Caroline Sullivan
BODY LANGUAGE
‘Just what did you buy at the sex shop, Liz?” asked a headline in last week’s The Mirror. The paper managed to concoct a full-page story out of a picture of Elizabeth Hurley walking out of a Hollywood adult emporium called Hustler, with a carrier bag full of … well, no one knew quite what, but something saucy, anyway. The paper claimed her attention was especially caught by a jar of pink liquid latex designed to be painted on to the skin, and a book called The Magic of Fetishism. An “onlooker” supposedly commented: “We were amazed, because you don’t often get any women in places like this, let alone a famous British movie star.”
Rubbish, actually. In fact, women now comprise a significant proportion of sex shop customers, and increasingly manage them and work behind the counter, too. Half of Hustler’s 25 staff are female, and 75% of the shop’s trade is women and couples. “We get tons of rsums and applications from women,” says manager Brett Drysdale. “Girls are very comfortable in our shop. We have glass frontage, hardwood floors and we’re well lit.”
It all sounds more like a department store (the term he prefers to “sex shop”), which isn’t a coincidence. Erotic emporia are currently waking up to two facts: one, their average customer is as likely to be a woman as the classic dirty old man, and two, women like to shop in attractive surroundings. Consequently, shops that continue to peddle blow-up dolls in poorly lit premises will miss out on the Girl Power boom. Those that make themselves female-friendly – perhaps following the lead of the 27-strong Ann Summers chain, which incorporates coffee shops and pram ramps in its newest stores – will find their efforts are repaid.
Summers hopes to have 100 high-street sex shops by 2003. In June, Summers will be relaunching its flagship Soho outlets. “Our research has shown that they’re looking dated,” says publicity director Rebecca Cox.
“We want to give them a more luxurious feel with a clubby spin. We can foresee targeting trendy people who go to clubs and bars.” The company is toying with several themes, including “ice queen”, “classical” and the aspirationally titled “decadence”. One corner of Cox’s office is occupied by architects’ sketches of a space that looks more like a Notting Hill boutique than a sex shop. You can envisage groovesters in the right jeans in a place like that, perhaps casually popping the best-selling Heaven vibrator (“Soft jelly plastic in purple with a clitoral-stimulator attachment with rotating pearls in the shaft,” explains the young head buyer, Tracey Bell) into their baskets as they chat.
The concept of women using an adult shop as a club-style hangout may exist only in the Summers people’s imagination as yet, but in the London outlet on a Saturday afternoon, the female clientele are predominantly coolish twentysomethings. None of them seems self-conscious about being there – if anything, it’s the male customers, congregating in the video section, who look uncomfortable. Customers wander in pairs, examining PVC bras and leather goods (though they conspicuously avoid hardcore stuff like the indescribable Jenny’s Vibrating Vag) with the glazed look women get when they’re shopping seriously.
Everyone is so matter-of-fact that it’s hard to accept The Mirror’s claim that Hurley was “unable to hide her giggles” at Hustler.
Years of the women’s media banging on about us taking control of our sexual pleasure, it seems, is actually having an effect, as witnessed by the sight of a pair browsing in Ann Summers. “I want to teach her not to be afraid of her body,” says Susan, mother of 18-year-old Suzi, who’s busy buying a studded leather wristlet of the sort now found in every high street. “I was just explaining to her about the strap- ons. She asked me if it was just lesbians that used them and I said, ‘No, men do, too.'” Rather than dying a million deaths, Suzi beams.
The ongoing feminisation of Ann Summers has been encouraged by the success of fetishy lingerie shop Agent Provocateur, and Sh, an east London erotic boutique run by and for women. “Sometimes women are very embarrassed,” admits Sh owner Kathryn Hoyle. “It’s not all ‘Give me a vibrator and make it fast’. But people’s attitudes toward sexuality became much more fluid in the late Nineties. Things like fetish fashion and E culture came into the mainstream, and everyone was loved up, so people are less defining of sexuality now.”
Her shop’s organic feel – wooden floors, sheer white blinds – and policy of admitting only “accompanied men” encourages customers to linger. There’s even seating and a pile of erotic magazines to read, though it seems these aren’t as graphic as some clients would prefer. “There’s a demand for hardcore porn, and explicit close-up penetrative shots,” Hoyle says.
Additional reporting by Pippa Crerar