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Consumer Sexualities: Women and Sex Shopping A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details 1 Consumer Sexualities: Women and Sex Shopping Rachel Wood Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Gender Studies University of Sussex April 2015 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature:.................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements This thesis would absolutely not have been possible without the kindness, help, and support of so very many people. First and foremost I have to thank the 22 women who participated in this research. I was and am overwhelmed with gratitude for their generosity with their time, and for their readiness to speak to someone – who was in many cases a near stranger – about their sex shopping experiences and sex lives. Their voices absolutely capture the many contradictions, pleasures, anxieties and contradictions involved in being a sexual consumer. I must thank my supervisors Sally Munt, who taught me to perceive myself as a researcher and take ownership of this project, and Janice Winship, whose detailed, practical guidance, and positivity towards my research and writing has been invaluable. Other Sussex faculty members have also provided much needed advice and understanding, particularly Sharif Mowlobowcus, Kate O’Riordan, Andy Medhurst, Kate Lacey, Niall Richardson, Nicolas Till and Alison Phipps. My part time PhD has taken over five years and hasn’t always been easy; I would not have completed it without the solidarity of my peers in the fantastically supportive and enjoyable doctoral research communities at Sussex in Media, Film and Music, Gender Studies, and the Research Hive in Sussex Library. I am lucky to now count a great number of fellow research students as friends; I’m only sorry I can’t name all of them here. I am deeply appreciative of my grandparents Juliet and Charles Pratt, whose financial support and enthusiasm for my continuing education has enabled me to achieve so much. I’m thankful to my parents Sue and Jon for their generosity in providing lifts, food, drink, and a spare bedroom when I needed one; and for instilling in me a lifelong love of ideas, learning, reading and debating. My sister Jessie, cousins Sarah and Charlotte, Aunty Wendy, and my amazing group of friends, particularly Vicky, James and Becca, have always been interested in and supportive of my research, and provided a welcome distraction from it when needed. And for the last four years my partner Ben has been at hand through the many highs and lows of my PhD, always knowing that I would finally get here, and ensuring that I never take it all too seriously. 3 Abstract The thesis investigates contemporary sexual cultures through the lens of British women’s experiences of buying and using sexual commodities. Sexual consumer culture offers women a comprehensive programme of what Foucault calls ‘technologies of the self’: a language, set of knowledge, and field of expertise through which the sexual self learns to articulate itself in order to become intelligible. Consuming and using sexual products to achieve ‘better’ sex and construct a knowledgeable and ‘confident’ sexual identity form a key part of the neoliberal project of the sexual self. Sex shopping culture reproduces a ‘postfeminist sensibility’ (Gill, 2007), representing a ‘double entanglement’ (McRobbie, 2009) with feminism by inciting and requiring women to construct and perform their sexualities through a narrow depoliticised discourse of sexual ‘choice’, ‘empowerment’, and consumerism. The thesis draws upon data from 22 one-to-one semi-structured interviews and 7 accompanied shopping trips to sex shops. A central contention of the analysis is that women use a diverse range of discursive, embodied and everyday strategies in order to ‘make do’ with the kinds of femininity and female sexuality that sex shop culture represents (de Certeau, 1998). The thesis investigates three key spheres of social and everyday life at which sexual consumer culture is negotiated: spaces (the location, layout and experience of sex shops); bodies (the forms of bodily ‘becoming’ offered by wearing lingerie in sexual contexts); and objects (using sex toys and the enabling and disabling of possibilities for sexual pleasures and practices). Each section demonstrates the constraints, anxieties and potential pleasures of constructing sexual identities in and through neoliberal and postfeminist consumer culture, whilst at the same time exploring the potential for contradiction, negotiation and resistance evidenced in the multiple ways in which women take up the sexual identities and practices offered by sex shopping. Word count: 87,228 