For F☆ck’s Sake. The Political Narrative of Sex Toys in the Communication of MySecretCase

Abstract

In the last 20 years, the industry of sex toys has grown exponentially within the Western online market, giving life to new forms of communication regarding topics such as sex and sexuality. However, if on one hand the online sale of sex toys and its related communication allow (once again) the spread of political narratives, on the other they seem to reinforce an individual and self-determining conception of sex and sexuality which preclude its broader understanding within societal norms and omit forms of collective and shared practices related to such topics.

To understand the consequences of this paradox, the paper will focus on sex toys as carriers of political narratives related to sex and sexuality, reflecting especially on the role of that online communication might have on their diffusion. To achieve this, the paper will take into consideration the visual communication of MySecretCase as a case study and analyze it through the visual methodology proposed by Gillian Rose [1, 2]. Through the analysis of the communication design strategies adopted by MySecretCase, we aim at interrogating whether—if confined in the virtual space—sex toys can still be considered as carriers of political and collective values, reflecting on the role of communication design in shaping the symbolic narrative around these objects.

1 Introduction

In the contemporary context of Western late capitalism, sex and sexuality have grown into a fashionable and profitable matters within cultural and entertaining products [3], which overall have been accustomed to an ever greater freedom in the expression of sexual content—or at least within the limits set by public morality. However, this accomplishment comes with a rather fascinating paradox, which professor Feona Attwood highlights through her work by noticing how sex is “present everywhere as a subject for discussion and representation even while its practices are often hidden away” [3, xiv]. In other words, sex has undergone a process of separation between the “pure” and the “dirt”, the “out of place” [4]. This meaning that while representations of sex and the sexualization of people and things can be easily found on billboards, commercials, TV series and other products of popular culture, the actual acts of masturbation or self-pleasure often remain a form of taboo.

This paradox is even more visible in the specific case of sex toys, which have long been the vehicle for many issues concerning political, juridical and health struggles. In fact, although the market for sex toys has seen an exponential growth in the last twenty years in many Western countries, there often seems to be fundamental deficiencies in participatory and/or collective forms of knowledge-sharing practices about sex- and sexuality-related topics. The same paradox applies to the recent growth of female-headed and female-oriented sex toys suppliers and sales outlets, which by moving their retail online are adopting new and sophisticated marketing and communication strategies to acquire new costumers.

To understand the consequences of this paradox, the paper will focus on sex toys as carriers of political narratives related to sex and sexuality, reflecting especially on the role of that online communication might have on their diffusion. To achieve this, the paper will take into consideration the visual communication of MySecretCase as a case study and analyze it through the visual methodology proposed by British professor Gillian Rose [1, 2]. Through the analysis of the communication design strategies adopted by MySecretCase, we aim at interrogating whether—if confined in the virtual space—sex toys can still be considered as carriers of political and collective values, reflecting on the role of communication design in shaping the symbolic narrative around these objects. At a time when feminism and sex positivism are being used as marketing strategies, we believe that the communicative aspect of sex toys’ online retailers becomes particularly interesting as it unveils complex dynamics involving both problematic aspects as well as subversive potential.

2 Research Background

The history of sex shops is as compelling as much as it is poorly documented. However, the works of Lynn Comella [5], Hallie Lieberman [6] and Coulmont and Hubbard [7] provide us with a detailed and precious report regarding the changes in the sex toys market in the U.S., Britain and France. In particular, Lieberman [6] and Comella [5] focus on the rise of feminist and women-run sex shops and how these changed the “business of pleasure”. Coulmont and Hubbard [7], instead, trace the changes of British and French regulations for selling pornography and sexual materials since the 1970s, investigating how they affected sex shops’ evolution. These contributions have been helpful in demonstrating how—regardless of the country where they are located—sex shops are entangled with the regulations of the public space, as well as with the transformations occurring in the social, political, and cultural discourses about sexuality. Furthermore, sex toys have long been the vehicle for many issues concerning political, juridical and health struggles. Throughout the sexual revolution carried out across the U.S., for example, the so-called “sex war” carried out between the 1970s and 1980s became an important moment for the incorporation and politicization of the topics of sex and sexuality into second wave feminist movements. “Sex war” refers to a heated debate on the issues of porn and sex toys, which divided feminists into two main oppositions. On one side, sex toys were contested as “phallic signifier[s]” [8, 1001], and thus considered as embodiments of the patriarchal hegemony over women’s sexuality. On the other side, other strands of feminists claimed sex toys as “totems of feminist struggle over gendered sexual prohibitions and inequalities” [9, 615].

