OhMiBod

The Lovely Lauren brought this to my attention, after I talked about another iVibrator towards which Dan Savage pointed me.
Now, I’ve been trying to explain, to relatively little avail the commodification and ‘coolification’ of sex toys for a while now. Vibrators among certain young and hip sets are akin to bags and shoes in terms of status and indie cool to others. It isn’t really about how much you spent on your sex toy(s) it’s about having them, shopping for them, knowing about them, and talking about them. It’s a culture of ‘if you know you know’ much the same way as the rest of idie/hipster culture is.

At my lovely Alma Mater, it was quite common for groups of friends, social clubs, etc to make jaunts both to the local sex store downtown, and to make day-trips to those further a field, to the sketchy warehouses along the highway in Connecticut, or big-name stores like Good Vibrations and Babeland in Boston and New York respectively.

I think these good people hit the nail on the head in saying: OhMiBod harnesses the iPod movement and popularity to bring a higher level of acceptance and openness about sexuality in a fun and liberating way. By ‘harnessing the iPod movement’ they mean ‘cashing in on brand power-cool’. Since when does a music player constitute a movement? Yes, they’re everywhere, yes, almost everyone has one, (including, I’m told, her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) and I have no idea how I ever lived, or could live without one again. But can we really believe that by putting the ‘i’ in front of a sex toy, this thing is going to change the way that people think about sex, and the use of sex toys? I’ll grant you there are most likely a fair number of people who wouldn’t otherwise really consider buying a sex toy who will feel at liberty to do so because now it has the white silhouetted figure endorsing it. I don’t think that these people will be prudes, just boring suburbanites who somehow haven’t yet caught on to pleasure parties (the Tupperware of sex toys) who have dangly shit on their phones and will buy pretty much anything with the right logo.

There are nifty accessories available for the OhMiBod as well! My favorite accessory is the garter holder, seen above. It’s like the strap I wear on my arm at the gym, but pink, and goes around one’s thigh! The only problem is that it seems as though the only models are built to fit nanos and minis. What about all of those larger iPods, the third, forth, and fifth generation ones that are far too wide for the strap? Maybe the gym armband will have to do in a pinch.

Along with accessories for the toy itself, there are OhMiBod blogs, and playlists. It really is creating a whole elite culture around a sex toy. I’m having a hard time believing that this is really people being open about their sexuality, and not people trying to show the world how cool and liberated they are, because they have sex toys, and blog about them.*

*I'm totally aware of the fact that I'm blogging about sex toys and thereby trying to prove how cool and liberated I am in regards to sexuality