Filtering by Tag: SEX TOYS
The Rise of Creature Cocks
Images courtesy of Creature Cocks
In the latest edition of my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl, I interviewed Rebecca Weinberg, the president of XR Brands, which produces Creature Cocks, a line of monstrous sex toys. From tentacle dildos to alien eggs, these adult products are really out there. Why are they so popular? It has to do with romantasy literature.
“If you read to imagine relations with a creature, why not have an actual creature to take your experience to the next level? One can never get bored, as the imagination is limitless.”
Read the rest here and subscribe to get my newsletter in your inbox.
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Etsy Banned Sex Toys, But It Can’t Ban Sex
This story was originally published on Forbes.com in August 2024.
Etsy, the e-commerce platform, prohibited the sale of sex toys as of July 29, 2024. In a June 27, 2024, public letter entitled “Strengthening Our Approach to Mature Content on Etsy,” Etsy Vice President of Trust and Safety Alice Wu announced the platform had updated its Adult Nudity and Sexual Content policy. The updates included limiting the sale of adult toys sold on the site, prohibiting realistic depictions of nudity, and imposing stricter criteria for listings featuring mature content. According to Etsy’s updated policy on adult content, pornography (including Playboy magazine) is prohibited, human models cannot expose their private parts (which includes their “gluteal clefts”), and the sale of sexual services and custom “content that sexualizes a specific body part” (“‘e.g. foot pics’”) are not allowed. Perhaps most impactfully, Etsy prohibited the sale of adult toys except for “non-insertable and non-penetrable adult toys and sexual accessories.”
For sellers who specialized in selling sex toys, the potential consequences were catastrophic. On X (formerly Twitter), Simply Elegant Glass, which sells, among other products, glass adult toys, lamented the decision in an open letter to Etsy. “It's hard to run a business oriented around adult products,” the thread noted. The “blanket ban” was “the lazy solution.” Now, they added, “Everything we've built on your platform will be completely nullified in 30 short days.” Free Speech Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile, wondered: “Do adults get to exist on the web or nah?” In Wu’s public letter, she asserted: “Our policies are designed to protect our global community, and maintain our position as the destination for truly special, creative goods.” But for Etsy sellers of adult toys and mature product who had long seen Etsy as a sex positive marketplace, the revised rules felt like a personal betrayal.
So, what does the new supposedly de-eroticized Etsy product landscape look like? With some sellers pivoting in how their more mature wares are sold, the platform’s products aren’t exactly wholly G-rated. A search for “sex toys” produced a plethora of listings for miniature “dong” adult toys for use in dollhouses ($4), a 7-inch carved obsidian “penis model” ($64.08), a black silicone head hood with a silicone vagina where the mouth would be ($337.69), a rainbow-colored Nicolas Cage “penis figurine” ($8), and a “Ceramic Dildo Sensual Sculpture” ($91.73). While Etsy had expressly prohibited “Materials produced by pornographic publishers (e.g. Playboy, Brazzers),” including “vintage adult magazines and films,” there were numerous Playboy magazines for sale on the platform. As for a search for “porn,” that yielded no listings at all. “We couldn't find any results for porn,” the productless-product page read. “Try searching for something else instead?”, it suggested helpfully.
Ironically, as a New York Times article, “Etsy vs. Sex,” pointed out, celebrities are having better luck hawking their erotic wares to consumers. On Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop platform, one can buy a double-sided wand vibrator ($95), a “TEACH ME A LESSON” ruler ($20), and a bottle of something called a “sex serum” ($24). According to a July 31, 2024, Etsy Inc. investor relations report, the company’s second-quarter consolidated net income was $53 million, which was down $8.9 million from last year. So far, it remains to be seen how the removal of the platform’s once copious adult and mature product listings will effect the bottom line.
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Hollywood Walk of Dildos
I took this photo in an adult store on Hollywood Boulevard. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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Meet The Artist Turning Blowup Dolls Into Fashion Designs
Image credit: Nicole Daddona
This story was originally published on Forbes.com in July 2020. It has been lightly updated.
