The problem with sex shops ‘for women’

The launch of a sex toy collection to tie-in with the Comedy Central series Broad City calls to mind another connection between sex toys and women on television. In a 1998 episode of Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw and her friends visited a sex shop to buy “Rabbit” vibrators. Several of the women that I interviewed for my research on women and sex shopping mentioned that episode as a watershed moment in the normalisation of sex shopping for women.
Sex shops aimed at women customers are now an established part of consumer culture, from the high street to online shopping and designer boutiques. Jacqueline Gold, CEO of Ann Summers, has said that that popping into one of her stores is now “just part of a regular shopping trip” and research would seem to back that up.
But the idea of sex shops for women as “normal” can come at …