Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture (5 page)

taxidermy hanging in a lodge, take up psychic space; figurative forms leave fantasy open to one’s own interpretation. “Staying away from body shapes,” Imboden explained, “is a way of keeping open provocative possibility, as opposed to narrowing it down to a provocative prescription.”

The Form 3, the second vibrator designed with Behar, has a vi- brating, ultra-thin soft silicone skin that flexes into the curve of the palm. The Form 4, the two men discussed that afternoon, should “deliver an oomph.” Imboden believed they could achieve this by setting two motors to vibrate at different frequencies. Behar pon- dered an internal structure that would allow the vibrator to bend in various directions, similar to the neck of his Herman Miller lamp. “Plus it makes it look exactly like Barbapapa, my childhood hero,” he said, referring to the popular French cartoon creature that looks like a pear-shaped blob and can change shape. “For each of these projects we came up with some funny metaphors,” he told me. “It keeps you true to the original concept.”

From a study released in 2009 by Indiana University, the first academic, peer-reviewed study to look at vibrator use, we now know that 53 percent of women and nearly half of all men in the United States have used a vibrator. This makes it nearly as common an appliance in American households as the drip cof- feemaker or toaster oven,
The New York Times
reported, and about twice as prevalent among American adults as condoms, according to Church & Dwight, maker of Trojan condoms, which funded the Indiana University study. Jimmyjane’s own sales reveal that as many men as women, as many twenty-five-year-olds as fifty- year olds, and as many Virginians as Californians, per capita, are buying vibrators. At each phase of life, a sex toy might take on new meaning; perhaps, initially, as a way to explore one’s own body, but later, within a long-term relationship, as a way to sus-

tain excitement. Today sex therapists are hearing more discussion of what they call “desire discrepancies”—one partner wanting sex more, or less, or in a different manner, than the other. “Our bread and butter used to be orgasm and erection problems,” said Sandor Gardos, a sex therapist, adding that self-help sources and Viagra have arisen to address those issues. “There’s more discus- sion now around the subtle and complex issues of relationship and sexuality.”

Imboden sees Jimmyjane as playing into that discussion around sex and well-being, not only as a peddler of “marital aids”—ter- minology still used by the handful of online sex-toy retailers catering to religious Christians—but as a trusted provocateur. Guests looking for condoms at W Hotels will find Jimmyjane’s Pocket Pleasure Set in their room’s minibar, a slim package con- taining condoms, a mini-vibrator, a feather tickler, and the “love decoder”—a piece of paper folded like an Origami fortune-teller that engages players in titillating acts through a game of chance. “Everybody wants to try these new boundaries but they need a catalyst to make this happen,” Imboden told me. “We are granting them permission by transferring the responsibility to us.”

One day, I flew to Los Angeles with Imboden for a routine trip he was taking to different retailers that carry Jimmyjane. We started at Hustler Hollywood, an upmarket sex emporium on a corner of the Sunset Strip, with a glass façade, bright lights and polished floors. Hard-core pornography was displayed just feet from an in-store coffee bar, arguably two things that should oc- cupy different spaces, but the suggestion is to get over it. Pre- senting erotica stigma-free in the manner of a Barnes & Noble triggers the disorienting feel of a dark nightclub suddenly flooded with fluorescent ceiling lights, where everyone can see what you’ve been doing in the corner. But a fishbowl is precisely the

metaphor of transparency Larry Flynt had in mind, and amidst this forthright statement of normalized sexuality (store motto: “Relax…it’s just sex”), Jimmyjane is at home.

“With most other consumer products, like a pair of jeans, you have to convince people
why
they need it,” Cory Silverberg, a certified sex educator and author who writes the “Sexuality Guide” for About.com, had told me. “With sex toys people come in already interested, and what you are doing is removing the obstacles. A lot of it is permission giving—saying that sex toys don’t make you kinky, or that your boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t good enough.”

