The sex toy industry is one of the few industries that is both a producer and a shower. It is worth billions of dollars and is constantly expanding with new products. However, getting to this point was not easy, and it took a long time.

When you think of sex toys, you probably think of a gadget or gadget that runs on batteries, has a USB charger, or somehow linked to an app, but in reality sex toys do exist. for centuries.

It all started in 29,000 BC. Neanderthals in the Swabian Alb region of present-day Germany started carving rocks into phallic shapes. We don’t know for sure if they used them as sex toys, for fertility ceremonies, or if they just thought it was hilarious to sculpt penis stones, but we do know that they paved the way for the modern sex toy industry. .

The creation of sex toys got a little more innovative – and a lot stranger – in 500 BC, when the ancient Greeks started making fake dongs using all kinds of materials. Some were made of brass or padded leather. Some were, for some reason, made from old bread. They called them olisbokolaime, which is almost as difficult to pronounce as it is to understand. While we don’t recommend you try this, it is definitely a waste-conscious and economical way to go. These bizarre Greeks were also the pioneers of lubricant using olive oil.

By 1300 AD, the sex toy industry was really taking off, especially in ancient China, which innovated Ben Wahh balls filled with animal sperm, cock rings made from goat eyelids and double-sided dildos. What a time to live! The real word dildo was not coined until around 1400 AD, during the Italian Renaissance. It follows from dilett o, which means pleasure.

In the 1600s, French sailors pioneered sex dolls by taking straw “women” on long, lonely voyages, calling them “traveling ladies”. Right now, even Shakespeare talks about sex toys, mentioning dildos by name in his play “A Winter’s Tale”. Naughty naughty!

In 1800s England, frail men began to label anxious or unhappy women with hysteria. Although we would like to say that this was a short-lived “medical diagnosis”, it lasted until the 1950s. Wanting to have these women Relax, he was “treated” with intense genital stimulation, among other things.

The hysteria spread like wildfire, and the doctors and their weak hands couldn’t keep up, so the story goes that they invented vibrating machines to make women cum with less effort. Back then, they called them “manipulators,” but now we know them as vibrators. The first “manipulator” was created by American physician George Taylor, but Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville created the first patent, disturbingly named the Granville Hammer.

While people these days typically use vibrators to get off, research suggests their original intention was to help relieve muscle cramps. This means that you are only half lying when you call it a back massager. Vibrators have been marketed as a bunch of different things throughout the 20th century, including scalp massagers, weight loss tools, and pain relievers. They might have worked for some of these things, but they were definitely used for other reasons.

In the early 1960s, a close friend of ventriloquist Ted Marche approached him about a problem he had: he was suffering from impotence and asked Ted to use his skills as a puppet maker to make him a penile prosthesis. As any good friend would, Ted agrees and goes to work, creating the first strap-on.

In the late 1960s, men launched into the sex toy craze, and men’s magazines began to offer inflatable sex dolls.

Around the same time, in Japan, Hitachi released “The Magic Wand”, a battery operated massager for “severe back pain”. Women everywhere have started to use it for their … uh, back pain, and the demand has skyrocketed.

A decade later, feminist Betty Dodson began demonstrating how to use the magic wand in her bodysex workshops, hailing the sex toy as a stimulant. Around the same time, inspired by an embarrassing experience she had buying a vibrator at a department store, businesswoman Dell Williams founded the first sex shop in the United States designed specifically for women. , called Eve’s Garden. The store popularized silicone vibrators that did not have the shape of a penis, which was a big deal back then, and is widely regarded as the model for the modern sex shop.

In 1983, to get around tightening obscenity laws, Japanese companies like Vibratex began making vibrators shaped like harmless (and, in some cases, adorable) things. Some were modeled after animals, including kangaroos, turtles, and rabbits, and were brightly colored. Cute!

Another major innovation in sex toys appeared in 1995 when the fleshlight was designed. Originally it was created to help collect samples from sperm donors, but the inventors quickly saw its potential wider and started selling it online.

About two years later, the first RealDoll appeared. RealDolls used silicone and mechanical seals to deliver the most realistic fake experience of being with a woman yet … far from the “travel ladies” of straw.

Today, thanks to the anonymity of the Internet and constantly evolving technological innovations, we are living in the golden age of sex toys. In fact, rResearch shows that half of adults regularly use sex toys.

We don’t know what the future holds, but we assume it’s a lot of orgasms.

Rapper 2 channels discovered Gwyneth Paltrow used her hit song “It’s a Vibe”, but maybe it gave it new meaning.

The Oscar winner, 48, used the song to promote Goop’s double-sided vibrator, which costs $ 95, via an Instagram video on Sunday, May 2.

