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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The Tingle
“I bought a poster (you can see it in the photo above) for an X-rated 1978 movie called ‘She Did It Her Way.’” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter here. Don’t forget to subscribe while you’re there.
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Big Shoes to Fill
The Theatre
“I took this photo of the Tiki Theatre on Friday while standing in the street on Santa Monica Boulevard as traffic approached.” Read the rest of my Substack newsletter. Subscribe to get it in your inbox weekly.
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How HBO’s "The Idol," With A Little Help From Valentino, Rewrote The "Pretty Woman" Playbook
In the third episode of the controversial HBO series “The Idol,” Jocelyn, a pop star played by Lily-Rose Depp, and Tedros, a slimy wannabe Svengali played by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, head off for a shopping spree at the Valentino boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. After bypassing a gaggle of adoring Jocelyn fans out front, the duo undertake some retail therapy. “You see that young lady over there?” Tedros asks a store employee. “Got anything in this store as beautiful as she is?” Jocelyn tries on a series of Valentino outfits as Tedros eggs her on, threatens to “curb stomp” an employee he believes his ogling his girl, and dismisses one top as “trash.”
Eventually, the pair end up having sex in a dressing room. When Jocelyn exits before Tedros can finish, he finishes himself off alone in the dressing room while holding onto a rack of Valentino clothes. Afterwards, he looks at his soiled hands. Then his gaze turns to the very expensive Valentino red dresses hanging nearby. The camera cuts away, but the implication is clear: he wipes his hands off on the dresses.
Did Valentino sign off on this? I wondered as I watched the scene. After all, Valentino is a venerated luxury fashion brand. Founded in 1959 by Valentino Garavani, its designs have been worn by Jackie Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Oprah Winfrey. Had Valentino cosigned on what appeared to be the bespoiling of its brand—or was this was what product placement looked like in 2023? In search of an answer, I reached out to Valentino for comment. I didn’t get a response back.
For an expert’s take, I sent an email to Stacy Jones, the CEO of Hollywood Branded, a pop culture marketing agency. She didn’t know if there was any brand partnership between Valentino and “The Idol,” but she did offer her take on the provocative Valentino scene, which had generated some debate on Twitter.
“While the scene in the Valentino store was certainly explicit, there isn’t damage to the brand,” Jones opined. “Even the derogatory mentions made by Tedros about some of the styles and the store’s stylist had no lasting negative impact. Tedros is shown to be the not-so-nice character he is, and it was in fact Tedros who came off looking poorly, not Valentino. The growing spotlight on Valentino dressing Lily-Rose's character and having her model their clothing on screen feels like a win regardless. The saying that you can’t pay for media worth that is true. This particular product placement is over delivering on brand awareness big time. There is not a lot of risk in offending older Valentino consumers as they simply won’t be watching the series. They are not the target audience.” These days, Valentino may be more interested in targeting millennials and Gen Z as potential customers. According to Bain & Co.: “These generations are expected to account for as much as 70% of the global luxury market by 2025.”
Not only that, it seemed I had missed the point entirely. As Jones pointed out in her email to me, the Valentino scene from “The Idol” was a redux of a scene from the 1990 film “Pretty Woman,” starring Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward, a Hollywood escort, and Richard Gere as Edward Lewis, a wealthy businessman, right down to the “Do you have anything in this shop as beautiful as she is?” line. “I googled to see where [the boutique shopping scene] in ‘Pretty Woman’ was filmed as I thought it had a high likelihood of being Valentino,” Jones added. “This article states ‘Pretty Woman’ filmed the Rodeo Drive scene specifically at Valentino. There are a lot of similarities in the scenes, just taken up many adult notches with an edgier, modern touch.”
Is “The Idol” “‘torture porn’”? Has it “set back the feminist movement by at least a decade”? Is it “anti-feminist spectacle”? Or is something more complex at work? At least in the case of the Valentino scene, the subtext is resolutely feminist. In “Pretty Woman,” Vivian says: “I want the fairy tale.”; she wants a man to rescue her. In Sam Levinson’s “The Idol,” the fairy tale is over. After all, it’s Jocelyn who denies Tedros his own pleasure, who is the star, and who, we presume, foots the bill for their shopping trip. In this retelling, the woman holds the power, not the man.
