Unicorns, ice-cream cones, little pigs… the cutification of sex toys

Photographs by Jess Hand

Cute sex toys have had a clear place in the collective imagination for decades. Vibratex’s Rabbit Pearl is famously cute. It twirls, it buzzes, it has adorable bunny ears, and pearls. It’s pink. The Rabbit debuted in 1986, but its popularity skyrocketed in 1998 after featuring in the first season of Sex and the City. Watching Charlotte turn away from earthly life in order to indulge in the pleasures of the Rabbit unleashed something in viewers. Women flocked to sex shops asking for their chosen pleasure aid by name. Vibratex’s annual sales jumped by 700%. The Rabbit became a pop culture sensation.

Before this moment, the type of customer one imagined walking into a sex shop was a “raincoater”: a man wrapped in shame and self-loathing or, at best, focused only on a discreet transaction, buying something dark and phallic. This idea of the sex-toy consumer may have shifted, but the need for discretion has not. According to sex-toy retailers, it remains the primary consideration for consumers.

After the Rabbit became an international bestseller, however, and sex toys became easier to buy online, we began to accept the reality of a woman naming her pleasures and going out to find them. The Rabbit wasn’t just female-coded, it was girl-coded. But while its cuteness has made the toy a fixture in any well-stocked pleasure chest, originally it was only cute for legal reasons. Japan-based Vibratex wasn’t allowed to manufacture sex toys due to obscenity laws – the rabbit shape allowed the vibe to slip through a loophole. It was a toy, in the general sense; it just happened to have other applications.

The ice-cream cone vibrator reminded me of a realistic, silicone ice-cream cone dildo that Something Squishy Toys launched in 2020, a staple at Other Nature, one of my favourite sex shops in Berlin. On a sunny day, I strolled into the shop to explore its cuter offerings. At a central display of personal lubricant (lips, nips and the rest), embellished with playful erotic astrology prints and a deck of cards that helps jumpstart sexual communication, an older woman was exploring the lubes as if she was at the perfume counter at Selfridges. There was the Something Squishy dildo – it looked like something I don’t want melting on my skin, but the shape and rainbow-cuteness of the toy was answering a big question for pleasure-seekers who aren’t into traditional phallic shapes: a customer entered asking, “Do you have any toys that aren’t… anatomical?”

Cute is in the name of indie toy line Cute Little Fuckers (CLF), which launched on Kickstarter in 2019. CLF’s gender-inclusive toys (like Starsi, their quietly vibrating grinning orange starfish creature, and Shimmer, which reminds me of a hungry purple axolotl that wants to get inside you) look like whimsical characters, each with their own backstory. These toys, by design, don’t tell you how to use them. It’s up to the user how they want to play with their fins, tentacles and textures. They’re a talking point at Other Nature, not least because, as their spokesperson Kitty May says, “Toys with faces tend to be an immediate yes or no for people. For some it sparks an affectionate feeling.”

There’s a word for that feeling of cuteness from the Japanese: moé. You know the surge of affection you feel for that floppy golden labradoodle puppy bounding up to you in the park, pink tongue and eyes glistening? That’s moé. It’s physical. It’s a feeling that transports you. It takes you to a place of wonder and puts you in touch with your inner child. May says this cuteness is a different kind of cute to, say, the penis-shaped novelties one might find at a hen party, but everyone’s version of cute has a place in the panoply of human desire. “We take sexuality seriously, because we don’t take ourselves too seriously. And that’s the tone that our toys hit: sexuality and pleasure are super important, and the exploration of them can be super playful and joyful.”

The space for exploration that a cute aesthetic can inspire is also something that sex educator and erotic romance author Shakira Scott, aka Scotty Unfamous, has noticed. I called Scott in London and the frank, funny and glamorous effervescence that I know from her videos filled my kitchen. Scott says the appeal of cute toys lies in the fact they’re “less aggressive, which is something that feeds into femininity and softness. Plus, there’s a cool factor to cute toys.” Like with the viral rose toy, it’s about participating in a pop culture moment. There’s also a third-wave feminist cool to being interested in self-pleasure, Scott says. If a toy provides pleasure and looks great, that’s the sweet spot. And, of course, it’s tantalising to have something on display that’s hiding a juicy secret. On a recent trip to Japan, Scott was drawn in by cute sex toys that were “disguised as something else, something pretty”. Like a star-shaped suction toy that also could be placed on a stand to project stars on to the ceiling – it offers pleasure in a number of ways.