Nicole Daddona, who goes by Friday, is 32, lives in Los Angeles, and is, as she puts it, “an artist, comedian, fashion designer, filmmaker, and toy designer” who’s created a popular line of blowup doll fashions. If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a handbag with the face of a vintage blowup doll on it or a coat covered in blowup doll faces, Friday has you covered. Here, Friday, who’s also the editor of FRIDAY Magazine, explains how she got into blowup doll fashion and why her designs are so coveted.
Susannah Breslin: How did you come up with the idea of turning blowup dolls into wearable products you could sell?
Friday: Last year I was living in a retirement community with my dad in Connecticut for a few months. I found a vintage blowup doll at the thrift store and immediately purchased it. I've always been drawn to blowup dolls. I just think they're such a fun part of pop culture. I've always made things out of other things. I used to go to the dump with my dad a lot as a kid and turn little trinkets I'd find into accessories I could wear. When I was in high school, I made a chair out of recycled plastic bags. I like upcycling and turning things into other things a lot. After having Judy—which is the official name of this style of blowup doll—around the house for a few days, I knew that I wanted to keep her with me always and that the best way to do that was to turn her into something wearable. I cut off her face—which sounds terrible, but was oddly cathartic—and assembled a very poorly made prototype of what is now the Blow Me Judy Bag.
Breslin: Where do you source the blowup dolls from?
Friday: At first I was getting them from eBay and thrift stores when I could find them, but after posting the bag as a pre-order for sale and getting a larger and more positive response than I anticipated, I knew eBay's blowup doll supply was going to run dry quickly. I found a manufacturer who makes blowup dolls, and now I source the blowup dolls from them directly.
Breslin: How do you manufacture the blowup doll products?
Friday: At first I was making them myself, but each bag was taking hours to make, and I was getting injured a lot by my sewing machine, so I knew I needed to find some manufacturing help. After a lot of research I was able to find an amazing manufacturer to help with production.
Breslin: Are the items made entirely from blowup doll materials, or do you add other materials?
Friday: The original prototype was, but after wearing it out a few times I realized that the vinyl material of the blowup doll's body wasn't going to be sturdy enough for longtime wear. I like a bag that's sturdy and can fit a lot or a little while also being great for casual or classy events. The Blow Me Judy Bag is all of that and more. When it came time to manufacture the bag on a larger scale, I did a lot of research. It was important to me that the bag, like everything I sell, was made of all vegan materials. I found a great vegan leather material that was the same color as the original blowup doll's hair, and that's what I use for the bag, which is essentially supposed to be the rest of the doll's head.
Breslin: The Blow Me Bag is $89 $150. How did you settle on that price point?
Friday: $69 seemed too obvious. I wanted to pick a price point that would cover my expenses, labor, and time. I run Magic Society completely on my own. I do all the marketing, customer service, shipping, web design, photography, product design—you name it—myself. The price point is on the lower end in the world of designer handbags, which was important to me because the Blow Me Judy Bag is definitely a designer piece, but I wanted the price to be something I'd be willing to pay for a designer bag. I also see it as a piece of collectible art and myself as an artist, so hopefully the value will go up over time. My dream is that one day it will be in a museum between Pedro Friedeberg's hand chair and Warhol's paper dress.
Breslin: Is the Blow Me Judy Bag your bestseller? How many have you sold?
Friday: It sells really well. So far I've released two pre-orders of 100 pieces each. I'm just about to sell out the second pre-order.
Breslin: Why did you choose this model of blowup doll?
Friday: Judy's the one! Out of all the blowup dolls out in the world, she's the most iconic. She has a classic design that's been around for decades, so she has a warm nostalgic feeling about her. I like that she plays it classy with her closed mouth, but we all know what she's really got on her mind.
Breslin: Is working with blowup doll materials easy or challenging?