“The @goop vibrator that sold out in less than 24 hours is finally back in stock. Link in the bio to shop; it’s an atmosphere ”, she wrote in addition to tagging 2 Chainz, 43 years old.

The 2017 song, starring Ty Dolla $ ign, Trey Songz, and Jhené Aiko, includes sexually-oriented lyrics, but it doesn’t look like 2 Chainz intends to talk about a rechargeable, shock-resistant sex toy. water with two vibrating ends. Still, he appeared to be a good sport on the short video.

“Lord… ..GP,” the rapper (real name: Tauheed Epps) commented on the video with a laughing emoji.

Others had different reactions. “Is it for neck pain?” Comedian Ali Wentworth joked while actress Lake Bell shared fist emojis.

In an April interview on Today, Paltrow said that her mother, an actress Blythe danner, 78, “always” finds Goop’s sexual health products too outrageous. However, the Iron Man star said, “Even decent women have sexuality.”

Paltrow, who is the mother of daughter Apple Martin, 16, and son Moses Martin, 15, stressed the importance of talking about female pleasure and sexuality to normalize topics, and that’s in part why she makes sure Goop wellness items meet women’s sexual needs. health.

“Look, I think our sexuality is such an important part of who we are… and one of the things that we really believe in at Goop is to kind of remove the shame from these topics,” she said. Explain.

The entrepreneur said Us weekly In September 2020, Goop’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle started out as a joke, but became a reality once she saw it as a feminist statement.

“You grew up getting messages around heavily scented feminine skincare with synthetic scents and all that stuff,” Paltrow said at the time. “I just felt it was time to make a feminist statement around accepting who we are and our femininity.”

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In our early cultures, humans wanted more sexual options that weren’t just for childbearing. Our ancestors quickly began to develop sex toys and birth control methods, a fine science that developed over a long period of time – and a lot of fun.

When it comes to sex toys, dildos seem to have been the first choice sought after by early cultures. Primary records of pre-industrial sex toys are scarce, with plays and literature from ancient Greece to Elizabethan England holding some of the best accounts of sex toy use.

“Lysistrata” a Greek comedy originally performed in 411 BC. Although no actual dildos have survived from this era, researchers found that back then, they were mostly made of stitched leather.

In “Lysistrata” the term used is “olisbos, “ coming from the ancient Greek word “olisthánein”, meaning to slip into it.

The first use of the modern English word “dildo” comes from the erotic poem “The Choise of Valentines”, by author Thomas Nashe. The poem was originally composed in the early 1590s, but it was not officially printed until the late 19th century. The poem describes a sexual encounter between narrator Tomalin and his lover Mistress Frances, ending with the narrated description of a contemporary dildo before it was used on her.

When the industrial revolution came, vibrators became all the rage, but not as a personal sex toy. Instead, they were first used as a medical device. Although it was originally invented to relieve pain, it quickly became a remedy for female hysteria, an outdated catch-all term for the problems women of the day had.

Medical vibrators of the time included the first electronic steam vibrators that doctors used to give pelvic massages. Vibrators at home of the time were then marketed for massage, beauty, and women’s health – all three repeated in various euphemistic labels for the use of modern vibrators.

The records of early contraception are much more hazy, which can be largely attributed to the decay of materials and many eras of religious bans on contraception as a whole. Despite this, there is various methods preserved in ancient writings that indicate the materials used for contraception. Many non-European cultures practiced alternative contraceptive methods such as the external course (sexual activity without penetration) or fertility monitoring through menstrual cycles.

In the ancient world, other methods of contraception often included the use of natural materials inserted into the vagina. For example, the ancient Egyptians created cervical caps using acacia leaves with honey and lint. The Greek philosopher Aristotle even suggested the use of olive oil mixed with frankincense or lead ointment applied inside the vagina to prevent conception. The effectiveness of these inserted options is questionable, and almost all of them were unsafe to use.

Condoms from the pre-industrial world were made from various natural materials. King Minos of Crete has been documented to use a goat’s bladder. The ancient Egyptians used linen cases as condoms, but apparently only to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. As in Egypt, many condoms in the ancient world, from Rome to China, were used to prevent STDs rather than as contraception.

In the early part of the 20th century, the birth control movement in the United States was started with the goal of supporting low-income women and reducing the difficulties associated with repeated births and self-induced abortions. The legal battles fought and won in this movement have not only paved the way for more open conversations about sex, but also the wider range of birth control options we have today.

The past use of contraception and sex toys, although often rooted in trial and error, has led to the modern understanding and practice of sex as a whole.

