marvel at the convenience and thrift of using their products. Irna was a wizard at scripting heart-clenching drama to take place amidst a variety of cleaning supplies. If a villain wasn’t being threatened to have his mouth washed out with soap (only one brand would do!), then the heroine was hurrying to get her laundry done before her husband arrived home and learned she’d been out all day, engaging in who knows what mischief. How lucky she was that this brand of detergent took half the time for twice the results!

Their bigger problems stemmed from all that they weren’t allowed to do by Standards and Practices. According to “daytime morality,” good men and women could not smoke. This infuriated Irna, who saw thousands of dollars in potential sponsorship monies wafting away like, well, smoke. It was Rose who came up with having the bad characters be the smokers, but of having the good ones constantly remark on it. “Go, and take your (brand of) cigarettes with you!” and “I knew you’d been there. I could smell your (brand of) cigarette the second I arrived!” That way, they wouldn’t be going against the censors, but the product would still be associated with the voices of heroes and heroines.

They faced the same obstacles with alcohol. Even beer and sherry were off limits. Tea or coffee were the mandated beverages of choice, no matter what the crises. (They could always select from hot or iced, in case anyone complained of feeling creatively shackled.) Inspired by prohibition, Rose suggested to Irna that she write any drinking as either religious or medicinal. When Rose submitted that having Jewish characters would make a sip on Friday a directive from God Himself – what pious censor could deny that? – she actually pried a smile out of her redoubtable boss. 

Their biggest problem, however, was sex. They couldn’t show it. This was radio, not the movies. They couldn’t speak of it. This was radio, not… the bible. (Irna had chortled at that one, too, which was the biggest compliment Rose could hope for.) On The Romance Of Helen Trent, one of the few radio soaps not created by Irna, where the titular heroine had been proving that “romance can begin at thirty-five” for seventeen years; while managing to remain thirty-five – they spoke of the “emotional understanding” that could only come with marriage. And not a second before. They meant sex. Everyone knew they meant sex. But no one was allowed to say it. Irna gave notice she wasn’t going to adopt that awkward turn of phrase for her own shows.

So, on The Guiding Light, characters begged each other to “hold me and never let me go.” They embraced. Quite a bit. They stared into each other’s eyes. Sometimes from one day to the next. And then they somehow ended up pregnant. Viewers filled in the gaps on their own.

Will Irna and Rose be able to write their shows the way that they want, or will their hands forever be tied? (And not in a sexy way.) Stay tuned!