| Summary: | The sex shop has existed as spatially Othered and ideologically transgressive. However, the last decades have witnessed both a literal and figurative move into a position of normalcy and legitimacy. Previous research conducted on this topic has covered this shift, and the importance of a “feminization” of the market for this to happen. While the previous research is extensive on the “new” sex shop, it has partly overlooked the hybridization of the traditional with the feminized. This essay has thus aimed to discern the trends of a “mixed-gender” sex shop, in order to both contribute to the understanding of the Swedish context as well as how class, gender, and past & present work as distinctions within this. The results show that a stereotypical femininity and masculinity is visually used by the store as tropes of distinction. As abstract ideals they converge in a rhetoric of an aspirational class, that sees knowledge as well as consumption as vital to a “sexual health”. However, while the commodities on offer are partly marketed with such sophistication, they are equally advertised as realistic resemblances of genitalia or parts of the body. Thus, the sophisticated consumption is diversified with a realistic, at times vulgar, address. The conclusive observation here is hence that the traditional sexuality-related consumption can coexist with a feminized version within one and the same store. Consequently, this essay sees that a plurality of desires is a part of the market’s continual expansion.
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