Fashion and Passion

Marketing Sex to Women

Bibliographic Data

ID18966976
AuthorsFeona Attwood (0000-0002-0129-5862, Sheffield Hallam University, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume8
Issue4
Pages392-406
Publication date2005-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSexualities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1363460705056617
OpenAlexW2144696511
LanguageEN
Citations received77
References cited10

Against a backdrop of a ‘pornographication’ of mainstream media and the emergence of a more heavily sexualized culture, women are increasingly targeted as sexual consumers. In the UK, the success of TV shows like Sex and the City and the ‘fashion ‘n’ passion’ of sex emporia like Ann Summers suggests that late 20th-century discourses which foregrounded female pleasure have crystallized in a new form of sexual address to women. This article examines how sex products are being marketed for female consumers, focusing on the websites of sex businesses such as Myla, Babes n Horny, Beecourse, tabooboo and Ann Summers. It asks how a variety of existing discourses - of fashion, consumerism, bodily pleasure and sexuality - are drawn on in the construction of this new market, how they negotiate the dangers and pleasures of sexuality for women, and what they show about the construction of ‘new’ female sexualities

Consumerism · Human sexuality · Mainstream · Negotiation · Passion · Pleasure · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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