She Bops, She Has Bopped, and She Will Continue to Bop
Masturbation. Everybody does it. Anyone who says they don’t is either dead—at least from the waist down—or a liar. From the first furtive frisson of frottage with which we learn to lull ourselves to sleep as little girls, the impulse to touch ourselves to bring pleasure and release is as ingrained as it is natural. (If you don’t want to take my word for it, just ask Kinsey.) We are, after all, apes, and what better prescriptive to fan the flames of lust than a little hot monkey lovin’ from the hand that knows us best … our own?
From an early age, however, we are taught discretion. Even in an increasingly sex-positive culture, society dictates that openly pleasuring ourselves in public is taboo, but by rendering masturbation illicit, have we actually increased its allure? Undoubtedly.
Outlawed activity combined with advancing technology has incited fertile minds to seek out ever-more-cunning permutations of bliss-inducing devices. From discrete lap-loving accessories such as Pipedream’s Remote Control Tiger Panty that can be secreted under the most staid business suit, to the bulky-but-beloved Hitachi Magic Wand (a.k.a.: “the world’s most popular vibrator”), the devilishly clever Infrared Massager from California Exotic to Lady Calston’s saucy “ultra-realistic, flesh-like” Mini Tongue, the galaxy of delicious, delightful, wiggling, diddling toys continues to expand eXXXponentially.
Of course, that is now…but what of then?
The development of modern female sexual mores can be traced at least as far back as ancient Greece, when Hippocrates conjectured that women who complained of nervousness, fluid retention, insomnia and poor appetite suffered from a blockage in the womb, which he believed to be a mysterious organ that, much like a gypsy tinker, traveled around the body with no fixed address and suspect intentions. The condition, known as “womb furie” or “hysteria,” is derived from the Greek word for womb (hysteros).
Most commonly observing this bizarre behavior in those femmes living sex-free lifestyles: postulants, virgins and widows…along with unfortunate married ladies whose husbands would not—or could not—satisfy their carnal appetites, Greek physician Galen (120something to 200 CE, which is something like AD but supposedly more PC) attributed “womb furie” to sexual deprivation. His prescribed treatment was manual pussy massage. “Arising from the touch of the genital organs required by the treatment, there follows twitchings accompanied at the same time by pain and pleasure...from that time she is free of all the evil she felt,” Galen decreed. Amen to that.
Ironically, vibrators, as we know them today, are the happy byproduct of an unintentional equation that combined two of the seven deadly sins: greed and sloth, resulting in inspired invention. Manually stimulating female patients to “paroxysm” continued to be en vogue well into the 19th Century, however bringing a woman to climax by hand took both patience and wherewithal. Medical “wisdom” of the day classed approximately 75 percent of women as “hysterical.” The condition was considered chronic, meaning it could be treated, but not cured. Practitioners surmised that must be a way to turn a tedious activity into a lucrative gash cow, but how? Eventually, they hit upon the notion that to get the most bang for their clients’ bucks, they’d need a device that would allow them perform treatments on a conveyor-belt principle: get ’em in, get ’em off, and get ’em out the door, lickety-split. In 1883, Brit physician, Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville conceived and delivered to market the “Perceteur,” and thus, the vibrator was born.
The first vibes, much like first-generation computers, were bulky, obtuse and not meant for personal use. Remember the classic 1957 Tracy/Hepburn comedy, Desk Set? Electronic brain, EMERAC, swallows up almost an entire office floor, at the cost of untold thousands of dollars. Fifty years later, in real life, you can buy a 4-gig lipstick-shaped flash drive for under $20 bucks (which, by the way, bears a sinfully striking resemblance to Topco’s Incognito Lipstick Vibe).
Imagine yourself strapped to a cumbersome wooden table boasting a crotch-level cutout in which a nefarious steam-powered sphere spins maniacally at your clit. Shuddering shades of Goldfinger! “The Manipulator,” introduced in the 1870s, was just such an object d’horreur. Also popular at the time were hydrotherapy treatments that often involved aiming a high-velocity water hoses at a woman’s delicate private parts. Yikes!