Imboden told me that Jimmyjane was the first to present sex toys in white packaging, and that retailers, accustomed to the candy-colored aesthetic, told him customers would never go for it. Several packages made by the company’s competitors now have a cleaner, white look. Imboden picked one of them off a rack, and pointed out the words bullet-pointed on the package:
body-safe materials, phthalate-free, waterproof
. “You never used to see that,” he said. European laws have driven much of the industry’s attention to materials safety, but whether it is to be believed is something different. Sander Gardos, who founded MyPleasure.com, an on- line retailer of sex toys, had told me, “You cannot trust what’s on the box—it has nothing to do with what’s actually in there,” recalling a manufacturer at a trade show in Shanghai who stood before a display of two boxes that contained the same product— one was labeled “100% TPR” (thermoplastic rubber), the other “100% silicone”—and then admitted both were made with PVC. “We have visited the Chinese factories that make all the toys that say ‘Made in Japan,’” Gardos said. “There are tremendous qual- ity-control issues in this industry because it is completely unregu- lated.”

A stand-alone glass case carried what the salesman distin- guished as the “sex devices”—superior quality, more nicely de- signed and higher priced products “that don’t crap out,” as he put it. Jimmyjane’s products occupied two shelves. The case also displayed products by LELO and Minna. On another shelf was OhMiBod’s Freestyle vibrator, which pulsates to music from an mp3 player. It bore a striking resemblance to the Form 6, down to its solid plum color and narrow metallic band.

Nearby, in West Hollywood, we stopped in at Coco de Mer, a luxury erotic boutique with outlets in London and Manhattan. With Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who is an investor in the store, Imboden designed a custom version of the Little Chroma in black, with Stewart’s lyrics etched into the aluminum and a leather cord threaded through the cap, along with a custom guitar pick. We then met Robin Coe-Hutshing at Studio BeautyMix, her store inside Fred Segal, in Santa Monica (which has since changed ownership). A wall behind the custom fragrance counter displayed Jimmyjane’s vibrators, white porcelain massage stones (for which it won an International Design Excellence Award), and scented massage oil candles, which were the first candles of any kind to be formulated with a melting point matching body tem- perature, an innovation that makes them an effective emollient when poured onto the skin. In an environment of soaps, perfumes and skin cream, Jimmyjane’s bright color palette and white boxes fit as seamlessly as they had in a room of maid outfits and butt plugs. If Hustler Hollywood and Studio BeautyMix might rep- resent almost dichotomous approaches to sex—the excitement of sexual fantasy versus the everyday made sexy—Jimmyjane works in both worlds by remaining agnostic.

We finished our tour in Venice, at A+R, the design store that Rose Apodaca, the former
Women’s Wear Daily
editor, opened

with her husband Andy Griffith. The store displays a compen- dium of home accessories from designers around the world. The Form 2 sits on a shelf behind glass in a wall display next to the Braun travel alarm clock by Dieter Rams, and is sometimes mis- taken by customers, according to Apodaca, for a Japanese anime toy. In the adjacent case, beside colored glass vases in the shape of honey bears, are the Form 6 and Little Chroma. “We wanted to include these products in our mix because we wanted it to seem like a perfectly normal part of one’s lifestyle,” Apodaca told me. “Just like they’d have a great wine carafe or a filtered water bottle.” When Sasha Baron Cohen walked into the store the week before I visited and learned what that Little Chroma was, he pro- ceeded to browse the store picking up random objects and asking, “Does this vibrate?”

Victoria’s Secret, a $5 billion retailer ubiquitous today in Amer- ican shopping malls, was founded in San Francisco in the 1970s by a Stanford Business School graduate who felt embarrassed buying lingerie for his wife in a department store, and set out to create a more inviting atmosphere for men. Soon, picking up a vibrator in a shopping mall, or a store that sells home accesso- ries, cosmetics or lattes may seem rather conventional. It nearly is already. One of the faster growing categories in terms of sales at Walgreen’s, the nation’s biggest drugstore chain, is sexual well- ness. Walgreens has been selling a vibrating ring—a gateway sex toy—made by Trojan, since 2006, except in the seven U.S. states where it is illegal to do so; Target and Wal-Mart sell them as well. Amazon.com currently carries just under eighty thousand sexual wellness products. Sales of “sexual enhancement devices” in mass food and drug retailers (excluding Wal-Mart) increased by 20 percent for the year that ended April 15, according to

