Sexpo Oz style
Kim Powell visits Sydney’s annual Sexpo and finds that for all our talk of sexual liberation, mainstream sexual mores aren’t so risqué.
The girl on the stage has a textbook perfect body, and her long dark hair flows as she strips down to a teensy g-string and twirls herself around a pole. Her body says sex, but her smile says Aerobics Oz Style, and when she touches her breasts it’s ever-so-lightly, as though she’d rather not. As though they do nothing for her. This is Miss Nude Australia, Arianna Starr. And this is Sexpo, where sex is washed and polished to remove the icky bits, presenting a non-offensive heterosexual image to a city that views the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras as a family event.
California Exotic Novelties Sexpo 2006 expected to draw 65,000 people through the doors of Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion over four days, before the show moves on to Melbourne in November. According to the organisers, Sexpo started as a way to take the adult shop to women, so they could buy vibrators, dildos and clitoris stimulators in a non-threatening environment.
It’s an admirable plan: pitch the event at women and couples, and sell them the idea of great sex. Make them believe that if they buy something battery-powered it won’t matter that- after working long hours in a job they don’t really like, to pay off an exorbitant mortgage- they’re generally too buggered (and not in a good way!) to even want sex, let alone fabulous sex.
The crowd is mostly couples, and interestingly it is the women who appear more relaxed. I guess many men face an uncomfortable dilemma: if your girlfriend takes you to Sexpo are you able to ogle the pole dancers? Or perhaps the enormous dildos make them nervous.
Rod Burgess, the founder of Quiver – a Tupperware-style party for adults – says women prefer to buy sex toys in a relaxed get-together at home, rather than in a “male-dominated adult shop that is wall to wall porn”. The fact that they are buying is good news.
It’s a view echoed by Cascie Wills, the director of Hire A Hunk, a non-sex service that delivers buffed guys to female parties. She says if women weren’t interested in their own pleasure there wouldn’t be so many vibrator stands at Sexpo. But, she believes that women are still “warming up” when it comes to actively seeking sexual satisfaction.
Over at the Sex Bomb stand of toys and costumes, the girls don’t wear the product so they are more approachable.
“If the boyfriend is drooling over the sales girl, then the girlfriend won’t have a bar of it,” says promo girl Claire, dressed in 1950s rockabilly. She says the Japanese products – such as the mini vibrators cunningly disguised as kitschy toys – are popular because the packaging doesn’t feature chicks gagging on cocks. Plus, these harmless-looking toys and vibrating rubber duckies won’t traumatise the kids if they find them.
Claire says the problem is that while women are inquisitive and want to know the difference between vibrators, they won’t pick up a giant dildo in front of their boyfriends lest they offend the male ego. Yet men go straight for the outfits and point out what they like and don’t like.
“Women are accommodating [about male fantasies] rather than having their own fantasies acted out,” Claire says. “But toys are more geared towards women’s pleasure. Clitoris stimulating toys [are] very popular. Guys are pretty great about that because they know that they’re not really talented themselves, and they just want to get their partners off.”
Men, women and sex can be complicated bedfellows. My taxi driver on the way home – uncomfortable talking about sex with a female stranger but eventually coaxed into a more abstract discussion – told me about a show he saw on the adult channel. Male porn stars were being interviewed about sexiness, and one said that if guys are learning their techniques from porn then they are in big trouble: all the positions are very uncomfortable for the women and he would never do any of them with a woman he loves. Likewise, if guys are learning how to give head from porn films, they’ll be doing it all wrong because in these movies the focus is on allowing the camera to see everything, rather than being pleasurable.
For all our supposed liberation, role-playing still falls into typical categories: nurse, schoolgirl, policewoman, devil. Sexpo has a limited and very heteronormative view of sexuality on display- all platform stilettos, tacky clothing and veiny vibrators. Where are the stands for the people who fancy feederism? Where are the booths for those who love zentai? What about a foot fetish or pregnancy fetish? Hell, where are the dirty old men in trench coats? The motto of this year’s Sexpo is lighten up, sex is fun! True, but it also seems sterilised in this plastic palace.
Sexpo ran in Sydney from July 27-30. Next stop: Melbourne, November 23-26.