On a recent Friday afternoon, I made my way to the Valentino boutique. Since it was late June, the well-heeled shoppers making their way up and down the sidewalks had to share space with groups of tourists. In the Valentino store, I was met by a security guard. A salesperson followed me around as I admired a pair of $1,800 see-through platform pumps that reminded me of the strippers’ shoe brand of choice, Pleaser Shoes, and a red dress that looked like one Jocelyn had worn. On the second floor, the salesperson indicated the dressing room where the racy scene for “The Idol” had been shot, supposedly. I opened the door. No one, much less Tedros, was there.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
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"The Idol," Valentino, and Me
As I was watching last week’s episode of “The Idol,” in which the main characters have sex in a Valentino dressing room, I thought: Is this for real? It was a brand partnership involving couture and cum, it seemed. (If you’ve seen the scene, you know what I mean.) I wrote about it for Forbes.com, including a trip to Beverly Hills to eyeball the dressing room of the Valentino boutique where the scene was shot (apparently). Read it.
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Forbes by the Numbers: January 2023
I’ve been writing for the Forbes website for forever, it seems. Over the years, I have held several beats: self-employment, vices, and sex. Currently, my tagline is: “I cover the business of sex.” In January 2023, I started posting again after a hiatus, and I thought I would track my traffic numbers progress here.
Stories published: 4. My goal was to publish five stories, but various things led that to not happening. Next time, I will get more of the posts done earlier in the month.
Total page views: 42,956. My goal was to double my page views from December 2022, when I wasn’t posting. My page views in December 2022 were 22,353. That’s an increase of 91%. So, not bad.
Total visitors: 39,011. My goal was to double my page views from December 2022, when I wasn’t posting. My page views in December 2022 were 20,155. That’s an increase of 93%. So, not bad.
Most popular post, by views: How Rapper Iggy Azalea Is Making Money on Only Fans: 19,381 (as of this writing). If the question is what works, the answer is the intersection of celebrities and sex. Other reasons this post performed well: It was tweeted multiple times by Forbes and ForbesLife, the top image featured Iggy preparing to lick a cherry, I had read something recently that reminded me that headlines that explain “how” something is done are more likely to generate higher engagement and so I used that construct.
The month’s highlight: Iggy is #1: At one point, my story about Iggy was the number one trending story on Forbes.com, beating out stories about Tom Brady and Elon Musk.
Me & Iggy
For my latest post on Forbes, I wrote about how rapper Iggy Azalea is making money on Only Fans.
An excerpt:
Curious to check out Azalea’s project, I signed up for OnlyFans and paid $25 to subscribe to her content stream. At the top of her feed, a small green circle appeared next to her avatar (which was an image of Azalea licking a cherry); next to her OnlyFans handle, it read: “Available now.” Was Azalea actually live on the site? Was I more proximate to her than I had been before handing over my money? It seemed possible.
Read the rest here.
I cover the business of sex | Blog | Forbes | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Email
What I Do
Luka was kind enough to interview me for his Medium blog and newsletter.
How/why did you decide to become a sex journalist?
I don’t know that I chose this path, per se. It kind of happened. In the late Nineties, there weren’t a lot of women writing about sex.
The most well-known ones were Candace Bushnell, who wrote the “Sex and the City” column that would become the HBO series, and Anka Radakovich, who wrote for Details.
I saw them more as columnists and myself more as a reporter. Less Carrie Bradshaw, more Gay Talese. The year after I moved to LA, I got hired by Playboy TV to be an on-camera reporter on “Sexcetera,” which featured half a dozen sex reporters, of which I was one, covering sex news stories around the world. “Sexcetera” was like “60 Minutes,” but on Viagra.
Each segment we did was about eight minutes, which I seem to recall one of the executive producers saying was how long it took for the presumably male viewer to jack off to it. I described my job as “talking to the camera while people fuck behind me.”
Read it here.
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Plans in My Head and Other Things
I sent out another newsletter. (Don’t forget to subscribe; there’s a button at the bottom of the post.)
This one is mostly a roundup of various things that were in my head, from my brief, non-interactive sort-of-encounter with A Famous Man Who Talked to His Penis to My Estate Sale Meanderings Involving a Former Playboy Model to this idea I have for an article that would involve me touring the last remaining adult theaters in Los Angeles.
That last thing, that adult theater tour idea for an article with pictures and such, was inspired by an experience I had writing this article about virtual reality porn for The Atlantic.
