GavestonPS said: "Sheila2 said: "In Company. I never get the part where Peter says (sings) "The kind of girl you can't send through the mails".
In the number Have I Got a Girl for You. What does "send through the mails" mean?"
I don't know if this got answered, but I don't think the line has anything to do with mail-order brides. (Seriously, kids, it was the ORDER that was sent parcel post, not the woman!)
Up through the 1960s, at least, there were especially severe federal obscenity laws and mailing porn carried harsher penalties than merely selling dirty mags in the back room. Images and text that "couldn't be sent through the mails" was far sexier than images and text that could be ordered by post.
I don't know what the law is now, but as late as the 1980s, the Canadian post office was confiscating nude pictures that had a gay context and magazines that were also sold in Canada tended to have censored content.
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Not quite true. stuff coming over the boarder through customs had such issues but it has been written that within the country gay erotica and pornography was often allowed to be much more graphic than the us or uk even if sent thru the mails