What Women Want .com - Sex-Toy Parties

SEX-TOY PARTIES BACK IN LIVING ROOMS
By Libby Copeland
The Washington Post

"I don't like to go to Tupperware parties but this had my name written all over it!"
- Mary Alice Hill of Maryland

WASHINGTON - If you hosted a sex-toy party in your home, you probably wouldn't invite your mother.
But not only did Dawn Montgomery invite her mom, whom she lives with and who cleaned their house in Accokeek, MD, for the party, but she also asked three aunts, a cousin and a slew of friends and co-workers.

Later, while guests milled about, Dawn, 31, filed through the rack of lingerie and pulled out a blue teddy and a purple one. "Okay, Mom, which one do you like for me?"

"Well, the blue is nice," said Jacqueline Medley, 50, relaxing on the couch as her daughter held one nightie, then the other, in front of her. "Well, maybe that would be more for me."

Dawn, a customer service rep at the Department of Motor Vehicles, is today's sexually liberated woman. Skip the '90's; this is the Aught Age. She's not some free lovin' hippie throwback. Her brand of sexual awareness is post-post feminist, the marketing-age sexuality of "romance enhancements" and "relationship aids", of lotions and potions, of scented candles and vibrators and flimsy filigreed garments like the one she finally winds up buying in blue.

In other words, she is the perfect hostess for a sex toy party - the phenomenon born in the early '70's that has swelled surprisingly in popularity and profits.

Inspired by the Tupperware party and the Avon lady, sex-toy party companies hit pay dirt in the late '80's and early '90's, and now if you throw a dart at any of the Lower 48, chances are that if you don't find one of these companies' headquarters you'll at least come upon a few distributors.

"We're in the middle of the Bible Belt!" says Surprise Parties co-owner Sue Rhea, whose operations, based in Mount Juliet, Tenn., has grown from one distributor (herself) in 1989 to more than 400 today in 25 states and Canada. "If we can do this here, we can do it anywhere."

Here's the deal on the sex-toy party: A smartly dressed woman arrives at your house with duffel bags and Rubbermaid containers filled with all manner of hardware, then proceeds to give a three- to- four hour tour of the products to you and 20 of your closet female friends. There is occasional shrieking and continual laughter. No one takes their clothes off. The demonstration itself resembles a cross between a bachelorette party and an archaeological dig, which is to say you spend half the time wondering what is that?

It's a question you direct to your guide - in this case, Mary Alice Hill of Bowie, Md., whose husband, a fire equipment purchaser, helps her set up for every party and whose Ford Bronco boasts "Tasteful Treasures by Mary Alice" with an 800 number. Mary Alice raked in $12,000 last year from eight hours a week at sex toy parties.

"I don't like to go to Tupperware parties," says Hill, 46, who has been in this line of work for less than two years. "But this - I think this had my name written all over it."

Hang out with these women for an afternoon and you'll come away with a conclusion you might have reached once in your intellect but not in your gut: Sex is no big deal. All the nervous tittering and closemouthedness is a lot of wasted energy.

If the '80's were a time of economic prosperity layered with social conservatism, the '90's - Internet porn sites, unwanted sex email and all - were a time of sexual deluge, with the release of the Starr Report onto office screens everywhere as its high water mark.

"After all", says cultural sexologist Carol Queen in San Francisco, "in the '80's everyone was worrying about herpes and AIDS, and discussions of sex took on a troubled tone - they weren't about sexual experimentation anymore, but sexual defense. By the '90's there had been so much "hysteria, "Queen says that "the same cultural conditions that made it a little less safe to explore sex" a decade before "were also the genesis for the atmosphere that made it more easy."

The event, when it finally happens, is a downright banquet. There's white zinfandel, champagne, pina colada, fruit platters and fried chicken. There's chocolate-covered cake that would be X-rated if anyone could figure out precisely what body part it's supposed to look like.

Hill enters, wearing a red suit, red pumps, and sparkle on her eyelids. She passes around chocolate body topping and candy condoms that are "just like a Fruit Rollups." There's more, of course, but you'll have to use your imagination.

"I have used almost everything on the table," notes Mary Alice Hill as an aside, gesturing at the spread of toys and novelty items. She has to, she adds. How can she vouch for them otherwise? How can she promise that they're safe?

Hill, like representatives from companies based in CA, FL, LA, NV and other places, likes to stress the "educational" aspect of her shows. Representatives also make the point that women aren't eager to go into adult bookstores. The all-female parties seem safer.

No trade organizations seem to exist to offer hard statistics on the trajectory of sex-toy parties. But their growth, both in terms of the number of companies around and in terms of the expansions of these companies, seems undeniable.

As for Hill's pocketbook, at this particular party she pulls in $525 from 14 women in four hours. Of that she get to keep $210, which averages over $52 an hour. " A good night," she says.

These women buy lotions and glitter and something called the "Pirate's Cove." Many are candid about their purchases, talking about them or opening their plain stapled paper bags to let a curious reporter peek inside. There's an easy frankness about the plug-in pleasure, pleasure at different speeds, pleasure in a book and on a string - all of which, after a while, begins to seem downright conventional.