Investors searching for the next big thing should look at vibrators and sex-ed talks, according to this starry-eyed business manifesto.
Debut author Barrica, a former venture capitalist and CEO and founder of the website O.school, argues that the world is sunk in a mire of sexual ignorance and dissatisfaction thanks to inadequate school sex-ed courses and society’s embarrassed reluctance to talk about sex. She sees a crying need for private companies to step in and supply a market for “sexual wellness” that she estimates could be worth $122 billion by 2026. Barrica extols business opportunities in two sectors: nice, respectable, female-friendly retail outlets selling sex aids like vibrators and pre-warmed lubricant dispensers—she praises San Francisco’s pioneering Good Vibrations boutique—and media sources providing frank but nonpornographic information on sex. (Her O.school site offers videos, livestreams, and comments by sex educators on many topics, including sexually transmitted infections, BDSM–related topics, and proper cunnilingus technique.) To get there, she warns, investors and entrepreneurs must surmount barriers, including venture capital firms’ limited-partner agreements with morals clauses and wary payment processors. The book concludes with a savvy primer on growing a sextech startup, including advice on scoring venture capital (“it takes 100 meetings for every one million dollars you want to raise”) and keeping your bank from freaking out about your business. (“Keep it vague.”) Barrica’s prose has the flavor of an investment prospectus—“By shifting the message away from prurience and toward wellness, it allows us to access a much broader market”—written from a very woke-capitalist perspective. She offers tips on trans-inclusive sextech terminology—don’t say “women,” say “vulva owners”—and bemoans the “orgasm gap” that sees straight women climaxing just 65% of the time compared with straight men’s 95%. Barrica’s unblushing confrontations with sociosexual issues—“No one is talking to their kids about responsible consumption of porn”—may make readers squirm, but they also remind us why we might need a website to talk about these things with kids so that we don’t have to. An impassioned and cogent, though boosterish, case for market-based sexual therapeutics.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0491-9
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Meet Norma Hazelton, connoisseur and collector of swizzle sticks. If you're not impressed by a plastic Jackie Gleason long since separated from its maraschino cherry, take a look at Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade and a collector of Studebakers (re the carmaker's Dictator line of the 1930s, he says: ``Dictator was a good name until Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. They dropped the Dictator line in 1937 because of them''). Among the 20 collections that Tuchman and photographer Brenner cast their eyes on are caches of Civil War memorabilia (a banjo, a musket, a toothbrush); aquarium furniture (a lot of mermaids); and representations of the Last Supper (a clock, a saltshaker, a funeral-home fan). Tuchman's text, mostly a pastiche of comments from the collectors themselves, is informative—and just glib enough to keep the whole book from feeling like a spooky visit to your mad Aunt Mabel's attic.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0360-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
A European woman who assumed the persona of a young male Tunisian student describes her remarkable journey into the Sahara in colorful and textured, albeit romanticized, vignettes. In 1897, Isabelle Eberhardt (The Oblivion Seekers, not reviewed), born and raised in Geneva, traveled with her mother to Tunis, where both converted to Islam. Eberhardt spent much of the rest of her life in Algeria; this work comes from notes she made during 1904 as they were later edited and published in France by Victor Barrucand. Despite this cleanup of the notes, some intriguing internal tensions remain: Eberhardt says her male persona (which Arabs respected, even when they saw through it) allows her to travel without attracting notice, but in a low moment she notes that she attracts disapproval. Near the Algeria-Morocco border, she muses with some pleasure that nobody knows precisely where the boundary is, yet soon (in one of the few hints at the region's volatility) she trades her Moroccan attire for Algerian to avoid annoying residents. When individuals and settings attract her eye she describes them vividly and concisely, whether she is passing a madman reciting verses from the Koran or taking tea with male students at a mosque. (Her garb ironically restricts her access to—and ability to learn about—women; interestingly, she seems not to mind.) Her observations on the play of light and color over the desert are made with an artist's eye, and her musings on travel and isolation reveal a pensive side. Yet far as she journeys, literally and metaphorically, she is still dogged by her prejudices: Jewish women cast ``provocative leers,'' and Jewish men possess ``insinuating and commercial abilities''; blacks can be ``repulsive'' and, when dancing, both ``childlike'' and ``barbarous.'' Though lacking a needed glossary for the many Arabic terms used, this slim volume makes a welcome addition to the information available on an extraordinary woman.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1994
ISBN: 0-7206-0889-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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