Consuming Eroticism

Abstract

This ethnographic study examines how women and men negotiate their public presentations and gender performances in the context of an adult novelty shop. Building on Goffman’s perspective of impression management and West and Zimmerman’s concept of “doing gender,” this study adds to the growing body of literature on gender performance to show how in the highly sexualized space of the adult novelty store, individuals manage their self-presentations in ways that both sustain and challenge societal notions of hegemonic masculinity, emphasized femininity, and compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from this study can better illuminate how men and women actively negotiate the situatedness in doing gender in the sphere of the erotic reality. Such settings as the adult novelty shop can help to illuminate answers to the question of when and under what conditions do gendered selves matter.

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