However, she sees a shadow side in this girlishness. Cuteness in the form of “the whole Lolita thing, which has bled into a lot of fashion houses, too.” Designers such as Simone Rocha and Sandy Liang use pearls, puff-sleeves, bows, ruffles, flowers. Like Britney Spears dancing in her schoolgirl uniform, it’s not that innocent. “Cute” and “conservative” – in this case conservative Christian values – can sometimes go hand in hand. It infantilises, defangs.

The massive swoon for the “romantasy” book genre (a combination of romance and fantasy, novels featuring horny mythical creatures and fantastical worlds) is also having a big effect on what consumers are asking for, like Sex and the City did decades ago. These are toys that speak to other worlds and universes, to the desires that can be discovered through deep imaginative play.

And where else but in sexuality do adults get to simply… play? Lack of resources, time and space have an impact on how and when we can devote ourselves to pleasure. Scott noted the pressures of the housing crisis and the discretion people might want to maintain around their sexual lives in shared living spaces. If you can’t have a massive dildo on your nightstand, you might get away with a little panda. And whatever your domestic or economic status, talking about sex always comes with a sense of risk, no matter how practised you are in having that kind of conversation. A partner might take one look at the Rabbit’s phallic vibrator plus clit stimulator and wonder, am I not enough? But a colourful, fruit-shaped toy, Scott says, might feel like a “lower point of entry”.

Intimacy coach, pornographer and advice columnist Jessica Stoya sees the benefit of cute toys: “I think people are seeking out novelty and joy in the way that is most available to them.” In her decades working with human sexuality, which spans award-winning filmmaking to running an online magazine, Stoya has developed a different vision for pillow talk. We caught up on my balcony in the sun – she snapped Instax photos and talked about the weird and surprising things our bodies do during sex, and how good it feels when you know how to welcome that. Rather than relying on cute sex toys, “I think a much better way to introduce joy and novelty is through embracing the funny, awkward moments of sex and laughing about them”.

But such ease around desire isn’t often second nature, especially in a society where sex and shame sit side by side. We sometimes need a helping hand. Like Scott, Stoya is trying to engage people in this conversation online, where they have both built a massive community on social media platforms. But speaking about sex on Instagram, even for educational purposes, is a risky proposition. The community guidelines that outline what’s acceptable are still murky. One false step and your account can get shut down.

Cuteness, then, becomes strategic. Making the very language of sex cute is part of how creators working with this subject evade the censors. On social media, prawn and corn emojis have long been stand-ins for the word “porn”. The letters s-e-x are avoided. It’s “seggs”, “seggsy”, “seggsuality”. This cutesy baby talk is currently necessary in order to allow mature conversations about sex and desire to take place. Cuteness here is a kind of armour, to avoid catching the censor’s eye and finding yourself deplatformed, where the conversation you’re opening up gets shut down, the community you’ve built gets razed. One of the reasons that the Rose sex toy got so much traction online is because it is unassuming. Who knows what it can pass as? Maybe it’s a high-concept bud vase. Or a stand for a single pencil. You can get away with a lot if you’re cute about it.

Cute toys reflect how the internet has become increasingly enclosed, and how that shapes our lives. They show the stronghold that Japanese pop culture has had in the West. They reveal shifting romantic and erotic norms, a certain decolonisation of desire, and what feels like a collective impulse to imagine better, alternate worlds and ways of being. In dire times, escapism does more than help us cope, it helps us dream. We know this version of reality isn’t the only one. That sweet unicorn, that juicy strawberry and all those Cute Little Fuckers are part of how we conjure the future.

And, more than armour, cuteness can be a portal. I get a certain giddy feeling when I see a unicorn suction toy – plump and in pretty pastels with a round little mouth and jutting tongue. The unicorn activates something in me that’s one part body horror and two parts put-your-lips-to-mine.

It’s a welcome tension, a sort of momentary unease around the unknown mingled with desire. What are my desires like when they’re unstuck from human anatomy, gender, and the real world? Sometimes it’s best to just dive down the rabbit hole and see what unfolds.

Water
Showerheads designed for pleasure with jets that provide stimulation via one-handed control

Tech
Toys that take their design cues from tech gadgets. A bit like making love to your PlayStation

Steel
Sleek, stylish, firm and free of gadgetry, like the Njoy Pure Wand. Can also be used hot or cold

Unicorn toys all by Unihorn; Cat Paws, Squirrel, Piggy all from Cyberdog; Panda, Ice-Cream Cone from Sinful; Heart from Ann Summers; Bunny from Hedonist