Dear Dr. Berman – I call Bullshit

Dr. Laura Berman’s line of sex toys has been around for awhile now. In fact when I first was purchasing sex toys back in ’05 they existed. Since then the packaging has changed; I’ve been able to see on the CalExotics website how some of the products have been slightly updated to look less cheap. But when you really get down to it my point is: If Dr. Berman were truly fucking serious about her sex toys then why the HELL did she partner with CalExotics?

Some of her products are eerily similar to existing CalEx products – they’ve just been made purple and rebranded. If she took a lie detector test (and passed) and swore up and down that she actually created the design of even half the toys in her line I would faint from shock. She does a great job of coming off as authentic and of course the MIGHTY OPRAH supports her.

I want to quote this, but since Dr. Laura’s site didn’t link to the original article, I can only link to quote on her site.

Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz about vibrators! The New York Times recently interviewed Dr. Laura Berman about her popular line of intimate accessories and the growing trend of women taking sex into their own hands. “Women are getting less and less caught up on an unrealistic and puritanical vision of what a good girl is,” Dr. Berman told the Times. “When they can embrace their self-stimulation, they can take ownership of their sexuality.” She pointed out that Sex and the City helped pave the way for sexual comfort in women and even the film industry is on board. Her products were in a recent episode of Private Practice on ABC, and in 2009, her vibrating panties appeared in The Ugly Truth, a movie starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. “That scene would not have been in a major Hollywood movie 10 years ago,” she said.

From Vibrators Carry the Conversation, New York Times, April 20

I do watch Private Practice and I don’t remember her products so I guess it didn’t stand out. “That scene” in the movie The Ugly Truth I definitely do remember and I also remember thinking that a woman would have to be highly sensitive and easy to orgasm if a pair of cheap vibrating panties sent her into epileptic convulsions. I’ve seen those panties in a sex toy store, I’ve read reviews. They’re most certainly not plus-size, in fact they come in only one size. Which is typical for CalExotics. They’re not exactly discreet, the remote is wonky at best and good luck being one of the few people for who the vibrating bit will be in the right spot (and stay there).

What else is typical of most CalExotics toys? They’re not “one size fits all” in situations where something claims to be; they’re cheaply made and even the higher end lines cut corners (like “couture silicone” dildos filled with foam, covered with a silicone skin) and they’re never going to last you very long at all. That’s fine for the 4,000 items they sell that are under $25, but it gives sex toys a bad name. When I first was buying toys and thought that Dr. Berman’s line was something special and better, I was so sorely disappointed by the reality – cheap, plastic, and somewhere out there is probably a similar version of it mad eby a different company and it’s much, much better.

If I were a famous sex sex educator I would *never* partner up with a company like CalExotics to bring my ideas to the public. Smart people who’ve bought toys with famous names on them like Sue Johanson and Dr. Joel Kaplan will probably lose respect from sex-toy-buying people after trying out their cheap unoriginal CalExotics toys. I’ve noticed that most of the old Sue Johanson line is discontinued on the CalEx site but can still be found elsewhere, mostly alongside crappy reviews. I recall once when I was considering a fancy and expensive clitoral/nipple pump system I looked at one that had the Dr. Joel Kaplan name on it. I was briefly suckered in until a reviewer friend pointed out that A: It was manufactured by CalEx and B: It was a copy of an existing item in their line up, just with different colors. Wow….talk about deflated! The credibility and reputation of all of these educators has plummeted in my eyes after seeing what crap they’re willing to pass off to unsuspecting sex toy noobs.

Lest you think I’m just ranting here against the shitastic CalExotics, I will state that I have (sadly) owned 4 of the Berman Center line of sex toys. And I owned them and hated them well before I was a sex toy reviewer with access to high end toys. /disclaimer.

Since this rant is mostly targeted at my disgust that a well-known sex educator would partner up with such a shitty company, I want to direct you to some more reading to know more (if my past reviews haven’t said it) about why I will never endorse/support/recommend 99% of CalEx toys. True Pleasures talks about her time as a CalExotics “Sexpert” and it really says a lot about the company. Please give it a read if you haven’t already.

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Sep 1, 2011

Posted by Lilly | 1 Comment

From the Sex Toy Noob Files: Vibrating Cock Rings….wtf

Recently I asked you all what you wished you would have known before you bought your first sex toys. One of the biggest things I’d touched on was that back when we first started buying toys there were no bloggers reviewing toys. I could see that a customer named Maria loved it and had great things to say about it, but I couldn’t ask Maria a follow-up question. I couldn’t ask ANYbody a question on a particular toy. I couldn’t really find out if one person’s “Wow that’s strong!!” was my “Meh…it’s so-so”.

Now I want to express here that I mean no disrespect to MyPleasure.com and especially Garnet, who works with us irritating bloggers ;) – it’s just that in my sex toy noob days we probably dropped around oh….$300-$350 over a couple months buying sex toys and accessories at MP that ultimately left us disappointed or frustrated or both. We were too afraid to drop $75+ on a better toy and I was still figuring out what type of vibrations I liked, along with being able to tell if something really was “powerful”. It’s nothing against the site; it’s simply what they happened to carry back in oh….2005? 6? And quite frankly, their selection was less iffy than Adam & Eve’s selection at that time but also much much smaller; yet both were already leaps and bounds better than they’d been even just 3 years prior. I think it’s only been in the last 4-6 years that sex toys have really taken off into the “premium” realm – yes? no?

Anyways. So there we were, looking to make another batch purchase from MP in the quest for more exciting orgasms and we’re trying to find things for me and for us. Enter: The vibrating cock ring. In theory it’s good. In actual practice it requires two things: for the woman to not have full outer labia and to have a prominent clit; and for the couple to be engaging in sexual positions that maximize body contact – i.e. something more tantric, maybe, or woman on top with very little thrusting. The key there is: very little thrusting. Because for every outstroke……AWAY goes the vibrator from her clit!!!

We quickly learned two things: A small watch-battery powered bullet vibrator was not going to vibrate his cock enough for me to confuse him with an actual vibrator. And two, half-second collisions with my outer labia wherein 1 out of every 6 thrusts might have landed the bullet in the vicinity of my clit did not have a prayer, not even halfway there, of giving me a clitoral orgasm during penetrative sex with him.

I can’t find the exact cock ring that we bought back then, but I think that this one is pretty close, ours was clear. I think it was TPR because I don’t remember a jelly stench, but clear stretchy TPR acts like jelly – kind of tacky, it sticks to itself, and it picks up dust/lint/fur. Once I went to pull it out of our toybag, the bullet wasn’t inside the little bullet sleeve, and it was this…..unrecognizable mass of clear sticky material in a ball. We finally figured out that if we stuck it under the faucet the water temporarily de-stickied it so that we could untangle it and maybe use it again. I must have tried the thing at least 3 times before it took up permanent residence in a pocket of the toy bag. Long ago I reviewed Lelo’s answer to a more premium vibrating cock ring, the Bo. Their updated version, Lelo Tor remedied one or two of my issues with the Bo, but in the end it’s still the same concept as the $16.99 TPR jobs – it’s not going to provide the clitoral vibrations that I personally need in either strength, type or time length of contact (can you orgasm with a black fly? that’s what it’s like) so it’s something that is more for “him” than “us”.

Vibrating cock rings. *shrugs* I just do not get the appeal. At all.

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