“My other ride is a Rabbit Pearl” automobile bumper sticker
Abstract
This article presents participant-observation research from five female-only sex-toy parties. We situate the sale of sex toys in the context of in-home marketing to women, the explosion of a sex industry, and the emergence of lifestyle and body politics. We explore the significance of sex toys for women as marketed in female-only contexts, paying particular attention to the similarities and differences with Tupperware’s marketing of plastic that promises happiness to women. We argue that sex-toy sales follow the exact patterns of Tupperware sales but, since the artifacts sold are for the bedroom rather than the kitchen, foster an even greater sense of intimacy between the women—which has both positve and negative consequences for thinking critically about the commodification of sexuality, bodies, and lifestyles in our capitalist culture. Vibrators and other sex toys constitute the technological route to a self-reflexive body project of female orgasm. We ask to what extent such a body project, achieved primarily through an individualistic, capitalistic consumption model, can offer a critique of normative discourses of heterosexual sex and identity. Is this new plastic purchased at parties liberatory or just another form of containment? In other words, how much Tupperware does a woman really need to buy, before she’s been bought?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Clarke, Alison J. (1999). Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Ebert, Teresa. (1996). Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
French, Christina. (2000). Defining orgasm. Unpublished ms., Virginia Tech.
Giddens, Anthony. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Haraway, Donna J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Kapsalis, Terri. (1997). Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Loe, Meika. (1998). “Dildos in our toolboxes”: The production of sexuality at a pro-sex feminist sex toy store. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 143: 97–136.
Maines, Rachel. (2000). Technology of Orgasm. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
McCaughey, Martha. (1997). Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense. New York: New York University Press.
Zita, Jacquelyn N. (1998). Body Talk: Philosophical Reflections on Sex and Gender. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McCaughey, M., French, C. Women’s sex-toy parties: Technology, orgasm, and commodification. Sex Cult 5, 77–96 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-001-1031-2
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-001-1031-2