Sex Toys in TV – Still Not Mainstream, Yet
But we’re getting there. In a recent episode of a Showtime show called “The Big C”, two of the women went into a VERY posh-looking sex shop. The focus of this shop seemed to be more towards lingerie and some kink, and definitely geared towards upper class clientele. Not too far off from the sort of people who subscribe to Showtime, as a matter of fact. It’s a premium channel with soft porn late at night and “I swear they’re actually having sex” sex scenes during their prime time original TV shows (same with Weeds – in my little world, the rough Bartender played by Mark Paul Gosselar actually was fucking Nancy/Mary Louise Parker in reality because WOW it’s a hot scene).
I spied a number of Lelo toys as the camera followed them around this shop (I’m curious as to which shop this is in real life), but even though one of them was briefly picked up the vibrators were never given a name-dropping spotlight.
Until our main hero, Cathy (not played by Cynthia Nixon who’s in those above stills) decides that her “spicing up” gift to her husband is a Fleshlight. And they actually say the name Fleshlight, she talks it up like a saleswoman and makes it sound really awesome to her husband. She even dirty-talks him through a fantasy scene to get him comfy with using it in front of her, but that ends up actually making her aroused enough for sex despite her cancer treatment exhaustion. I was so happy to see that the Fleshlight is being talked about in a healthy way – not as a gross, poor substitute for lonely drab men who will never find a woman.
I’m wondering if Lelo and Fleshlight paid to be spotlighted, or just Fleshlight since they were the only ones mentioned by name. I’d also like to know about the shop, but I can’t find anything online where the shop name is being given out.
We’re getting there, slowly, sex toys are being shown as something “normal”. George Clooney’s character in “Burn After Reading” toted around a Liberator shape to every sexual hook-up (he also built a fuck-machine-cum-exercise-bike in that movie, too, didn’t he?) but that movie was one of those “weird”ish movies anyways.
Where else have you seen sex toys being portrayed in a positive light in either TV or movies?
Call me cynical, but if a product is mentioned by name on a TV show, you can almost guarantee that it was a paid product placement. Networks and studios don’t give away advertising for free.
For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the movie – but Im pretty sure it was a straight to tv movie. It centered around one young uni aged woman who had never had an orgasm but was desperately searching for one (ok so I make it sound like porn even though it was nothing close to that) It featured the original ohmibod which I thought was kinda cool. I just wish I could remember the title as it was a bit of a cute coming of age movie.
Although not shown, but certainly mentioned and discussed, on the recent initial episode of NECESSARY ROUGHNESS, the lead actress Callie Thorne and her sidekick are bemoaning re-entering the dating pool. They discuss how poorly the evening’s dates went, and decided that they’ll go home and have an electronic evening—I’m not great at remembering dialogue, but it seemed obvious that they were talking about vibrators.
~ Yeah you’re right, I remember the vague mention. Very vague. But again….they’re single women. So it’s “ok”. What I loved so much about The Big C’s portrayal was that it was ok to go to the sex shop, and buy toys for use WITH your partner or without even though you have a partner, recognizing that sometimes…masturbation is all you’re capable of and THATS OK.