Symphony IRI Group, a Chicago-based market-research firm. Yearly sales of sexual products through home-party direct sales, like Pleasure Parties, are more than $400 million. “Vibrators are already mainstream,” said Jim Daniels, Trojan’s former vice presi- dent for marketing, who estimates the market for vibrators in the United States to be $1 billion—more than twice that of condoms. Trojan, along with Durex and Lifestyle, are among the large companies now developing vibrators that a place like Walgreen’s might start to feel okay about selling under florescent lights. Trojan has introduced the sixty-dollar Vibrating Twister—the condom maker’s third vibrator model. For a trial, Philips Elec- tronics launched a line of “intimate massagers” under their Rela- tionship Care category. “These big multinational companies are realizing there is a ton money to be made,” says Cory Silverberg. “They will change things more significantly than the political feminist sex stores and some of the more interesting manufac- turers like Jimmyjane.” Mainstream manufacturers and retailers are couching these products as being good for sexual health—that it’s not just about getting turned on, or being kinky, but about being healthy, like exercising and eating well. “That’s not exactly a change in our comfort with sex,” says Silverberg—it still will be some time before sex toy ads become as acceptable as Viagra commercials—“it’s a marketing ploy, but it will give people per-

mission to try something they want to try anyway.”

Johnson & Johnson’s KY relaunched its own brand with what it’s calling “intimacy enhancing products for couples,” including a topical female arousal gel “scientifically proven to enhance a woman’s intimate satisfaction.” “I look at it as the final frontier of the women’s movement,” says Dr. Laura Berman, a promi- nent TV sex and relationships therapist who incited a vibrator buying frenzy after appearing on “Oprah” with various devices.

“Women now feel more entitled and free to explore their own sexual responses.”

As sex toys become just another personal electronic device, our expectations of them and how they are used are bound to change. Imboden has been considering this scenario for years already, quietly developing technologies that he says will “fundamen- tally alter the way that we interact with these products.” Imagine wearable sensors—embedded in clothing, or a bracelet—that op- erate according to heart rate, blood pressure and skin response. Imagine devices that communicate via a personal area network, connecting sexual partners in ways they don’t even realize.

One afternoon at Jimmyjane’s offices, Imboden told me that he believed the companies that will succeed in making sex toys are those that are forthright, trusted and accountable, like an intimate partner. He paused, then added—“and give great orgasms”—just before it became an afterthought.

Sex by numbers

Rac hel Swan

Jessica, John and Kate (not their real names) sat together at Cafe Van Kleef recently, looking more like three longtime friends than three people involved in a love triangle—or, as they’d put it, a love polygonal. Jessica had an arm casually draped around John, who leaned against her contentedly. The two of them met on OKCupid about three years ago, started an email correspon- dence, and hooked up, for the first time, at a friend’s Christmas party—John says they spent most of it making out in the bath- room. They started seeing each other “in a fling capacity,” he says, and fell in love against their better interests. John clearly remembers the day it struck him: “We were outside a Virgin Me- gastore in New York,” he recalled, “next to two guys who were laying asphalt. I suddenly turned to her and I was like, ‘Hey, I love you.’ And she started crying.”

About a year into their relationship, Kate entered the picture.

She and John had actually known each other for a long time, and John said they’d always had a lot of chemistry. Both were warm and loquacious, identified as “queer,” and saw themselves as part of the Bay Area’s sexual underground. They’d actually met at a drag show. One day, Kate showed up at a music event that John had produced in Oakland’s Mosswood Park. (By day, he works as a freelance lighting designer for rock shows.) Kate marched straight up to Jessica. “Full disclosure,” she said. “I’m only here to get in your boyfriend’s pants.”

Weirdly enough, it worked. It turns out Jessica is one of the few people in the world who would take kindly to someone trying to steal her man. Because she doesn’t think of it as stealing; it’s more like sharing. A good boyfriend shouldn’t be squandered on one person, right? At this point, Kate and John have been sleeping together for a full year. They use condoms. John and Jes- sica are still “primary” partners. Jessica, in the meantime, started seeing three other guys. It’s not about getting even, she says; it’s about sharing the love. She and Kate are best friends. And Kate has a fiancé of her own.

Confused yet? Jessica explains it this way: “So here’s a conven- tional relationship,” she said. “You meet someone, you date, after six months, you use the
L
word.” She paused and glanced over at Kate, who nodded approvingly. “Then you wait for him to ask you to marry him. Then you have a baby.”