How the Joy of Sex was illustrated

By Cordelia HebblethwaiteBBC World Service

Forty years ago, a London publisher was working on a groundbreaking sex manual - a "gourmet guide" to sexual pleasure, with copious and detailed illustrations. But how could this be done tastefully and legally?

Think of The Joy of Sex and chances are your mind will drift to an image of a man with a bushy beard and a woman with hairy armpits.

Illustrating ‘The Joy Of Sex’ Involved Trickery, Porn

BY ERIN GLORIA RYAN

For many of us, The Joy of Sex was our first (usually accidental) introduction to pubes. For its publishers, it was a challenge — how do you show people how to have sex without showing actual, well, sex? Very carefully, it turns out.

The BBC reports that Penguin, the book's publisher, wanted to avoid being charged with obscenity, and thus they knew that in order to accurately depict sex in an instructive way, they had to find a way to illustrate it.