Friday: It's 1,000% challenging! The mask part of the doll is flexible plastic, which is very thick and difficult to sew, but makes for a sturdy bag. The vinyl the body is made of is difficult to wrangle in the Los Angeles heat, but it's all worth it when I catch Judy's hypnotizing gaze.
Breslin: Your blowup line is amusing, but it's also sort of disturbing. In the product description, you even refer to the Blow Me Judy Bag as a potential "relationship ender." Do you think your blowup products are beautiful? Terrifying? Art?
Friday: I definitely think of it as all of the above. The blowup line is pop art personified. It's high fashion and lowbrow all at the same time. Magic Society's slogan is "Lowbrow High Fashion.” I don't think anything sums that up better than the Blow Me Judy Bag. The good thing is that the blowup line is a great conversation starter. It also makes uptight people uncomfortable, which is always fun. Gotta love scaring Karens.
To quote Delia Deetz, "This is my art and it is dangerous," kind of sums up most of the work I do. From the films I make with my directing partner Adam Shenkman to the clothing I design, I like to make things that dwell in the subconscious, touch on surrealism, and most of all amuse me. I know in a world as big as the one we live in that there are like-minded people out there who will get it and get something positive out of my creations.
Breslin: Have you gotten any interest in carrying the Blow Me Judy Bag yet from, say, Nordstrom?
Friday: Not yet, but hit me up, Nordstrom! I'm ready to take this line all the way to Fashion Week and confuse the masses. London. New York. Paris. Milan. Retailers, drop me a line! Magic Society will cast a spell over you!
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Sex Sales
Today on Forbes.com, I wrote about Etsy banning adult toy sales, among a host of other new constraints imposed on people who hawk mature wares on the e-commerce platform. You can read it right here.
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Meet Bill
Image credit: Hot Real Dolls
Something I came across on YouTube: “170cm M7 Bill realistic male sex doll silicone.” [NB: The video is NSFW.]
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Hey Doll
Mannequin with bow tie | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This fictional short story was written by me, published by Nerve in 2002, and republished in You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You? in 2003.
She wondered if it was a good idea to date someone of whom there was a doll version. What if one of her girlfriends mailed the doll of him to her as a gag gift for her birthday? Maybe at some later point she would get mad and rip his head off and yank his clothes away and humiliate him in some obscene act of desperation. Then what?
She watched him on television. She watched him so much the show's theme song turned her on. When he came onscreen, she would smile at him and think, Oh, he is really funny, or, Wow, that is such a burden. She thought if she had the doll of him, he could sit on the couch right next to her, and by the end of the show his little plastic hand would be climbing up her shirt, headed straight for her boobs.
She told her girlfriend, who went to a bar he frequented, to invite her along one night. As it turned out, he must have liked her because he walked right up to her, and he said, Hey, do you want to go out with me sometime? She couldn't see his small eyes back behind his thick glasses, but she told him, Sure. Other men had told her, You are terribly intriguing, or, You are terrifically fascinating, but then couldn't think of anything else to say. This time, she thought, it would be different. With this one, the script had already been written.
For their first date, she went over to his house. He went off to the kitchen to get them a couple of beers, and she went to wait in the living room. There, she found four female sex dolls, sitting around on his furniture. She wasn't sure what to do, so she sat down next to one of them. She pulled at its rubber tongue, and it popped out in her hand. Luckily, she got the tongue back in before he came back in the room. Then, they drank the beer, and watched TV, and made out while the dolls sat around on the furniture, watching them.
Their relationship, such as it was, went on like that for a while. That was pretty much all they ever did. Once, they went bowling. After about a month like this, he broke down and told her what he really enjoyed was being beaten during sex. In his home-office, he showed her several oversized books filled with page after page of drawings of tall, angry women standing on top of men, beating them.
