Sex shops around the country have experienced an increased demand for sex toys, bondage equipment and whips in the run-up to the release of the film version of EL James’s erotic blockbuster 'Fifty Shades of Grey’.
“We laid in a double supply of erotic accessories of the slightly kinkier variety,” Sabina Elvstam-Johns, the proprietor of the sex shop shop Lust in Copenhagen, told DR Nyheder. “Our customers are primarily asking for blindfolds, whips and anal sex toys like butt plugs.
Growing steadily
James’s books have sold over 100 million copies. Elvstram-Johns says she saw a jump in interest when the first book in the series was published in 2012. Male customers began turning up with very specific wish-lists from partners inspired by James’s prose.
“Our clientele has expanded ever since,” she said. “Even ‘Mr and Mrs Denmark’ now want to experiment.”
All in knots
Some shops are already reportedly sold out of items like the all-important butt plugs and penis rings.
The webshop lovejoy.dk has doubled its assortment over the past few weeks. Co-owner Lennart Øster said that it appears that all types of formerly taboo sexual practices are becoming mainstream.
Interest in bondage has increased in general,” Øster told DR Nyhder. “This applies to rougher items like rope, tape, whips and small paddles and softer toys like teasing feathers.”
Taboos shrinking
Mathilde Mackowski, a sex toy lecturer and co-founder of sinful.dk, said that 'Fifty Shades of Grey’ has brought things like bondage into the mainstream.
“The fact that we sit on the train or plane and show we are reading 'Fifty Shades of Grey' removes the taboo surrounding this kind of sex.”
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Øster warned that kinky sex novices should take things slowly and, like in the book, have a ‘safe-word’ that partners can use if things start to get too intense.
