Zoë Ligon, CEO and founder of Spectrum Boutique and self-titled “Duchess of Dildos,” discusses her journey to sex positivity and how everyone can ensure their own sexual wellness.
You’re very sex positive. What was your experience growing up? What education resources were available to you?
I grew up in a household where information was available to me. I attended schools with sex education and felt comfortable asking my mom questions, but I also endured a lot of trauma which sadly colors the way I look back on my childhood. My parents were separated and I lived mostly with my dad as a teenager because he was closer to my school. I didn’t know that the icky feeling was something real, and no one wants to believe that their own father is abusing them.
So, I just waited and counted down the days until I turned 18 and left home immediately. I was always trying to avoid anything that was remotely sexual because I had to compartmentalize that part of myself. It’s stuff I’m still unpacking in therapy, and while I’m mad that I had to spend my formative years walking on eggshells at home, I know that all those years were an incubation period leading up to who I am today.
Today, I’m just thankful for my freedom and reclamation of my body, and for having a career that allows me to speak directly to people who endured things like I did. We all have some sort of trauma. Even if it isn’t a specific event in our lives, we are all sent very harmful messages about sexuality and our bodies through media and we all have unlearning to do. I like to educate as a peer, as a person who can say, “Hey, I was terrified of vibrators once, too. I didn’t think I could have an orgasm. I thought I was broken. You have the power to change that, and it’s going to be difficult, but you aren’t broken. You can do whatever you want.”
What was your first introduction to sex toys?
I walked into a sub-basement sex toy store in the West Village to get a pair of handcuffs as a gag gift for a friend when I was 18 or 19, and the dildos just sang to me from the shelves. I had a magnetic attraction to toys, but I was still afraid of them. I’d buy a toy, then let it sit in my drawer for weeks or months before I’d have the bravery to use it.
Toys were tools that forced me to confront my body, and at the time I didn’t understand why I had so many walls up. It was a wall I slowly chiseled down through trial and error, and it’s a wall I will probably keep chiseling down throughout the rest of my life. I’ve had toys in my life for almost a decade, and I’m still encountering new items and space that bring me discomfort. But today, I am able to greet the discomfort with the knowledge that I’m growing when I work through it instead of dismissing it.
Toys are truly a part of me. They’re a huge piece of my sexuality, and they allowed me to experience pleasure when I couldn’t find any other way to.
What was your experience the first time you used a sex toy with a partner?
My first experience using toys with a partner was performative. I would send sexual selfies, or use toys during sex to be an “adventurous” sex partner. This was self-imposed – no one made me do anything with toys; I just thought that I could be a more appealing partner if I was up for anything.
Once I discovered that wand massagers were my thing, it took a while to use those with a partner. I had some pretty awesome partners help me get more comfortable with speaking up for myself and my needs, but even as recently as a couple years ago, I’d stifle my desire to use a wand during partnered sex to avoid bruising my male partner’s ego.
Now I’m in a relationship where not only am I able to and encouraged to use toys, but he also uses them too. He even reviews them in our podcast, Hot Brain.
What advice do you have for people selecting their first sex toy?
Regardless of who you are, what your experience level is, and what your gender is, toys can take a bit trial and error. I always recommend that people go for a versatile toy so that if they don’t like using it one way, they can use it other ways. Basically, anything that gives you options is a great place to start.
There is no one “best” toy out there. Go with your gut! What stands out to you and call out from the shelves or web page? Maybe it’s the color that makes you feel good and attracted to a toy. That’s totally a valid way to dip your toes into toys. It’s completely normal for your first toy pick to not be the thing that blows your mind. Just shop for yourself, not for what you think someone else wants you to want.
What do you hope to see more of in the sex toy industry as we progress forward?
Diversity. Not just in the products themselves, but in the brains behind the brands and products. The sex toy world is still dominated by old white men. Besides the fact that everyone deserves representation in this industry, it’s truly not helping anyone to have such a homogenous population designing sex toys.
We also need more transparency. I would never lie about a product in order to sell it or make a profit, but many “progressive” shops still do that. Part of the reason I disliked the first shop I worked at so much is that I was encouraged to sell things that had a good price margin or incentive from a brand, but my job was to help people pick things that would make them feel good. You can’t accomplish that when all you care about is money or the brand business relationships you have incentives to push.
What’s the best advice you have for finding sexual wellness?
Take it slow, be gentle with yourself, and listen to your instincts. We go about our journeys in many different ways, but it always helps to have a strong foundation in your sexual relationship with yourself. If we map out our own desire first, partnered sex is more pleasurable and easier to navigate.
Sexual wellness is more than just pleasure and relationships, it’s about communication and awareness – picking up on subtle cues of the body, checking in with your and your partner’s head, heart, and gut over and over again – and setting aside time to connect intimately without there necessarily being sex actively happening. Sex doesn’t look like it does in porn or the movies – that’s entertainment! Make your own sex from scratch and follow your intuition, not the social scripts society has laid out for us.