All of a sudden, before she knew it, he was naked down on the floor, and the bottom of her boot was across the back of his neck, and his tongue was on the top of her other boot, licking it, and she was shouting at him, You're licking my boot because that's the only thing that you're good enough to do! With one hand, she twisted his balls, hard. With the other hand, she smacked violently at his penis.
As she did it, it didn't turn her on, exactly. But the thought of someday standing next to his large swimming pool, holding the hand of his fat and round baby as it doddered around like a small and tiny version of him in its own pair of miniature glasses, while she staggered around half-drunk in high heels and a string-bikini with her lipstick smeared all over her frozen-on smile face, did turn her on. To her, that was a fantastic idea and everything she had ever wanted and a dream come true, all rolled into one.
Their relationship, such as it was, would involve him talking into his cellphone while they drove around, and him chatting with his agent as they dined out, and him laughing loudly with his friends across the back of the limousine they were riding in as, the whole entire time, she sat there right beside him, at his side. Living her life as if there was a camera broadcasting everything she did out to the world's peoples sitting bored in their homes metaphorically masturbating to her life would, surely, make her happy. Everything that had already taken place in her life before him would become like the blinding snow of a silent TV screen. It would be amazing what she could do when she lived on the other side of the fourth wall with him.
After things had been going along in this manner for about a month, they took a trip together to Las Vegas. At the airport, she watched as the crowds of people stood around staring at them like the people in Close Encounters of the Third Kind watching the aliens shuffle down off the spaceship. When they walked through the casino surrounded by the fleet of bodyguards, she knew that the people playing the slot-machines were jerking off their levers just for them.
But, late that night, in the privacy of their hotel room, when she looked up into the round mirror over the king-size bed in the Greco-Roman penthouse suite, the only thing she knew for sure was that he had just said to her, I do not like having intercourse, per se, all that very much, and within 4.6 seconds, she had thought, I can live with that, because that, she knew, was what the script had called for. There was, after all, no going back to auditions once you had won the part. It was hard, though, to know what to do when you found yourself hanging off the edge of the very page that you thought you had written.
The next morning, when she had finished hitting him for the umpteenth time, he looked up at her, and he said, Isn't this great? Behind him, The Mask of Zorro was playing on the TV, and Antonio Banderas was running back and forth in his black mask, waving his whip around wildly, raising his arched eyebrow up and down at her, as if in an erotic challenge. It was getting harder for her to upright her brain from the place it fell over when his bad edits in the reel of their life together knocked her over like a car that had gone off the road.
Back in the city, she found herself at the very last moment softening her blows to his erect penis. She discovered increasingly she could barely muster up enough energy to tighten his ball-gag as tight as he liked. She could hardly bring herself to raise the crop high enough above him to bring out the best welts on his pale bottom waiting below.
By the time her birthday came, he had stopped calling. Instead, a UPS man showed up at her front door with a brown box containing the doll version of him as a gag gift from her girlfriend. That night, she could hear the live-in studio audience in her head murmuring its displeasure, shuffling out the stage door, as she climbed in bed alone yet again.
When the phone had quit ringing entirely, she called her girlfriend, who had taken her to the bar that first night, and asked her to come over. Together, they made a collage out of pictures of him that they had cut from The National Enquirer. When it was done, he looked like a big, fat, crying baby. The next morning, when she looked at it again, she burst into tears, and then cancelled her cable TV service. The doll version of him, for its part, was already sitting headless in the back of one of her bathroom cupboards, the dust bunnies gathered all around it.
In the revised version of the story of her life, that she finally ended up writing, she never completely forgot that boyfriend or what he had meant to her or how hard she had been able to slap him across the face just to make him smile. But, eventually, she fell in love with another man, who was balding and who had never been on TV. With him, she learned how to pantomime true love to the degree that, sometimes, she thought she could hear a laugh-track playing in the background like applause while they had sex. And in the end, it turned out, that turned her on.
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Tour
Scenes From My Life as a Sex Journalist
The Flesh Eaters
This short story was originally published in Construction Literary Magazine in June 2018.
