Macy Gray‘s latest song, “B.O.B,” is a beautiful love song. “He fits like a glove/ always up for love,” she sings. “I’d go out and kill/ for what he makes me feel.” The song captures the sincerity, vulnerability and passion we all want to feel… about our vibrators.
Yes, Macy Gray wrote a love song about her battery operated boyfriend, B.O.B. The novelty is not just the subject matter, but how whimsical and lighthearted the animated video is.
Breaking news: women masturbate and women have vibrators, so let’s all stop being so shocked by that. Macy Gray is a woman being forthright and assertive about her sexuality. The truth is that this “age of enlightenment” around vibrators has been going on for about twenty years. Sex toys became a metaphor for how women have been empowering themselves — providing themselves with agency over all things that matter — and represent the ultimate in female positivity since the late ’90s (at least).
But let’s not be naive. There are still a lot of prudes out there. Be it their religion or their insecurity about their own desires, as open-minded as we like to think everyone is, especially in this TMI, over-sharing age we live in, there are still those who are shocked by Gray’s song.
Personally, I thought we all did this and got over it when Miranda introduced us to “The Rabbit” on Sex and the City Season one. But as a psychologist, and a relationship expert, I’m always amazed at how many men who consider themselves to be feminists, who in every other area of their relationships are progressive, are still threatened by vibrators.
If that seems outrageous or fictitious to you, think about how some women react when they find out that their man masturbates to porn. They feel inadequate, “My butt will never look like hers.” Or threatened, “What? My breasts aren’t good enough for you?”
There are still too many men who don’t understand that women orgasm or worse, give themselves orgasms. There are plenty of men in this country who have not yet mastered clitoral stimulation and who think penetrative vaginal sex is all there is. And if a woman can’t get off like that, it’s her problem. This is why the culture of faking orgasms still exists. Women get off, and they enjoy getting off and they don’t always need a man to do it.
To quote sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, “Sex toys are common, completely mainstream and safe for use by young women.” A study published in TheJournal of Sexual Medicine found that 52.2 percent of women 23 to 60 years old have used sex toys either alone, or during intercourse with a partner. The study also found that women who use vibrators are more likely to exhibit other health-positive behaviors, like regular gynecological exams.
Sex therapists often suggest that grown-ass adult women who have never had orgasms go out and buy a vibrator and give it a whirl. I always recommend visiting the female owned and operated, Babeland, either online or via their well-lit, brick-and-mortar stores. You can also go get yourself that Magic Wand that pretended to be a back massager until it was outed as a vibrator. Or don’t get anything at all. Just like any other choice you make to do something, you’re free not to as well. And that is a choice made by many women who have sexual agency.
However, if you ask Macy Gray, she would agree that if you’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to have a vibrator, regardless of what you name it. She tells Elle, “You should have a Bob. You should have all kinds of shit. You shouldn’t be so quiet.”
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