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Consumer Sexualities explores women's experiences of shopping in 'sex shops' and using sexual commodities in their everyday lives. This enlightening volume shows how women take up sexual consumer 'technologies of the self' to work upon and understand themselves as confident and active sexual agents in postfeminist neoliberal culture. In guiding the reader through the historical emergence of sexual commodities 'for women' in feminism and postfeminism, Wood points to the normalisation and regulation of sexual practices and identities in and through consumption. Indeed, women's accounts show the work involved in constructing the 'right' - knowledgeable, tasteful, and confident - orientation to sexual consumption and, by extension, in becoming an intelligibly 'good' sexual person. At the same time, the author draws upon de Certeau to show how the ordinary contexts in which sexual commodities are used can lead to unpredictable moments of adaptation, discomfort, playfulness, and resistance.
A rich analysis of women's everyday strategies of 'making do' with the kinds of femininity and female sexuality that sex shop culture represents, Consumer Sexualities will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural studies and gender studies with interests in gender, sexuality, sex and consumption.
List of contents
Introduction: Consumer Sexualities
Chapter One - Sexual Consumption and Liberation in Feminism
Chapter Two - Consumer Sex: Technologies of the Self
Chapter Three - Sexual Spaces: Going Sex Shopping
Chapter Four - The Sexy Body: Wearing Lingerie
Chapter Five - Sexual Objects: Using 'Sex Toys'
Conclusion: (Sexual) Politics of the Ordinary
About the author
Rachel Wood is a is a research associate in the Department of Psychology, Sociology & Politics at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research interests centre on sexual consumption, new feminisms, gender and work in the creative / cultural industries, and the production of sexual knowledge.
