Tonight, we were recording a podcast for Freddy and Eddy (our episode will up July 9th, you can subscribe here) and we talked a bit about toy reviews. Obviously, with their nine years of experience, those two know the toys and the toy industry far, far better than we do. But one thing I had time to reflect on was the peculiar sort of jading that happens when you review sex toys.
Your First Sex Toy
Remember that sense of discovery? You snuck off to a dirty store in the corner, waded through piles and piles of oddly-colored, weirdly-shaped missile with porn star picture until you found just the right one. You went to the desk, where an extra from “Miami Ink” checked you out as you tried not to be seen or noticed, and wondered if anyone could see your car outside. You got home in a full-blown buzz as you couldn’t WAIT to see what this new baby could do. You knew that vibrations could be nice, or maybe having something inside you that you controlled would be new. Or, perhaps your toy came with a something else you bought, like a “naughty weekend kit,” and you weren’t even sure you would try it out. In fact, you possibly felt a little dirty about the whole thing. But, at the end of the day, you would up with something like this:
What a rush, right? Toy are so cool! And you could have nice orgasms any time you want with them! Eventually you were in a rush to get another, a different one, to see what it could do. Maybe something that did a little more. Or maybe you were a “Sex and the City” fan:
Sure, it sounded like a wood chipper, and seemed a little ridiculous, but man it could hit two spots at once! What’s the next step from here? The rush of discovery is on as you lunge for more power, or more size, or more places. This hobby gets expensive fast. Maybe there could be a way to get some of these for free. Hey, there are people out that that write reviews, right, maybe you can be a toy reviewer!
Becoming a Reviewer
So, you start a blog, or you talk to a friend, or whatever you have to do, and you wind up reviewing sex toys. You start making a list for that first box. It’s thrilling, all these wonderful items are now open to you, and they are free! Who cares what you get, because it’s free. The first box arrives and you are tearing into it like Santa left it under a tree. Maybe that really expensive toy you always almost splured on is in there, or perhaps the really freaky one you couldn’t talk yourself into, but no matter what, you now suddenly have free sex toys. All you have to do is treat yourself to some orgasms, and writ about them. And they are all great, because, hey, you’re having orgasms! You power through the first box, the second, the third…and you are just a machine devouring sex toys by the dozen.
Then it happens.
You realize, one day, that you are bored. How did orgasms become boring? Maybe it was when you wrote your fifth review of a phallic vibrator. Perhaps it was when you cracked open the box, dropped another set of batteries in, and your sex organs retreated into your body at the sound of the clattering buzz, or it was the night you were trying to have just regular sex and you felt like you weren’t going to get to the happy place without a buzz. Possibly, you were decided to masturbate just because, and you pulled out your now-bloated toybox and just gave it the blank stare a vegetarian gives the McDonald’s menu.
Suddenly, it starts taking a lot more to hold your attention. Your body has been shaken more ways than San Francisco. It feels like you have seen every possible variation of the disembodied phallus, the cock ring, and the butt plug. You start needing something special. Maybe it needs to be beautiful, or maybe it needs to have enough power to strip the paint off the walls. At the end of the day, though, nothing starts seeming enough any more. Your list of favorite toys becomes eclectic and elite. But you have also been long-disconnected from the cost of these items, since they have been rolling in for free for so long. For instance, our favorite toys, the Eroscillator, the LELO Gigi, and the Fun Factory Delight, cost a combined $450 over at Freddy and Eddy. Granted, any one of them are worth the price, and we would pay for them (especially the Eroscillator). But, let’s think back to that person buying their first toy.
Suppose they come to me, as an experience sex toy reviewer, and ask what the best toy for them to get is. Let’s suppose I just cut to chase and recommend the incomparable Eroscillator. First they think it looks like a giant, golden toothbrush. Then it costs as much as nine of those jelly vibes. Sure, you can prattle on about how much better it is than the cheapo vibe, and how much better the material is. But, and this is the fact of the matter for someone looking for their first toy, anything that vibrates will get them off. So what is the point? As a reviewer, I feel completely justified in recommending what is actually the best possible purchase, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that you are telling someone to ignore a whole universe of orgasmic items for what your jaded body has developed a taste for. And then you realize that maybe you have lost something. You’ve lost sight of that first time experience.
On one hand, I am passionate about this topic. I desperately want to put the information out there, to educate people about what materials belong in their bodies, what kinds of toys are out there, and why some toys are better than others. I want to start drying up the market for crap, and encouraging people as a whole to demand better from a market that provides very little information. But there has to be an appreciation for the fact that the vast majority of people never use toys in their sex life, and the majority of those that do only use one or two of the basics. I think back to the crazy pool party we went to, where we were asked if we were a kinky couple, and the first litmus test was whether or not we used toys. We still laugh about this: if using toys is your definition of kinky, get a hold of your socks now. But, with that laugh is a reminder that the people with this kind of experience with toys make up a tiny, tiny sliver of the world at large. That large majority doesn’t need an Eroscillator to get off the way that someone who has seen every variety of dong does. Sure, they will enjoy it, I would argue the ought to buy the best, but telling someone to pay in the triple digits to get the only thing that satisfies your educated organs when you never paid it yourself is very haughty advice, indeed.
There is a lot that needs to be done, and people need to be educated. But to do that, we have to remember just how far from the normal we really are as reviewers, and that is a long way, indeed. I am not arguing that we should condescend, and tell people to just get a piece of garbage we would never need to use ourselves. I am simply stating that the whole story to how we get to this rarefied air matters, and you can’t skip that. It might take longer to explain why a toy should be made of silicone, and not jelly. The virtues of not numbing the clitoris with V8-level horsepower are not obvious. But we can’t just wave our hands and dismiss the whole universe of sex toys that, point of fact, do get people off. That is a snobbery common to critics of all things, and it’s something we can’t easily afford. We can never forget when we were all that naive person darting to their bedroom to get their first taste of vibration, because that person has millions of friends, with more coming of age each day. We try to think of that when we ask ourselves why we are writing, and whose lives we are trying to improve, and, hopefully, how unique our perspective truly is.
Posted by Sylvanus 
Posted by Sylvanus 
Posted by Sylvanus 
