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Vibes, we know them, we love them. But, how much do we know about their history? While there’s some debate about their intended use and design, allow me to do the work for you. Welcome to the history of the vibe, how this device came about, and the evolutions it went through to get us to where we are today.
Art imitates life.
Some of you may be familiar with Hysteria , a 2011 film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. The movie depicts the vibrator as a medical device created by a physician to treat hysteria in women by inducing paroxysm; a sudden attack or outburst of emotion. Hindsight has taught us that this ‘outburst’ was likely an orgasm. For those who aren’t familiar, in the 19th century, hysteria was a diagnosis given to women experiencing ungovernable emotional excess, considered to temporarily alter their state of mind and emotions. We now know that this diagnosis was a bullshit product of a misogynist society, one that would rather create a disease to diagnose discontented women, rather than acknowledge their obvious suffering as members of a society that granted them no rights to their own lives.
Maines supplies a hypothesis.
In Hysteria, the doctors treat hysteria by using their hands. However, when they start developing carpal tunnel, the doctors are forced to find a tool that will allow them to safely continue their treatment. And while the film isn’t exceedingly accurate, this delightfully entertaining story was pulled from Rachel Maines’ book, The Technology of Orgasm (1998). Maines’ proposed that Victorian physicians had created the vibrator to treat hysteria in female patients. And while her sources and references were challenged, Maines stated that the ideas presented were nothing more than a hypothesis; that people felt compelled to believe it as factually accurate.
A brief history of the vibrator
While its origins seem murky, let’s go over what we do know to be true:
What both Maines and the movie got right is that the vibrator was first created in the 1880s by the British physician Dr Mortimer Granville.
While it would be fun to believe a doctor created and used a tool to masturbate female patients to relieve them of hysteria, there’s no supporting evidence that the vibrator was created with women in mind – or that practitioners ever used them on women.
The diaries of Dr Granville actually show him advising against the use of the vibrator on women. Instead, the device was recommended for the treatment of pain, headaches, irritability, indigestion, constipation and sexual dysfunction in men.
Now, please don’t be discouraged if you were an avid fan of the hysteria hypothesis. After all, there’s no evidence to say that women in the Victorian era weren’t getting off using the first vibrator. But, we now know that vibrators weren’t initially created for women and, for a long time, not marketed to them. We most likely got where we are now from discovering their pleasurable potential and spreading the word among a trusted network.
Vibrators for sexual use.
The earliest recorded vibrator for sexual use was the Hygeia in 1903; a vibratory appliance for men and women, marketed and made available to both customers. This was quite bold at the time, and led the way for other vibrator products advertised over the course of the next year. These were often promoted to women as beauty products and aids for pain. In 1915, the American Medical Association (AMA) released a statement, declaring vibrators to be a fraudulent product, not the cure-all medical devices they were once marketed to be. And that any effects experienced by the user were purely psychological, rather than physical. After losing support from the medical industry, manufacturers needed to figure out a new purpose for their products to start selling again.
Enter, The Polar Cub.
This notable 1920s vibrator was marketed as a superior beauty product for women, used to not only change and shape their face, but their entire body. As you can imagine, The Polar Club missed the mark on the beauty-front. But, as an exciting new, orgasm-summoning electric device, it was likely much more successful. It was not until the 1950s that vibrators started to be used and distributed as pleasure devices, and not until the ’60s that they were sold and marketed as such. And even though that marketing was highly controversial for the time, it was often through suggestive language and images.
That historic vibrator scene.
The ’70s marked the birth of a sex toy that’s still around today, mostly unchanged and widely adored; the Hitachi Magic Wand. Although Hitachi did not create it or market it as a female pleasure device but rather a portable massager for athletic injuries, it very quickly gained underground fame as the best clitoral stimulator one could acquire. Despite its success, once news of its most popular use made its way back to Japan, Hitachi removed its name from the product, leaving it as the enigmatic Magic Wand. Featuring in an episode of Sex and the City in 2001, the Magic Wand leapt from the underground and into mainstream media, gaining stratospheric levels of fame and recognition. But, this wasn’t the first – nor would it be the last – time that SATC showcased a popular sex toy.
A design that will go down in history.
While this design has come leaps and bounds (just check out our rabbit vibrators ), never underestimate the power of showing a vibrator on television. If you’ve visited our physical store, here in Fitzroy, you may have noticed a display cabinet of old vibrators that we affectionately call the vibrator museum. In it, we have the original Rabbit: a toy that prompts instant flashbacks for our customers, back to a time when they were all the rage.