4 Contents 1. Consumer Sexualities: Introduction 7 Sex Shopping Scholarship 12 Structure of the Thesis 17 2. Sexual Consumption and Sexual Liberation in Feminism 22 Sexual commodities pre 1970 23 Sexuality in the 1960s 24 ‘The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm’ 26 ‘Our Bodies: Ourselves’ 27 ‘Liberating Masturbation’ 28 ‘What Every Woman Should Know about Vibrators’ 30 ‘Good Vibrations’ 31 ‘Refusing to Comply’ 32 ‘The Woman Identified Woman’ 35 Smash the Sex Shop 37 ‘The Sex Issue’ 39 The Barnard Conference 40 ‘Toys for Us’ 41 ‘A Subversive Business’ 43 Conclusion: Feminism to Postfeminism 45 3. Postfeminist Sexuality and Consumer Sex 47 Neoliberalism and the Self 48 Postfeminist Sensibility 50 Postfeminist sex advice 53 Intimate Entrepreneurship 55 Heterosexuality and Sexual Difference 57 Entangled with Feminism 58 The Rabbit: a Postfeminist Vibrator 60 Taste and sexual consumption 65 The Question of Agency 67 Negotiating Postfeminist Sexual Culture 69 4. Constructing (Sexual) Knowledge: Research Methodology 72 Doing Feminist Research 72 Aims and Sampling 73 Participants 75 Ethics 77 Interviewing ‘in place’ 81 Talking Sex 82 Accompanied Sex Shopping 84 Sex Shopper / Researcher 86 ‘Openness’ and Taking Part in the Research 88 5 ‘Expert’ Sex Shoppers and Subcultural Capital 93 5. Sexual Spaces: Going Sex Shopping 97 Spaces of Encounter 97 Ann Summers 99 Shopping for lingerie and sex toys in Ann Summers 107 Knowledge and Taste: Sex Boutiques 111 Men in raincoats: licenced sex shops 119 6. The Sexy Body: Wearing Lingerie 125 ‘Lingerie’ 126 Talking Bodies 127 The Pleasures of ‘Nice’ Lingerie 130 Body Work 135 (Dis)Comfort 137 Laughter 138 Gender Play 140 7. Sexual Objects: Using ‘Sex Toys’ 142 Human/Object Relations 143 ‘A Special Evening In’: Using Sex Toys Alone 145 ‘Bringing something in’: introducing sex toys in relationships 150 ‘It’s a lot more physical’: Using sex toys in relationships 155 ‘An Extension of your own Body’: Strap on Dildos 160 8. Conclusion 164 9. Bibliography 171 6 Table of Figures Figure 1: (p. 29) ‘Celebrate your Sexuality’, Spare Rib Issue 75, October 1978, (38) Figure 2: (p.34) Baydart advertisement, Spare Rib Issue 64, November 1977, (34) Figure 3: (p.47) Still from Sex and the City, (1998), Episode 1:9 ‘The Turtle and the Hare’, Home Box Office Figure 4: (p.127) Image from Ann Summers Autumn/Winter catalogue 2014 [available from http://www.annsummers.com/page/new-catalogue accessed November 2014] 7 Consumer Sexualities: Introduction According to their website, there are currently 352 Ann Summers stores in the UK (Ann Summers, 2014). Located on high streets and in shopping centres from Aberdeen to York, the erotic retailer, established in 1972, has grown to become the UK market leader. Amongst stalwarts of the British high street both old and new, Ann Summers is an established brand as ordinary and familiar to shoppers as British Home Stores, Primark, WH Smiths or Poundland. Yet it also carries with it a frisson of naughtiness, of sexiness and even taboo. As a number of the women interviewed for this thesis would tell you, a shopper may have to be feeling particularly confident to walk through the doors of Ann Summers. She might worry if onlookers will notice her going in, and what they might be thinking if they do. The location and design of the store does all it can to assuage these potential fears; the signage and décor employ a pink, feminine colour scheme, and the products visible upon entrance are primarily matching bra sets in colourful or floral designs. As the visitor moves further into the store, however, the lingerie becomes more explicitly ‘sexy’; the shopper might browse corsets, suspender belts, stockings, peephole bras and crotchless underwear in black, red or leopard print. Displays of boxed vibrators and accessories such as silky blindfolds and fluffy handcuffs may come into view. Novelties such as ‘penis pasta’ and ‘cock candy’ sit alongside pink L plates and feather boas, providing fodder for hen nights and secret Santa gifts. Racks of club wear and revealing costumes such as nurse, maid or police officer can also be browsed and tried on in the fitting rooms. Throughout the shop numerous mannequins and photographs of models can be seen; making evident the sexiness of the (young, white, slim) feminine body in lingerie. As they venture further into the shop, the shopper will likely notice the area reserved for more sexually explicit products. Depending on the store this will be located behind or between curved display partitions, or down a small flight of stairs, perhaps accompanied by a sign, as in the current Manchester store, reading ‘going down has never felt so good’.
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