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Salon
Salon
Lifestyle
Amanda Marcotte

"Minx" and the politics of pleasure

Donald Trump Joe Rogan Amanda Marcotte
Minx Photograph by Courtesy of HBO Max

Scratch a libertarian and you will find a prude. It's a truth beautifully illustrated in the season finale of "Minx," HBO's breezy-yet-sharp comedy about a fictional '70s-era magazine that combines Ms.-style feminist editorial with dicks-out Blueboy-esque nude male centerfolds. The show's two "shock jock" characters, Willy (Eric Edelstein) and Franco (Samm Levine), use their airtime titillating drive-time listeners with stories about how much they love sex and partying. But Willy's wife Wanda (Allison Tolman) gets her hands on a copy of "Minx" and decides to stand up for her own right to enjoy her life, instead wasting her time giving her husband joyless hand jobs between serving him meals. Suddenly the libertarians aren't so pro-liberty anymore.

The politics of equality are useless, unless joined with a politics of pleasure.

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