Eventually, all these debates started to converge in a broader discourse dominated by the dissatisfaction for the existing adult stores, translating these political practices and theoretical positionings into new retailing models. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the U.S. and Europe saw the emergence of feminist sex shops, which became an alternative to both traditional male-run adult stores. The distinction between traditional adult stores and feminist sex shops was based mainly on the idea that the latter were conceived on a political-aware identity which shaped not only the commercial choices it employed, but also the representations it made of the commodities for sale. Feminist sex shops were born indeed to contrast the blooming of traditional male-driven sex shops or adult stores [5, 6], characterized by blacked out windows and (mainly) pornographic material on the inside [10]. For example, the feminist sex shop Eve’s Garden, opened in 1974 in New York City, decided not to sell dildos and vibrators since they were considered symbols of phallocentrism and heteronormativity. Others such as Good Vibrations, opened in 1977 in San Francisco, opted to display only non-phallic dildos and vibrators in the front and at the center of the store to make a statement that “the store was about women’s pleasure, not men’s idea of how women should experience pleasure” [6, 167]. Most of these stores were also thought and used as gathering spots, hosting workshops on masturbation, sex education and books’ presentations, with the aim of creating alternative ways of representing and narrating women’s sexuality. By doing so, they also contributed to a new aesthetic of adult stores both considering the goods for sale and the decoration of the shop. According to Feona Attwood, this “stylish form of auto-erotism”, which originated from the second-wave feminists of the ‘70s, set the basis for the understanding of an “appropriate female sexuality”, but also for the integration of the sex toy as a mean of cultural change by becoming “a vital part of the contemporary reordering of sexual practice as [well as] a combination of fantasy and appliance” [11, 395–396].

In the last twenty years, sex toys and sex shops have changed drastically, undergoing a “postfeminist ‘makeover’” [12] “through a combination of feminization and gentrification that has ‘cleaned up’ the industry” [9, 615–616]. In particular, the expansion of internet-based retailing systems helped the sex toys market to turn these objects into empowering, fashionable and “cool” luxury goods—a trend that is placed within a general increase in the consumption of sexual merchandise [13]. In fact, as Fisher and Barak (2000) claim, online retailers have been “facilitated dramatically by the ‘three A’s’ of Internet use: access, affordability, and anonymity, which increasingly characterize the Internet scene across much of the globe” [14, 575]. At the same time, contemporary online sex shops (especially through social networking sites, or SNS) are leveraging the expansion of feminist digital activism [15, 16], developing marketing strategies that see the creation of informational content on their social media platforms and posing themselves as hybrids between shops and sex education pages. This includes, for example, advocating for LGBTQ + rights, stigmatized diseases like endometriosis and AIDS, and non-conforming bodies (and body parts). Although these contents are produced by retailers, with the ultimate goal of advertising their own products, the perception from a user point of view is often that there is no clear-cut distinction between marketing strategies and digital activism. And indeed, as Paul G. Nixon and Cosimo Marco Scarcelli notice, the question arises of whether the spread of such contents “is a prime example of (largely) female-empowerment or merely neoliberal markets being expanded to increase profits by targeting new markets and attracting new customers” [3, 17]. Or even, whether these shops are adopting a political endeavor precisely to tackle an increasingly larger audience using techniques such as pink or rainbow washing.

3 Methodology

This paper focuses on the Italian case of MySecretCase, which will help us understand the current status of the relationship between sex shops, online communication, and political narratives. Born in 2014, MySecretCase is an online sex shop which gained popularity on the socials for its educative and yet amusing contents. Today, the company has more than half of a million followers (681 thousand on September 21) on Instagram, 97 thousand members on YouTube, 71 thousand followers on Facebook and a turnover of 6.5 millions of euros [18]. With respect to MySecretCase’s communication strategy, we will focus only on commercials and Instagram posts. This choice is guided by the fact that these two modes of advertisement propose different narrations of sex toys and sexuality in general as regards to target audience, content, and medium used. Most importantly, they allow us to better underline the different approaches adopted through the passage between a television-oriented mode of communication and an SNS-based one.

