Masturbation.

Over the years it has become apparent that the act of masturbation and talking about said act is more socially acceptable. It has come a long way(no pun intended!) since the times of gruesome looking anti-masturbation contraptions, put it that way. However, I still think people casually walking down the road and getting off is pretty unacceptable, so how am I so sure it's so much more socially acceptable I hear you cry! My answer... popular music.

When researching this I found more songs than I was aware of containing lyrics about this topic. Some crude and obvious, some more ambiguous and hidden., but either way, it was there.

A few examples I gathered from my own iPod were:

So Happy I Could Die - Lady Gaga.
"I touch myself all through the night..."

Longview - Green Day
"When masturbation's lost its fun..."

All By Myself - Green Day (The whole song.)http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/greenday/allbymyself.html

... and I'm sure I found more while I was listening to my shuffle but right now the track names and singers escape me, but I'm sure you get the point.

These are all quite modern though, so I was surprised, but also happy to find this countdown on the internet of some earlier music stars also freely expressing and singing about masturbation.

It's called "The 15 Best Songs That Are Totally About Masturbation" and here's the link: http://www.cracked.com/article_15114_the-15-best-songs-that-are-totally-about-masturbation_p3.html

Billy Idol, Prince, The Buzzcocks... just to name a few.

Obviously, with such mainstreams stars such as Prince and Lady Gaga spreading the message it's got to show a new level of acceptance about masturbation . I mean I know stars, such as Lady Gaga, give the impression that they don't care, but do you really think they'd release songs about something that could really damage their career? Yes, singing about masturbation is risque and that's probably something that attracts more listeners. But I think the fact that this sort of the material is actually allowed to be put onto CD proves it's more acceptable nowadays. Also, all this mainstream exposure definitely goes in favour of the act. If the celebrities can sing about it, do it, get away with it and basically not be ashamed to tell us about it, why can't we?