What does it mean when someone says "I'm feeling frisky"?
07.06.2025 23:55
Twenty years later, the sexual revolution in the late sixties had happened. Ideas about free love meant there was less prudishness and sexual hang ups. Nevertheless, there was a nostalgia for the simpler more innocent times of the 1950s, and “American Graffiti” paved the way for the long running “Happy Days” sit-com.
Howard and Marion Cunningham were the archetypal American middle-classed couple. He owned a hardware store, and she was a homemaker. They were able to afford a very comfortable two-story house with a white picket fence— no dog.
It was the 1950s. Even though alcoholism and spousal abuse took place behind closed doors, and cops almost never arrested a man for disciplining his wife, proprietary and appearance were important. Yes, men wore suits and women dressed up in makeup and high heels just to go grocery shopping. Cursing was not allowed, and sex was not openly discussed. Everything had to be squeaky clean just like a Norman Rockwell painting.
But they had two very wholesome children, Ritchie and Joanie.
You see, frisky is a very playful, euphemistic word for horny. It just wouldn't have sounded appropriate for Marion Ross to tell Tom Bosley that she was feeling horny. Nothing was supposed to be dirty in the fifties.
You may or may not be familiar with the story about “I love Lucy”, as to why the producers of the show wouldn't allow Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball to sleep in the same bed. If you've watched the show, you know they slept in separate twin beds.
Now that I've given you all this unnecessary background information, there was a running gag on the show involving Howard and Marion. Whenever they felt amorous toward one another, usually at the end of a show, one of them would tell the other they were feeling “frisky”, and they would dash upstairs.
This was white middle-class suburbia. Whatever happened in the black ghettos and Spanish barrios were only known to the local police.
When Arthur Fonzarelli character became hugely popular, he was no longer just an Italian hoodlum from the wrong side of the tracks, he became an adopted member of the Cunningham household. Part of the shows appeal was having Fonzie tone down his coarse manners and language around the Cunninghams. “Sit on it” was the strongest epithet you ever heard on the show. The subtle message was that Fonzie yearned to be a part of a safe and loving family.
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