The methodology employed for the analysis of the selected case study is that suggested by Gillian Rose in her seminal book Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials [1, 2]. Rose’s framework identifies the site of production, the site of the image, the site of audiencing and the site of circulation as spheres where “the meanings of an image are made” [2, 24] and where the social and cultural impact of visual communication can be studied. Each of these sites (production, image, audiencing, and circulation), Rose argues, can also be critically examined by asking questions based on three aspects or “modalities”. In particular, the technological modality focuses on how different visual technologies impact on its meaning and effects (i.e. what technologies are used to make and circulate the image); the compositional modality refers to the material qualities of an image (i.e. color, content, genre); the social modality takes into account the range of social, political and economic relations, institutions and practices that surround an image and through which it is seen and used (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

The sites and modalities for interpreting visual materials by Gillian Rose (2016). Image redesigned by the authors.

Rose’s method is particularly suitable for this research as it helps taking into account many of the affordances offered by these platforms, such as the facility to build a network of supporters [19], the strategic “formal nature” of posts [20], and the “spreadability” of audio-visual contents [21]. With this methodology, the specific sites and their modalities will be used as a taxonomy to position a critical reading of the case study’s audio-visual content.

4 Analysis

MySecretCase’s first commercial was broadcasted on July 24th, 2017, on some of the major Italian private and public TV channels. As for the site of image, the commercial depicts four white women, three alone and one with her male partner, all looking for something in their houses or in their bags. Only towards the end of the commercial the viewer understands that the common desired object is a sex toy—respectively a dildo, a vibrator, a piece of lingerie, and a clitoral stimulator in the shape of a lipstick. The colors of the items used in props and scenery are skewed towards pale yellow and pink shades, whilst there is a predominant presence of white in the clothes worn by the actresses. The background music consists of a 1980s-inspired ballad, One More Lonely Night (Without Your Love) by Maurice Hayes, which creates a romantic and dream-like scenario. The camera is always still and allows the viewer to carefully look at the slow-paced actions performed by the four women through the technique of cross cutting—revealing only at the end what the advertised set of products is. Overall, the combination of the soft colors, the slow editing and the mellow music all converge towards the creation of a romance-like tale which, due to the application of the products shown at the end, is safe to assume is only addressed to women. Considering the site of audiencing, many elements and environments in which these women are portrayed—spacious modern houses, a huge walk-in closet, elegant clothing, and refined jewelry—suggest that the ad is targeting middle to high class women of all ages. Furthermore, the primary colors used throughout the commercial—such as pale pink, often representing femininity and infancy, and white, associated with purity and innocence—appear to be added in the attempt to convince the audience that “ordinary” women make use of sex toys, thus “purifying” the imaginary of these objects from their possibly “dirty” connotations.

On the site of circulation, it is particularly noteworthy that this commercial has been differentiated between nighttime and daytime, with the only difference between is that in the daytime one, women do not show their sex toys but smile instead, winking at the camera, and there are no images of sex toys while scrolling the website on the phone in the end. During the commercial, a (female) narrating voice says

“We want a world in which women are not sexual objects but can have them all. Find yours on MySecretCase.com, the first online shop dedicated to women’s pleasure. MySecretCase.com – Your pleasure”.

stressing both the target on a female clientele, and the fact that purchasing these items is a fair and empowering act which gives them pleasure. As the name of the brand itself suggests, the visual meaning this spot is playing with is the unveiling of the secret, of hidden sexual tools.

The second commercial release by MySecretCase was broadcasted on 15th of July 2019, almost two years after the first one. Starting with the site of circulation, MySecretCase has expanded the number of channels, especially public ones (from four to seven) and thus expanding their presence on national television. This commercial is also differentiated by night and daytime, and there are more diverse elements with respect to the first case. In the nighttime version there are three couples—two heterosexuals, one at a restaurant and one within a car, and a lesbian one, in the bathtub—in which the women give to their partner a sex toy, respectively a remote controller for an egg vibrator, a vibrator, and a cock ring. While in the daytime version there is a heterosexual couple more (of which a pregnant woman) who play and get massaged with wax. The only (part of) sex toy shown is the remote controller for the egg vibrator. On the production site, this commercial also follows a cinematic image, but while the first one helped constructing a romantic genre, here the camera moves in a more vibrant, animated way, following also a joyful French song (Bouge Ta Bouche, by Ann De Renais & Ben Parry) and some erotic interactions between different couples. If on one hand this commercial also follows a romantic genre, its erotic standpoint seems to stand out as well, dictated by the seductive and alluring elements of the direction such as the use of darker shades and environments with soft lights as opposed to the bright ones used in the first ad. Moving to the site of image, it is possible to notice a highly different composition of the scenes with respect to the first commercial. The narrating voice indeed says

“For those nights in which playing is our only secret. For those gifts which can open new paths. For those moments in which we think about the future, but time stops. For those loves which are always a blow to the heart. For all those games that free the imagination. MySecretCase.com — Your Pleasure”.