Dolores didn’t expect to spend the last year sewing pubic hair into a disembodied silicone vagina, but that’s the way it happened. One day, you’re working at the 7-11 on the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia, and the next day, you’re submitting your job application at a place your mother will refer to from this day forward as “the dildo factory.” In fact, it’s not a dildo factory. They make many things here. In the three and a half years that she’s worked at this place, she’s spent six months stringing anal beads, fourteen months assembling penis pumps, and two months boxing vibrators. A year ago, she found her niche: masturbators. The name sounded like something for which you should spend your Sunday mornings confessing, but in fact it was just her and four other girls in the far corner of the warehouse bent over a never-ending supply of thermoplastic rubber that had been molded to resemble the vaginas and assholes and entire rear ends of famous porn stars. At this point in her career, Dolores didn’t really think about what she was doing anymore: her head bent inches from the factory sculpted labia of a woman she’d never met as she poked the thick needle into the rubber surface and threaded another plastic pubic hair through the fake flesh. Sometimes she wondered what the real women were like. Somewhere in the Valley, they were famous actresses. On the internet, their images were beamed to places Dolores had never been in order to make men that Dolores would never meet happy, if only for a few fleeting moments. The demand was so great that Dolores and the other girls could hardly keep up with the pace. And right now, it wasn’t even the busy season. Come fall, the boss would hire another half dozen girls to work a second shift. The trucks would pull up to the back of the loading bay with increasing frequency, carting the boxed vaginas off to parts unknown. It made Dolores sad to see them leave, like watching your children head off for their first day of school. How would you defend them from the world? A week ago, Dolores was the last one leaving, and without thinking, she walked over to the table, picked up one of the boxes with a vagina in it, and dropped it into her bag. It was heavy—remarkably so—and she wondered briefly if the camera mounted in the corner where the wall met the ceiling had seen what she had done, even though she had turned her back to its prying eye. At home, she removed the vagina from her bag, set it on her dining room table, and considered it. On the cover of the box, the woman whose vagina it was had been dressed up like a waitress and was holding up her fake vagina like she was serving it for dinner. Dolores supposed that’s what men wanted: some piece of you offered up like a slice of pie for their consumption. To be honest, the thought didn’t make her mad. It made her lonely. As the sun set outside, and the room glowed with the golden hour, she had to believe that there was someone out there who would want the person Dolores really was, served on a platter, whole and ready to be eaten. Perhaps there was one man for whom she—meat and bone, organs and innards, blood and matter—would be enough to sate.
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Unicorn Love
This afternoon, I decided to go to an adult toy store. Awhile back, I had read about a line of sex toys that were, well, out of this world. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Creature Cocks, but they’re billed as “The Original Fantasy, Sci-Fi Monster Dildos.” If you’ve ever wanted to get intimate with a Radioactive Reptile Thick Scaly Silicone Dildo, a Gargoyle Rock Hard Silicone Dildo, an Orion Invader Veiny Space Alien Silicone Dildo, a Monstropus Tentacled Monster Silicone Dildo, or a Hydra Sea Monster Silicone Dildo, this product line is for you. In fact, I had seen Creature Cocks in the silicone flesh before. A few months ago, I had gone to an adult store in Sherman Oaks, and I had stared at a display of Creature Cocks, but I hadn’t bought one. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it. I had this idea I would keep it on my desk as a sort of talisman, but ultimately, I couldn’t decide on which one and left.
Recently, I read on AVN—which one could argue is the Variety of the adult business—that XR Brands, the company that produces Creature Cocks, was releasing even more Creature Cocks in new enhanced designs. These Creature Cocks were even more out there, among them a Sea Stallion Vibrating Silicone Dildo with Remote and, the one that really caught my eye, a Centaur Explosion Squirting Silicone Dildo. As a long-time watcher of “Shark Tank,” I had to wonder what need was being met. Was there really a demand for not just centaur dildos, but centaur squirting dildos? The answer was clear: Yes. In any case, I was curious to check out the new models.
