Journey back to a more idyllic time, when the exploits of a lightly fictionalized thirtysomething freelance writer named Carrie Bradshaw represented the vanguard of female sexuality in pop culture. It's 1998 and Carrie and her three pals sit gobbling down brunch when Miranda, the no-nonsense, no-cuddling-after-coitus career woman announces her new love: the Rabbit vibrator. Brunch ends and the ladies spring into a novelty shop peddling bachelorette-party swag like pecker candy rings and penis-shaped pasta. Carrie fixates on the $92 translucent mauve gizmo with a pearl-studded rotating mid-section and clit-tickling pair of bunny ears. "Look, it's so cute!" squeals Charlotte, the prim and Waspish one, before she ponies up her cash. Soon she cannot be separated from her quivering little bunny until Carrie and Miranda stage an intervention.
"The day after that episode aired, it was like a telethon," says Peter Serratore of Holiday Products, a sex toy distributor serving over 2,000 retail stores across the country. Serratore, a small, sweet man and former Southern California punk rocker who got into the sex toy trade in the '80s, has witnessed the business's various sea changes from the vantage of his nondescript San Fernando Valley shipping warehouse. "The phones would not stop ringing." The cacophony signaled a tectonic shift in the marketing and manufacturing of sex toys: Henceforth they would cater to the delicate tastes of the female consumer who would no longer blush at the suggestion she might have a secret little — or not so little — friend.
After Carrie Bradshaw threw open the gates to the plasticine pleasure dome, the next major breakthrough in the sex toy trade came in the last decade with a renaissance in materials and design. UR3®, Doc Johnson's third-generation "Ultra Realistic" material is used to produce pussy pockets, palm pleasers, realistic dildos, and Spread Eagle Sallies — this ultra-porous, squishy substance gives sex toys their extra push and pull when friction is applied. With better materials and savvier marketing, abstract streamlined silicone designs created by high-end product designers entered the market, forming a cottage industry of luxury female-friendly products that look more like hyper-modernist sculptures designed by Swedish architects (think Constantin Bråncusi's "Bird in Space") than gross vibrating mechanical dicks. "We used to be second-class citizens making strawberry lube," Serratore says, grinning. "Now it's posh."
The newest pop-culture sensation to set off another unanticipated tsunami in sales is
Fifty Shades of Grey, the B-grade whips-and-chains erotica phenomenon self-published by cheeky English housewife E. L. James. "After the book hit supermarkets, you could not find a pair of ben wah balls anywhere," Braverman recalls. "They sold out internationally." Ben wah balls are those clanky, steel balls you'd typically find in a junky Chinese souvenir shop, meant for twirling around in your hand to help in meditation, but in
Fifty Shades, the couple uses the orbs as a sex toy. The balls have been covertly and quietly this way for some time, but
Fifty Shades made them completely commonplace and socially acceptable.
With the popularity of
Fifty Shades, sex shops that have typically carried a small assortment of kink gear for leather daddies and Burning Man attendees were overrun by housewives and co-eds asking for nipple clamps and leather ankle straps. Attuned to the ever-changing needs of the public, Doc Johnson is set to release its new line of female-friendly fetish gear, Black and Blue, sponsored by James Deen. Deen, who is set to star alongside Lindsay Lohan this summer in
The Canyons, still makes his bread and butter with fetish films. "He helped design the products, and I think they are going to be popular with his female fans," Braverman says. "See, these are as isn't as intimidating," Braverman says, placing a soft pair of suede handcuffs onto my wrists. "You're a James Deen fan, right?"
Of course I am.