Here, the commercial is stressing the idea of the playfulness of sex toys, which are still something secret, but that can unravel new paths, or free the imagination, the unknown. The main theme here seems to be the one of discovery, yet with secrecy and within the intimacy of the relationship. The fil rouge that connects this commercial with the previous one is the representation of middle high-class people, which can be noticed from the environments in which these people are depicted and the various elements surrounding them. The dress of the first woman in the restaurant, for example, the big space in which the bathtub is placed, or the convertible car, are all elements which concur to the development of this imaginary. Also, in this second commercial it is mostly women the ones with give their partner sex toys, thus reinforcing the idea of the empowered woman who seeks her own pleasure—even if always within the shared space of the monogamous relationship.

If the two commercials by MySecretCase share many similarities, the same cannot be said about the company’s communication strategy for Instagram. The first post dates to November 24^th, 2017, and constitutes the beginning of a new and fresh approach that the company successfully managed to build throughout five years. For this study, two clusters of nine consecutive Instagram posts will be taken into analysis. The first one consists of posts published by MySecretCase’s Instagram page between December 10^th, 2018, and October 17^th, 2019, and is mainly characterized by the presence of colorful, ironic content, mostly oriented at advertising their products. There first post, for example, is a parody of a specific Italian comedy genre for movies which are usually released in cinemas during the Christmas period (called “cinepanettone” after the typical sweet bread eaten in Italy during Christmas time). The second post, instead, is an excerpt of the video clip of a song by the Italian pop singer M¥SS KETA in which she is sponsoring a MySecretCase’s vibrator. The third post is more ironic and less direct, but is nonetheless aimed at advertising a sex toy; the text reads indeed “What I do when I’m in the shower”, and the answers “I shower”, “I think at all the shrewd answers that I could have used in already concluded discussions” and “I use my suction-cup vibrator” are shown through different percentages of a pie chart. The following post are also aiming at selling a product and show a sequence of images depicting a black egg vibrator that quivers in a glass of water. The last five posts, instead, consist of ironic and colorful graphics that do not advertise any sex toy. There is a “Guide to understand if someone is really bisexual”, which stresses the importance of self-defining each and diverse sexual orientations, but also a series of illustrations that show how animals masturbate or have sex. The only two similar posts are the ones with the words “Tette” (tits) and “Soffocone” (blowjob), which are part of a series called #SEXDICTIONARY, exploring how body parts or sexual practices are called in different Italian regions and/or dialects (Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5).

Fig. 2.

Screenshots of MySecretCase’s first commercial in nighttime (2017). Source: YouTube.

Fig. 3.

Screenshots of MySecretCase’s second commercial in daytime (2019). Source: YouTube.

Fig. 4.

Post IG @mysecretcase 10/12/2018 – 17/10/2019. Source: Instagram.

Fig. 5.

Post IG @mysecretcase 24/07/2020 – 14/08/2020. Source: Instagram.

The comedy genre characterizing these posts suggests that, between 2018 and 2019, MySecretCase adopted a non-political communication strategy, based mostly on Italian popular and vernacular cultures, and aimed primarily at selling the company’s products. The composition of this group of posts is also inconsistent, both in the visual style and time of publication. In fact, these first nine posts have been published within a very long timeframe (almost a year), and there is no coherence in terms of the choices regarding colors, copywriting and topics treated. Also, if compared to the commercials, these posts do not seem to target any specific gender or sexually oriented people, nor any age-specific group of users.

From the circulation point of view, these posts received 18.231 thousand likes and 289 comments, with an average of approximately 2000 likes and 30 comments per post.

