As part of my day job, in which I manage and write for a women's lifestyle, entertainment and news blog that I created in 2008, I frequently review sex toys. This has been an awesome perk to what I do for a living and I have benefited greatly from it. Throughout the past couple of years I have had the opportunity to experience more vibrators, dildos, massagers, lubricants and other types of toys than will fit into a 35-gallon plastic container that I keep in my office and then write about those experiences in proud, shameless, sex-positive and sometimes intricately-detailed ways. I'm a bit of an oversharer by nature, so these experiences have lent very well to the writing I do. But most of all, I have learned a lot. Before I started writing about this subject matter, I had no idea that there were so many concerns for one to consider before choosing that one toy or that one type of lube, and how each product could affect people so differently.
In the very beginning, before I knew of all the different toys out there, I was actually pretty indifferent to them. For one, I thought vibrators were merely phallic-shaped plastic tubes that you unscrewed at the bottom to insert two AA batteries, and somehow the extremely weak vibrations coupled with the incredibly hard and uncomfortable plastic was what was supposed to make your mind melt into lusty oblivion. That is precisely what made up my very first vibrator experience and as a result, I was left unimpressed and unknowingly ignorant of the entire sex toy industry. My first vibrator was purple, a color that is so completely exhausted in the sex toy industry that I could easily craft an entire post containing very little else but my annoyance with the pink and purple color scheme of most toys. I still have the hard and uncomfortable purple vibrator because even though I absolutely hate it in-use, it was my first vibrator and I'm sentimental like that. It's buried at the very bottom of my aforementioned 35-gallon plastic container where all of my sex toys live, completely out of sight and laying buried beneath the multitude of toys that came after it, all of which are infinitely better in comparison.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity of reviewing sex toys on a fairly regular basis over the past nearly-four years. I believe that it has made me much more aware when it comes to knowing what materials are safest to acquaint my body with and what chemicals I now know to stay away from. It has also made me the impassioned sex-positive person that I am today; seeing first-hand the power that comes from exploring your own sexuality without guilt, shame or apology.
While I am fully aware that I possess toys in excess, I do feel very strongly about women in particular owning at least one, go-to vibrator that works for them every time. That is precisely why I was pretty excited to see the trailer for the upcoming film Hysteria, a film that aims to tell the story of the invention of the vibrator during the Victorian Era.
It's important to note that Hysteria is being told through the lens of a romantic comedy; important because women's medicine in the Victorian Era was pretty damn heinous. At that time, sexism fueled women's medicine and not surprisingly, a lot of women's true health issues went ignored and instead, they fell into the catch-all diagnosis of hysteria; ie: "She's not sick, she's just hysterical/crazy." One way doctors treated hysteria was by "pelvic massage" which obviously resulted in an orgasm that "cured" women, but other ways in which hysteria was treated are ghastly; including seclusion, sensory deprivation, lobotomies and shock therapy.
I am actually completely in favor of this film being presented as a romantic comedy. Romantic comedies are light, obviously comedic (or they're meant to be, anyway), but most of all, they are accessible and I think that when you're telling a story about the invention of the vibrator, accessibility is important. This movie could have the ability to open up new lines of sexuality-driven communication among those who may have otherwise felt reserved and uncomfortable talking about masturbation and sex toys. That, in a nutshell, is why I am more than just a little excited about this movie. Well, that and it's also starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I absolutely loved in Secretary, the 2002 movie that depicted the cultivation of a sadomasochistic romance between her and James Spader. Maggie Gyllenhaal sure as hell doesn't back down from movies where sexuality is on full display, does she?
Check out the trailer for Hysteria below:
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