Gwyneth Paltrow at Goop’s Santa Monica, Calif., Office in April 2019. “So many vibrators look hypersexualized,” Paltrow said of her company’s new double-sided vibrator. “We were just trying to do something… maybe a little more intellectual.” (Alex Welsh / v. The New York Times)

Next to Goop’s vaginal jade egg and a candle called “It smells like my vagina,” a vibrator almost looks, well, old-fashioned.

But that hasn’t stopped fans of Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s oft-mocked wellness company, from snatching up her new double-sided wand vibrator, which looks like a candy-colored gelato cone.

In an interview on Tuesday, Paltrow expressed disappointment at the underestimation of demand (the vibrator is sold out). After all, the pandemic has meant a lot of time indoors and alone, and a sex toy boom.

And the Goop vibrator is quite suitable for fighting boredom. With a massage ball on one side and a wand on the other – and eight pulse patterns for each – that means 64 possible combinations (or a different daily feel during two months of quarantine). At $ 95, it might even qualify as affordable, at least compared to the $ 15,000 gold dildo that Paltrow once recommended in a Goop newsletter.

“We have always been very interested in sexual well-being as a very important pillar of well-being,” said Paltrow.

Why a vibrator now?

For a lot of people – not for you and not for me – a vibrator is still considered a pretty racy thing. This has obviously changed a lot over the past decade. But still, people are triggered by sexual content or triggered by their own sexuality. Women don’t learn a certain vernacular and how to express what we want. We are not good at being vulnerable about our own sexuality.

I think in contrast to “Why a vibrator now?” It’s kind of like “How do we make a vibrator that helps to continue to decrease the stigma around this stuff?” “

Talk about its design.

So many vibrators seem hypersexualized. Either they are really phallic or they look like something you would buy in a sex shop. I was really intrigued that this would be something that would look really pretty and cool, and that you could leave it on your nightstand without embarrassing yourself or anyone else. There is something very sure of him about it.

To explain?

I think we were just trying to do something… maybe a little more intellectual.

Female sexual pleasure is less stigmatized. Is it a growth Marlet?

You are now seeing it with some amazing new emerging female care products like Honey Pot Co., or other consumer companies appearing around the vagina and vulva. There are celebrities who have signed up with vibrator companies to help promote them. It’s wonderful that visible, strong and popular women say, “It’s OK. It is not ashamed and you are not ashamed.

Goop has definitely been a partner in forging this path and creating a culture around women’s health, sexual health and sexuality. This is why we made a vaginal candle. Let’s dispel all this stuff. Take your projections away from me. Let me experience myself, my body and my pleasure in my own way.

Have you tested the vibrator yourself?

I’ve never been asked this question before. I think you made me blush. I will stop there.

A little less personal: New hobbies during the pandemic?

I wouldn’t say I developed new ones, but I definitely re-engaged or doubled down on some, like meditation. I do this every morning. Before, it was maybe once every two weeks, or maybe not at all. Plus, I cook all the time, like everyone else in the world.

You played Patient Zero in the movie Contagion. Did this prepare you for the pandemic?

I remember being on set and people saying, “It could really happen, and it will happen in our lifetime.”

Back in February, long before face coverings became the norm, you posted a selfie on Instagram with a mask.

It’s a familiar pattern in my life. I do something early, everyone says to me, “What is she doing? She’s crazy. And then it is adopted by the culture.

I must have taken this trip to France when it all started. I wore it on the plane, but didn’t wear it to the function I was going to, and ended up catching COVID and coming home, and was one of the first people I had heard of to have it.

Are you planning to get vaccinated?

I still have antibodies. I want everyone who isn’t protected to come first.

Goop was critical for making questionable welfare claims and, in 2018, had to pay $ 145,000 for making unsubstantiated health claims on her vaginal eggs. Why should customers trust Goop?

That’s what happened a few years ago, when we were still a small company that was involved in the conservation and purchase of third-party brands that made claims around their products. We’ve come a very long way since we were this little startup. Even with Yoni’s eggs. It was really around the claims, but it didn’t involve the product. This egg is not dangerous. We are still selling it.

This interview has been edited.

Valeriya Safronova c. 2021 The New York Times Company

Senior gynecologist urges doctors to prescribe vibrators for women with sexual dysfunction.

Once a medical device prescribed to treat “female hysteria,” vibrators have been largely relegated to sex toys and novelties and remain illegal in two states – Alabama and Mississippi – in the United States.

But Dr. Lauren Streicher, a gynecologist and sexual health specialist at Northwestern University, says women’s difficulty in enjoying an orgasm should be treated as a medical problem, and vibrators should be offered as a solution.

Speaking this week at the American College of Obstetricians, a meeting of gynecologists, she urged doctors to educate themselves and ask patients about their orgasms.