In 1998, SATC did an absolute service to the folks over at Vibratex by featuring their toy, The Rabbit: the first ever phallic, dual stimulator to go on the market. During this period, a lot of toys were manufactured in Japan, and to avoid obscenity laws they were designed to resemble animals in bright colours. So, in addition to the Rabbit, there was The Beaver, The Kangaroo and The Turtle; all made with an internal part for vaginal stimulation and an external part for clitoral stimulation. Till this day, customers still ask us for, “something akin to the toy they showed in Sex and the City!”.
Today’s vibrator marketplace.
The 1980s marked the beginning of the mainstream production and marketing of vibrators, as well as the widening of the spectrum of what was available and for what purpose. So, where are we now? For a very long time, sex toys were made of hard plastic and battery operated, and those that were soft were often made of toxic materials. But, as the distribution and purchase of pleasure devices becomes less taboo, more rigorous standards apply to improve the quality of the toys being manufactured. That said, the industry is still wildly under-regulated, and regulations differ country-to-country, with some manufacturers bypassing restrictions simply by adjusting their wording. But, for the most part, a majority of modern sex toys are made out of silicone, a bodysafe and non-porous material. It is able to be moulded into many different shapes and textures, and there are options from extremely hard and unmoving to soft, squishy and skin-like.
The future of vibrators
It is safe to say that we have come a long way since the first vibrator. (We’ve come a long way since the Rabbit!) But, that’s not to say that we do not have further to go.
More diversity by design.
Looking back a decade, you’d find that most penetrative sex toys were large, straight and anatomically inspired (think: flesh coloured and vein-laden). This might’ve been due to an industry reflective of this anatomy: one predominantly ruled by and catering for cis men. Today’s designs move further away from being purely phallic or dick-like. Customer desires cannot be assumed and certainly don’t take on one singular form. The importance of options cannot be understated. When our devices are expansive and genuinely engage with the customer’s nuanced desires, only then are our toys actually fit for purpose: pleasure seeking and serving.
Damn fine regulations.
Industry-wide regulations for manufacturing quality could do with some improvement. From design to supply chain and even disposal, there are opportunities for industry-leaders to also lead the way in driving higher standards for manufacturing. These toys are being fucked, sucked and lovingly careessed by our bodies, and so we should demand the highest possible standards for our lovers and ourselves.
Heteronormativity ain’t the norm.
The natural world is diverse by nature. Our boards and executives need to better reflect the people they serve. Which means the presence of cis, and queer and BIPOC and neurodivergent and differently abled bodies, to make more equitable business decisions. If we continue running things ‘as we always have’, we risk relevancy, genuine connection, or worse – standing behind another problematic male spokesperson.
Binary design.
Pink, pastel and petals for women and unflinching, imperialist-inspired designs for men. This isn’t a ’90s gender-reveal, this is a fucking sex toy. Let the colourways and art direction reflect the expressive, exciting and nuanced abilities, bodies and identities of its fanbase.
Crashing the conservative market.
Banks are still highly conservative discriminatory. Whether you’re a budding company wanting to create and manufacture toys, or open a brick and mortar sensuality shop, it is extremely difficult to secure financing or investment within the sex tech industry. Startups, especially women-led companies, have their work cut-out for them with only 4% of investor capital going to all female-founded teams ( Smart Company, 2023 ). Of course, there are still many places where the distribution and purchase of pleasure devices is prohibited, including: Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia and even the US state of Alabama.
The world is constantly evolving and in a state of fluidity.
While there’s still much to do when it comes to leading, funding, designing, manufacturing and marketing sex toys, we’ve come so far in the last century alone.
What remains important is that we are working towards the good and towards the better. I hear many customers marvel at how much the market has changed since their days with the Rabbit. And isn’t it exciting to wonder what it will look like in another 40 years?
Further reading
https://honisoit.com/2022/08/massagers-cum-toys-the-reverberating-history-of-the-vibrator/
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/opinion/women-founded-startups-secured-4-3-5-billion-funding-2023/
Feature Image Credit:
By Liedbeck, Harald 1851-1920 - https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/7b/f7/5345024cf65e661b2b176a914a82.jpg Gallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0051766.html Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-29): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sk9ggp84CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, Link
