For stores in pedestrian-heavy neighbourhoods, shop windows are often the first point of contact with consumers. Local sex shops are no different. They need to get people’s attention and no one should be shocked when a sex shop window display represents what inside.
A hullaballoo surrounding Centretown sex store Wicked Wanda’s began when store manager Mel Lockhart placed Barbie dolls in the store window last December.
He positioned the dolls in scenarios inspired by E. L. James’ popular erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey.
Unlike the dolls that litter many parents’ houses, these dolls were clothed (albeit scantily) and, as per usual, they had no genitals. They did, however, have doll-sized bondage gear.
The display scandalized some local residents, and people came to the store from as far away as Orleans and Kanata to complain that this sex shop display in Ottawa’s gay village was corrupting youth.
“It was great for business,” Lockhart says, especially leading up to the holidays. He takes pride in making his windows artistic, and always covers nipples and genitals as required by Ottawa bylaws. Nevertheless, people still complain.
“Even the optometrist has a mannequin in a thong and sunglasses in Montreal’s Pride Village,” he says, describing Ottawa as a conservative city.
In 2010, another Centretown sex shop, Wilde’s, had a sign advertising anal douches in its front window. The products are used to rinse body cavities and are sold in many drug stores.
A bylaw officer told storeowner Robert Giacobbi to take down the sign.
Instead, he covered it with another sign, reading “Censored by City of Ottawa anal bylaw,” which may have been a bit much, but it got his point across. Sex shops have the right to advertise, too.
Many of the complaints in both these situations were about children seeing the window displays.
The trouble is, sexual displays are ubiquitous and easy for children to access. Look to almost any of the popular music videos children watch, or the jokes on popular TV shows for examples. If a child visits the mall, store windows for La Senza or Victoria’s Secret display heavily-photoshopped images of models in lingerie. If the models existed to-scale, they would probably be 16 feet tall.
The main difference between these depictions and those in sex shop windows is that many sex shops cater to alternative sexual preferences, so the lingerie may be more vinyl and leather than satin and lace.
Arguing that it’s worse for children to know about “kinky” sex is disingenuous. It reinforces stigma against acts that deserve no stigma when practiced between consenting adults.
It is a way to justify one’s own discomfort by preserving the status quo.
This status quo suggests that sexual pleasure is male-centred and some desires are “normal,” while others are seen as different at best and at worse wrong. Children are inevitably exposed to these norms.
We can follow the example of parts of the United Kingdom and have sex shop windows boarded or postered over, or we can develop a more balanced image of sexuality.
If children have questions, parents can do what they are inevitably skilled at anyways: guide them with age-appropriate information.
Children will find out someday, and being weird about store windows only makes things worse. (When you tell a child not to look at something as you walk by, what do you honestly expect her to do?)
In the meantime, no one should be surprised when sex shops display sexy things.