It is estimated that 4.7 percent of women in the United States suffer from anorgasmia, which means they have difficulty cumming, have weak orgasms, or are unable to cum at all.

Achieving orgasm is difficult for psychological reasons for some. But “some medical conditions that cause decreased blood flow to the clitoris and nerve endings don’t respond as well,” says Dr. Streicher.

But for many women, says Dr Streicher, a vibrator can change that, or at least be the exception.

When she sees patients, Dr. Streicher has them fill out a screening form that includes detailed questions about their orgasms and how they reach them.

“It’s a little checklist and they check if they can have an orgasm with digital stimulation, oral sex stimulation, or a vibrator.

“It’s no surprise that a lot of women tick ‘no, no, no, no’ and then go to the vibrator and check yes,” says Dr Streicher.

Especially for an older woman who “at some point in her life might have a digital or oral simulation orgasm and is no longer able to do so, it may be due to vascular or neurological issues, so she needs to. more stimulation to be able to have an orgasm. ,’ she says.

But there is still an undeniable stigma around vibrators, and, in some places, even laws against them.

You can’t own vibrators in Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia – where a city will give you jail time if you buy one.

In Texas, an obscure law limits possession of dildos to six, while keeping that many guns is perfectly legal.

Instead of being regulated like guns, Dr Streicher says vibrators should be viewed more as medical devices.

Vibrators provide much more intense stimulation and have the added benefit of increasing blood flow to the clitoris.

About half of women use vibrators, according to a 2009 survey.

“But many – especially those over 50 – who come from a different culture are uncomfortable with the idea of ​​using one,” says Dr Streicher.

They are also the group most likely to have difficulty reaching orgasm for physical reasons, and for whom a vibrator could be most useful.

“So asking a doctor to recommend a one-time use can really go a long way,” says Dr. Streicher.

A vibrator can be purchased for as little as $ 1 (or as much as $ 400 – but many cost around $ 30), making it a much cheaper option than a $ 200 sex therapy session.

The problem is that doctors and patients rarely reach this point in their conversations, says Dr Streicher.

Women very rarely feel comfortable enough to take it upon themselves to bring up the subject of their sex life and satisfaction, a phenomenon so well documented in the medical literature that Dr Streicher says it is a fact.

Equally well established is the fact that doctors don’t ask.

“Women can be just too shy or embarrassed, and we know doctors don’t ask about it,” says Dr Streicher.

“Doctors may think you’re sexually active or that everything is sexually okay, but that’s not the same as asking if you’re capable of having an orgasm,” says Streicher.

And she says it shouldn’t be the patient’s responsibility in any way, but her doctor.

“From my point of view, it’s not that doctors would be uncomfortable asking questions about [orgasm], don’t do it because they don’t ask you questions if they don’t have solutions, ”she says.

“So if I keep going out and telling doctors that there are solutions” – namely vibrators – “the more likely they are to ask,” she explains.

Dr Streicher says her presentation was given to a “packed hall of extremely enthusiastic doctors” who she says she needs to “script” on how to talk to patients about orgasms and the vibrators that can cause them.

Jessica bienne had some candid words to say about vaginas during her AMA Reddit with Saundra Pelletier for WomanCare Global’s “So Who Will It” campaign on Thursday, October 29 – calling them both “magical” and “scary! “

While chatting with Pelletier, Biel reflected on what should be the most important takeaway in the conversation. And they figured a little intimate humor wouldn’t hurt.

“We could be really serious about it… or we couldn’t,” Biel said. “I mean we could literally say something funny about…. I guess we should be serious,” she added.

“We could do both,” Pelletier suggested. “We could say ‘Vaginas are awesome! Almost everyone comes from a woman!’ We could use the line you said – anything that bleeds for seven days and lives is amazing. “

“We could go with your line, like vaginas are magic things. I like that,” Justin Timberlake’s wife added. “Or go with the idea that vaginas are weird and scary, and they bleed for seven days, so don’t trust them!”

“THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DECLINE,” Pelletier added in a loud voice. “I think everyone should know more about vaginas – everyone benefits!”

Turning from female anatomy, Biel then offered her thoughts on the most important advice a mother should give to her child.

“All we really, really have left in this world that we can control is our own integrity,” Bienne said, turning serious. “I don’t mean that as sexual integrity, I mean that as a human being. It comes down to what Saundra said – you choose. You choose how you live your life, what you deserve. good with yourself. Don’t worry about all that other bullshit, “she continued.

But it wasn’t long before the new mother Biel cleared up the tone again! The actress gave a surprisingly cheeky answer to a seemingly innocent question: “What has improved dramatically over the years?”

Lightning fast, the 33-year-old star replied, “Vibrators!”