Minnesota

Woman-Friendly Sex Shops: By The Numbers

Babeland, New York's Lower East Side location (Yelp)

Babeland, New York’s Lower East Side location (Yelp)

Dell Williams, who died last week at age 92, is credited with founding the first woman-friendly sex shop in the nation. Her store Eve’s Garden, founded in 1974, was born out of a need for a safe space for women to embrace and grow their sexuality and respective needs and desires (as well as selling high-end toys and products).

Williams was very much ahead of her time in that respect. Over forty years later, we now have many woman-friendly sex stores. They tend to be founded in same spirit of celebration and discovery of sexuality that Eve’s Garden was. Education and empowerment go hand-in-hand.

Here’s a timeline of how woman-friendly sex shops have evolved:

1970s: After gaining popularity in the gay community, The Pleasure Chest becomes more couple- (and woman-) friendly.

1974: Dell Williams opened Eve’s Garden, the nation’s first woman-friendly sex shop.

1977: Joani Blank opened the first Good Vibrations store in San Francisco.

1993: Noticing a niche needing to be filled, Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning founded Toys in Babeland in Seattle.

1998: Toys in Babeland opened a store in New York.

2003: The Smitten Kitten opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2005: Toys in Babeland changes its name to simply Babeland, to better reflect a sexually satisfying lifestyle.

2006: Good Vibrations opened a store in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was the fourth store total, and the first to open outside of California.

2009: Evy Cowan and Jeneen Doumitt opened She Bop in Portland, Oregon.

 

This is just a handful of woman-friendly sex shops.

It’s interesting to note that not only are these stores woman-friendly, but they were also founded by women. Clearly, it takes one to know one, in the case of knowing what women want in their sex toy shopping experience. There also appears to be a link between owning your sexuality and entrepreneurship. Very interesting!

 

Google Trends: “Vanilla Sex” vs. “Kinky Sex”

One image result from Googling 'kinky sex'

One image result from Googling ‘kinky sex’

I wanted to see how many times kinky sex was searched for online, so I decided to do a Google Trends comparison. I used “vanilla sex” as a search term since I figured that using plain “sex” would be too broad for my question. I searched only within the U.S. and used 2004-present as my timeframe.

Google Trends 'Vanilla Sex' vs. 'Kinky Sex'

Google Trends ‘Vanilla Sex’ vs. ‘Kinky Sex’

Surprisingly, the “vanilla sex” results (blue line) were much smaller than the “kinky sex” results (red line). My guess is that nobody really searches for vanilla sex (since you can get that pretty easily), and so people turn to the Internet to learn about kinky sex either for mere curiosity or are interested in pursuing it.

Let’s look at the results breakdown:

“Vanilla Sex” by Subregion:

'Vanilla Sex' by Subregion

‘Vanilla Sex’ by Subregion

Illinois heads up this list, with Pennsylvania and Michigan tying for second with 96%, and Massachusetts and New Jersey tying for fifth with 92%. New York places third with 94%, while California achieves 89% in ninth place. Texas brings up the rear with 86%.

“Vanilla Sex” by Metro:

'Vanilla Sex' by Metro

‘Vanilla Sex’ by Metro

Yeah, this doesn’t look comprehensive. I find it very hard to believe that New York is the only metro area Googling “vanilla sex,” considering I found that the same metro area was madly Googling sexy Halloween costumes last month.

Unless it’s a case where the numbers need to hit a certain threshold to become visible, this does not look viable. At all.

“Vanilla Sex” by City:

'Vanilla Sex' by City

‘Vanilla Sex’ by City

Chicago unsurprisingly tops this list, considering how Illinois topped the subregion list. New York and Los Angeles sit at third with 83% and fourth with 79%, respectively. Seattle, Atlanta and Houston have a three-way (heh) tie with 73%. San Francisco closes out the list with 57%, the lowest I’ve seen so far in doing these Google Trends.

 

“Kinky Sex” by Subregion:

'Kinky Sex' by Subregion

‘Kinky Sex’ by Subregion

Here’s where it gets interesting: All of the top states score at least 87%, which means these states have a big interest in kinky sex (nothing wrong with that, of course). Cueing the jokes about the South, Kentucky tops this list, with West Virginia a close second at 98%.

“Kinky Sex” by Metro:

'Kinky Sex' by Metro

‘Kinky Sex’ by Metro

Missouri’s St. Louis and Kansas City appear at #1 with 100% and #3 with 90%, respectively. Charlotte, NC sits between them with 92%.

Aside from that, the rest of the metro areas are scattered among Texas, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Ohio, California, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“Kinky Sex” by City:

'Kinky Sex' by City

‘Kinky Sex’ by City

Southern cities Tampa and Atlanta tie for first, with St. Louis coming in at third with 95%. The rest of the lis is scattered geographically.

 

Conclusions:

It’s difficult to draw any concrete conclusions from the findings. It appears that Googling kinky sex is widespread and not limited to any particular region, metro area and/or city.