If you follow the Chintz Twitter account, you may have seen the tweets I posted following the show’s the conclusion late last night. They were, largely, to do with the colour pink and how annoyed I was that sex toy manufacturers-slash-sellers seem to think that every women wants something that looks like a piece of rock candy to stick between her legs. However, for me, this gripe was really the tip of a much bigger iceberg.

A quick recap for those who didn’t see get the chance to see this documentary … Eight everyday women – the ‘O Team’ – are recruited by adult toy/lingerie giant Ann Summers to produce a range of sex toys for ‘real women’. A camera crew follows them around for a year as they share their thoughts and ideas, and documents the Summers team taking them from concept to completion. The final (pink/purple) products are unveiled, everyone claps, and Ann Summers make a sh*t load of money. The volunteers? Oh, they get the kudos of having designed something for Ann Summers. And maybe a few free toys.

Really? Are we honestly still in that pastel-coloured place in which ‘acceptable’ sex toys look like they were produced for Barbie and fashioned from bubblegum? Are we actually cheering the fact that a massive, multinational retailer, with an annual turnover of £117.3 million in 2007-2008, was happy to exploit the ideas of eight – albeit willing – volunteers for profit?

Er, yeah, apparently.

Companies are there to make money. I get that. However, I have a big, big issue with them making it off the backs of volunteers and trying to portray their actions are magnanimous and benevolent (‘Here, have an orgasm, love’). How much would the time of those women have cost Ann Summers if they’d used a market research agency? A damn sight more than two airfares to China to see a sex toy factory, I’ll bet.

Back to the toys themselves, the tooth grinding started the moment the slightly more alternative suggestions were pushed to the side in favour of more traditional approaches. The lady who suggested an erotic dressage range? Uh, uh. No ‘scary’ BDSM-esque products allowed. The great grandmother who came up with an idea for an electrical-based product to stimulate the breasts? No, no. Health and safety issues. (Hello? Tens machines? Violet wands? The former are used during childbirth for crying out loud.) As one participant said on camera (and I’m paraphrasing rather than quoting here): ‘It’s like they’ve [Ann Summers] already decided what they want and our ideas don’t matter.’

And that’s the crux of it. This program was supposed to be about what women want from their sex toys when, in reality, it was about taking some interesting (free) ideas, sucking the most profitable into the Ann Summers’ brand machine, giving the participants contained choices so that they felt like they had options, and saying: ‘Look!’ This is what women want! Pink things that vibrate!’

I can tell you right now that not all women want those things. Heck, at least two women in that group didn’t want those things. But were they listened to? No. Probably because their ideas weren’t going to increase Ann Summers’ already significant bottom line to the required extent.

On top of the fact that these women weren’t being paid for their time, there was another moment of blatant disrespect in this thing that increased my digust to epically high levels. It came when the Ann Summers team didn’t even have the good grace to show up on time to their own product review meeting and left the eight participants sitting around until they had themselves sorted. So long, in fact, that one of them had to leave before she was able to see what she’d helped them to create. Rude. Plain rude. And disrespectful. And a very good indicator of how the eight participants were treated by Ann Summers in general.

Sex toys have come a long way in the past decade. They are a big part of my sex life and the sex lives of many men and women that I know. I had hoped that Sex Toy Stories might show that we were continuing to move forwards, that manufacturers are really listening and acting responsibly towards consumers. Being open-minded about their wants and needs. But, disappointingly, it showed that we’re going to be stuck in this vibrating pink bubble for the foreseeable future.

My kingdom for a camouflage-coloured dildo, a set of electrical nipple clamps, a melting butt plug, and a burnt umber cane. (All credit to @DomSigns for that last idea.)

* Total kudos to those eight women who were involved in Sex Toy Stories – I applaud them for taking part and being so candid. And Ann Summers? Why are only three and not the entire eight credited on your website?!

The post Sex Toy Stories: Fifty Shades of Pink appeared first on Behind the Chintz Curtain.

Fifty Shades of a bawdy board game
Source: Evening Standard

I actually have no words. A Fifty Shades of Grey boardgame with ‘Inner Goddess Tokens’ a ‘Red Room Expansion Pack’ and a non-disclosure agreement between the players and Christian Grey (otherwise know as the ‘Receiving Party’).

As someone who spent nearly a decade protecting the integrity of a rather high-profile brand that shall remain nameless, this kind of cash-in merchandising actually makes me feel slightly ill. Worse, if Susannah Butter’s article is anything to go by, those who fork over their hard-earned cash for this thing aren’t even going to be rewarded with anything particularly titillating or racy. Sample question:

“Which girlfriend would buy the best present for the man who had everything?”

No joke, I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Really E.L. James? Really? Stick with Monopoly, people. I guarantee fighting over who gets to be the boot will be more fun.

British sex toy shop makes post-watershed Christmas ads
Source: B&T

Now this is interesting. Adverts for sex toys on British television are almost unheard of. I recall Lovehoney doing one a while back but I don’t recall it being quite as titillating as this Christmas offering from High Street giant Ann Summers. Content-wise, it’s hardly explicit but the censors have deemed that it can only be shown after 11.00pm (although there is an edited version that we’ll be allowed to see from the earlier time of nine o’clock – PM, not AM).

Does this signal that, as a society, we’re becoming more accepting of sex toy advertisements in mainstream media?

Your next sex toy could come out of a 3D printer (NSFW)
Source: io9

I’m married to an engineer. And when he reads this article, the first thing out of his mouth is going to be ‘what did I tell you?’.  We’ve both been aware of 3D printing for some time and have often debated when and how the sex toy industry would begin to embrace the technology. The possibilities are endless (custom shapes, custom sizes, custom colours, etc.) but as this article points out, the resolutions, materials and costs are quite a way from being perfect just yet. It’s only a matter of time, though, and I think we’re going to see a lot more bespoke toys being manufactured in this way in the years to come. This is a great piece to geek out and dream to!

The post Alert Me: No-Sign-of-Sadomasochism – The Boardgame!, Ann Summers on TV, and printing 3D sex toys appeared first on Behind the Chintz Curtain.