When I arrived at the adult store, I was the only customer there. I said hello to the guy working behind the counter and found the Creature Cocks display between two doors marked Employees Only and under a sign that read DO NOT OPEN PRODUCT. (I wasn’t going to, but duly noted.) I scanned the boxes, considering the Swamp Monster Green Scaly Silicone Dildo (disturbingly, it had eyes), the Space Cock Glow-in-the-Dark Silicone Alien Dildo (were those blue … testicles?), and a Makara Glow-in-the-Dark Silicone Snake Dildo (I shuddered at its 18-inch length). A woman walked into the store and inquired about a remote-controlled sex toy. The guy behind the counter explained the cheapest one they had was $130. This was more than she expected to spend, she explained. I handled a large black box that contained a Mystique Silicone Unicorn Dildo. The toy’s rainbow color was aesthetically appealing, and it seemed like it would be hard to go wrong with anything unicorn.
At the register, I inquired about the new Creature Cocks products, but he explained they weren’t in stock at the store yet. “Do a lot of people buy Creature Cocks?” I asked, passing the unicorn dildo to him across the counter. “Yeah, people get them all the time, actually,” he told me. So, I wasn’t the only one. After I paid, I headed for the door. “Have a great night!” he called after me cheerily.
When I got home, I pulled the box out of the bag. YOU’LL BE ENTRANCED AS THE RAREST OF CREATURES, THE UNICORN, PENETRATES YOUR PLEASURE GARDEN! the front of the box promised. I opened the top and withdrew the dildo; it was nestled in a plastic container. I touched the dildo’s bottom tentatively (according to the box, this was the STRONG SUCTION BASE); it felt like rubbery flesh. I removed the dildo from the plastic shell; the toy was heavier than I had expected. I stood the dildo on my desk. It was thick and tapered, tan and blue and purple, covered in spiraling ripples. For some reason, I had expected it would do something, but this wasn’t a vibrator. Instead, it sat there, listing slightly, next to my keyboard.
RIDE THIS UNTAMABLE BEAST ALL THE WAY TO FANTASTICAL PLEASURE, the box demanded. I attempted to pick up the dildo, but it had suctioned itself to my desk. With a tug, it came loose. I waved the dildo around. It wagged pleasantly. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I was sure of one thing.
I had a unicorn dildo.
This post originally appeared on my newsletter: The Reverse Cowgirl.
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On the Rack
An adult store in the San Fernando Valley. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.
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The Lost Vagina
“The point is, I started thinking, you know, what if my silicone vagina didn’t have to be lost?” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter here, and don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter while you’re there.
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Blow Me
On my Forbes blog, I wrote about a woman who’s turning blowup dolls into fashion designs.
An excerpt:
Breslin: Why did you choose this model of blowup doll?
Friday: Judy's the one! Out of all the blowup dolls out in the world, she's the most iconic. She has a classic design that's been around for decades, so she has a warm nostalgic feeling about her. I like that she plays it classy with her closed mouth, but we all know what she's really got on her mind.
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The Fleshlight Documentary
That's a Lot of Toys
Image credit: Brett Hammond
"Some experts, like Sara Ramirez, the associate publisher for retailing for the adult entertainment trade publication XBIZ, agree that Americans buy somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion worth of pleasure products annually. A more conservative estimate from IBISWorld pegged that number at $610 million in 2013 and projected it to grow to $792 million by 2018."
[NYT]
Kim Kardashian Sex Doll Love
Image via Kim Kardashian
Mr. Fleshlight
Photo credit: Jack Davies
"Between the airport and his office, he began to redesign the product in his mind. 'I knew that it would have to be portable; it had to be small; it had to be able to fit easily into the hand so that it could facilitate the use of the product. I thought, Guys are into tools. And what I had settled on was a flashlight, so I decided to call it Fleshlight.'"
[Vice]