To wit:
On Santa Monica Boulevard, near the 101 Freeway, the Tiki Theater was still standing. Years ago, I’d photographed it, but I’d never been inside. “It’s porn movies,” the man in the front booth emphasized when I paid my $14. “I know,” I replied. In the gloom of the tiny theater, four men were scattered around on random chairs. On the big screen, a cheery blonde was performing oral sex on a man who seemed to be appreciating the attention. On the TV set that had been erected next to the bigger screen, a different porn movie was playing. Neither one had sound. It was not quite 9 o’clock in the morning. In this hidden world, the porn was real—almost too real.
That was a bizarre experience. And you know what they say about bizarre experiences. It’s best to repeat them. In any case, I’m not sure where to begin, although it would be cool to present it online as one of those maps, like one of those Eater maps. Let me know if you’d like to design one for me.
I cover the business of sex | Blog | Forbes | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Email
Just Say No to Robot Strippers
Image credit: Jonathan Tippett
After a break, I am back. Check out my Forbes blog for my deep dive into the world of strip club robot security guards, and while you’re at it, subscribe to my Substack newsletter: The Reverse Cowgirl. A good time, all.
I cover the business of sex | Blog | Forbes | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Email
Lost Objects Is Here
Delighted to have a story I wrote in the newly released LOST OBJECTS from Hat & Beard Press. It’s the true story of a silicone vagina I lost. My fellow contributors include Neil LaBute, Lydia Millet, and Geoff Manaugh. Until 12/25 you can use the code LOSTOBJECTS for 20% off the retail price of the book from Hat & Beard.
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My Lost Vagina
Illustration by Jennifer Heuer
A story I wrote about a silicone vagina that I lost appears in Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter. In an interview with PRINT, co-editor Rob Walker gave my story a shout out:
What are, say, three of the most surprising objects in your book?
Walker: For me, I’d say the silicone vagina that Susannah Breslin wrote about is not something I would have predicted. Then maybe Mandy Keifetz’ orgone accumulator, and Neil LaBute’s pickled octopus.
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I'm Only Happy When It Rains
Strip club, Hollywood, CA (Photo credit: Susannah Breslin)
Check out my latest newsletter at The Reverse Cowgirl:
“They had tattoos and did crazy acrobatics and I think one girl had a tramp stamp that read FUCK YOU or maybe FUCK YOU PAY ME.”
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All the Smut That's Fit to Print
Dancer with money, Las Vegas, Nev. (Photo credit: Susannah Breslin)
A couple new things:
I wrote a Forbes post about a strip club CEO:
“Pandemic? Fuggedaboutit. Two years of dark news, quarantining, and masks have resulted in a surge of consumers who want to go out and have fun. The strip club business may not be pandemic proof, but according to Langan, it’s pandemic resistant.”
I wrote a newsletter about the story behind that story:
"I had forgotten about that fact, and several other details in the piece, like the dancer who made $800 to $1,000 a night who told me: ‘I have a lot of spunk.’”
Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter here.
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The Hidden Pervert
Estate sale, Encino, Calif. (Photo credit: Susannah Breslin)
My latest newsletter is out. It features the perversions of dead people’s houses. Read it here. Subscribe here.
I’d assumed the place had belonged to an older gay man who had spent his final years contentedly rendering artistic homages to the penis, but when I got to the bedroom, I realized the deceased resident had been an older woman.
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Scenes from My Life as a Sex Writer
My latest newsletter is out. It features a walk down sex writer lane. Read it here. Subscribe here.
Interestingly, I’d forgotten many of the things that I’d done and which I’d referenced in the piece. That time I went to a sex dungeon in Van Nuys. That all-girl porn star orgy performance art at a downtown gallery. The ex-prostitute looking to buy the oldest brothel in the country.
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Lost Objects, the Book
Some time ago, I wrote a short nonfiction story about a lost vagina for an online literary series called Lost Objects. That series is now a book: Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter. The book was edited by series creators Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker and is being published by Hat & Beard Press. You can pre-order a copy now and / or pre-order one of the limited-edition companion posters here.
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My, My Obscene Comic
In my latest newsletter, I reveal what happened when I set out to post an X-rated comic I created several years ago online: “My, My Obscene Comic.”
Well, maybe I’ll publish the comic in my newsletter, I thought. But then I started to wonder if doing so would get me banned from Substack. “We don’t allow porn or sexually exploitative content on Substack,” read their Content Guidlines, although “We do allow depictions of nudity for artistic, journalistic, or related purposes, as well as erotic literature.” So, I wasn’t sure.
Read the rest here and hit the button at the bottom to subscribe.
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