The second cluster is composed of nine posts going from July 24^th, 2020, to August 14^th, 2020. From a circulation perspective, this cluster of posts shows a higher frequency of their publication—implying a greater effort in guaranteeing a consistency of posts and a much more active presence on Instagram. Secondly, they received 60220 likes and 512 comments altogether, with an average of 6500 likes and 500 comments per post. Differently from the first cluster, these posts present a coherent composition both in their aesthetic and content. All the photos and graphics have similar effects and styles, and each one characterized by a colored frame showing MySecretCase’s logo—ensuring that, if these posts go viral, the brand can be recognized. The contents are coherent in the sense that there is balance between informative, ironic, and political tones. For example, in the cluster we can see the presence of a campaign called “Disabile Desiderabile” (Desirable Disabled), which gather testimonies and experience of disabled people on their sexuality, and thus suggesting a programmatic agenda. The first post is the only one that advertises sex toys through the word game “I doni della ClitoriDea” (The gifts of the ClitoriGoddes), which represents Botticelli’s Venus into a vulva and adversities for different sex toys to stimulate the clitoris. The second post, called “Tutto il Tatto delle Tette” (All the Tactile Sensitivity of Tits), explains instead how the breasts can be stimulated and gives tips on how to use touch to bring pleasure to the partner. Similarly, the following post portrays the changes that occur in the vulva when it is aroused. The fourth, sixth and ninth posts, instead, give tips on how to perform oral sex, have sex in the water, and perform exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles (also known as Kegel exercises) to feel more pleasure.

In this cluster of posts female bodies are the protagonists, both photographed and illustrated, often represented in a non-normative way. Most importantly, there is a fundamental absence of sex toys which brings the profile of the company to appear more like a sex-education page rather than a sex toy retailer one. All these elements concur in creating both an informative and provocative genre, which challenges Instagram policies prohibiting the publication of nudes by censoring nipples or by publishing illustrations of intimate body parts like breasts and vulvas. Contrarily to the first cluster of posts or the commercials, this selection of posts pushes the limits of the public morality by publishing images with explicit sexual content, but with clear educational and, arguably, political ends.

5 Discussion and Conclusions

Overall, this paper has shown how MySecretCase constructed different meanings around sex toys via TV commercials and Instagram posts, creating different imaginaries that shaped the symbolic and political representation of these objects. In general, this brief analysis has demonstrated that TV commercials depict more high-class women and couples, while on the Instagram page there is an effort to represent different types of bodies, skin colors and sexualities through a more easy-going language. If on one hand there is a cautious use of the depicted images to not upset the common decency, e.g. the differentiation of the commercials between night and daytime, on the other hand there is a redefined attention to a calculated use of naked bodies, genitals, and sex/masturbation scenes. Also, a common element of both communication styles is the framing of sex toys as tools for female empowerment and further sexual emancipation. However, while the commercials are concerned with the normalization of masturbation and the use of tools to “spice up” the sexual relation with their partner, Instagram posts seems to have overcome this step, and talk about more specific issues regarding sex such as consensus, sexuality, mental and physical health.

If the aim of commercials is clear, i.e. selling the products, while on Instagram we are witnessing the creation of a hybrid format between dissemination and advertising, where the latter is increasingly less present and camouflaged under other guises. In fact, the recurrent social campaigns on body positivity, inclusion, and representation of LGBTQI+ subjectivities, as well as the reflections about consent, sexual experimentation and physical and mental health related to sex are blurring the boundaries between a commercial brand, and an activist, politically oriented, page. In fact, although MySecretCase poses itself more as a women-run business, the contents spread by the company on Instagram seems more and more similar to a feminist digital activist group. Although this might be a marketing strategy, it undoubtedly raises questions on the effect of such spread of sexual and politically aware themes on its followers and more generally about making issues like sex, masturbation, and alternative sexualities such public yet individualized matters.

As it was shown at the beginning of this paper, during the second wave of feminisms, attempts to transform sexuality in the public sphere have been made also through commercial businesses. However, if on one hand the online communication allows these issues to circulate more widely and potentially to inform more and more users on sexual themes, on the other hand it precludes the actual creation of shared debates and public or collective practices and endeavors. In fact, although MySecretCase has an interactive approach on its Instagram page carried out through questions on the captions of the posts and videos, the interaction is limited to the possibilities of the platform itself, thus reinforcing the creation of “public intimac[y]ies” [22, 98].

To conclude, we could say that even if the growth in online erotic consumption helped to (re)politicize sex toys, the purpose of the communication practices related to these objects lies only within the autonomous and individual sexual self-determination. In fact, although the television, the internet and the availability of social media are transforming what once was a source of taboo into an increasingly visible and accessible matter, the political narratives related to sex toys always seem to remain confined within the domestic and private spheres, failing to breach the screens into a more public and shared space. If we think of visibility as a sociological category that “lies at the intersection of the two domains of aesthetics (relations of perception) and politics (relations of power)” [23, 324], when there is a shift in visibility we should always ask ourselves who are the agents of this change, what is really changing in terms of power relations, and which effects does this change produce, what is been “cleaned up” and what still remains “dirt”.