When Cary Grant tells Grace Kelly in 1955’s To Catch a Thief that what she needs is “two weeks with a good man at Niagara Falls,” no one thinks he’s talking about boat rides.
—Cary Grant as cited by Ginger Strand in Selling Sex in Honeymoon Heaven: Femininty, Niagara Falls, and the Genuine Allure of an American Fake in the most recent post at Believer Magazine
Strand has written an interesting piece (if you have the time -- it's a little long) on the place of the Honeymoon in the American landscape (with apologies to Canada, with whom we share the Falls, but who fails to make it into the title of the piece) that raises more questions than it answers.
Like: How did one of North America's most astonishing Natural Wonders become a universal euphemism for marital sex? And how come Old Faithful got nudged out for the honor?
None of these questions are entirely answered (Old Faithful doesn't even come up -- that's just me thinking out loud) but it's an intriguing read, nonetheless. And the Red Hatters are mentioned, so it scores a few points as a cautionary tale.
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