By the end of the 19th Century, a plethora of vibrators had hit the scene. One manufacturer, Weiss, offered a snazzy battery-operated tool that featured a menu of interchangeable “vibratodes.” In addition to hand-held hysteria banishers, a savvy physician could avail himself of a variety of electric devices, from ponderous floor-standing models to the loopy Carpenter vibrator, which hung from the ceiling, like an absurd erotogenic trapeze.
From an early age, however, we are taught discretion. Even in an increasingly sex-positive culture, society dictates that openly pleasuring ourselves in public is taboo, but by rendering masturbation illicit, have we actually increased its allure? Undoubtedly.
Outlawed activity combined with advancing technology has incited fertile minds to seek out ever-more-cunning permutations of bliss-inducing devices. From discrete lap-loving accessories such as Pipedream’s Remote Control Tiger Panty that can be secreted under the most staid business suit, to the bulky-but-beloved Hitachi Magic Wand (a.k.a.: “the world’s most popular vibrator”), the devilishly clever Infrared Massager from California Exotic to Lady Calston’s saucy “ultra-realistic, flesh-like” Mini Tongue, the galaxy of delicious, delightful, wiggling, diddling toys continues to expand eXXXponentially.
Of course, that is now…but what of then?
The development of modern female sexual mores can be traced at least as far back as ancient Greece, when Hippocrates conjectured that women who complained of nervousness, fluid retention, insomnia and poor appetite suffered from a blockage in the womb, which he believed to be a mysterious organ that, much like a gypsy tinker, traveled around the body with no fixed address and suspect intentions. The condition, known as “womb furie” or “hysteria,” is derived from the Greek word for womb (hysteros).
Most commonly observing this bizarre behavior in those femmes living sex-free lifestyles: postulants, virgins and widows…along with unfortunate married ladies whose husbands would not—or could not—satisfy their carnal appetites, Greek physician Galen (120something to 200 CE, which is something like AD but supposedly more PC) attributed “womb furie” to sexual deprivation. His prescribed treatment was manual pussy massage. “Arising from the touch of the genital organs required by the treatment, there follows twitchings accompanied at the same time by pain and pleasure...from that time she is free of all the evil she felt,” Galen decreed. Amen to that.
Ironically, vibrators, as we know them today, are the happy byproduct of an unintentional equation that combined two of the seven deadly sins: greed and sloth, resulting in inspired invention. Manually stimulating female patients to “paroxysm” continued to be en vogue well into the 19th Century, however bringing a woman to climax by hand took both patience and wherewithal. Medical “wisdom” of the day classed approximately 75 percent of women as “hysterical.” The condition was considered chronic, meaning it could be treated, but not cured. Practitioners surmised that must be a way to turn a tedious activity into a lucrative gash cow, but how? Eventually, they hit upon the notion that to get the most bang for their clients’ bucks, they’d need a device that would allow them perform treatments on a conveyor-belt principle: get ’em in, get ’em off, and get ’em out the door, lickety-split. In 1883, Brit physician, Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville conceived and delivered to market the “Perceteur,” and thus, the vibrator was born.
The first vibes, much like first-generation computers, were bulky, obtuse and not meant for personal use. Remember the classic 1957 Tracy/Hepburn comedy, Desk Set? Electronic brain, EMERAC, swallows up almost an entire office floor, at the cost of untold thousands of dollars. Fifty years later, in real life, you can buy a 4-gig lipstick-shaped flash drive for under $20 bucks (which, by the way, bears a sinfully striking resemblance to Topco’s Incognito Lipstick Vibe).
Imagine yourself strapped to a cumbersome wooden table boasting a crotch-level cutout in which a nefarious steam-powered sphere spins maniacally at your clit. Shuddering shades of Goldfinger! “The Manipulator,” introduced in the 1870s, was just such an object d’horreur. Also popular at the time were hydrotherapy treatments that often involved aiming a high-velocity water hoses at a woman’s delicate private parts. Yikes!
By the end of the 19th Century, a plethora of vibrators had hit the scene. One manufacturer, Weiss, offered a snazzy battery-operated tool that featured a menu of interchangeable “vibratodes.” In addition to hand-held hysteria banishers, a savvy physician could avail himself of a variety of electric devices, from ponderous floor-standing models to the loopy Carpenter vibrator, which hung from the ceiling, like an absurd erotogenic trapeze.
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