IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v54y2017i3p582-599.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sex and the city: Branding, gender and the commodification of sex consumption in contemporary retailing

Author

Listed:
  • Louise Crewe

    (University of Nottingham, UK)

  • Amber Martin

    (Queen Mary University of London, UK)

Abstract

This paper explores the changing spatiality of the sex retail industry in England and Wales, from highly regulated male-orientated sex shops, pushed to the legislative margins of the city and social respectability, towards the emergence of unregulated female-orientated ‘erotic boutiques’ located visibly in city centres. This is achieved through an exploration of the oppositional binaries of perceptions of sex shops as dark, dirty, male-orientated, and ‘seedy’ and erotic boutiques as light, female-orientated and stylish, showing how such discourses are embedded in the physical space, design and marketing of the stores and the products sold within them. More specifically, the paper analyses how female-orientated sex stores utilise light, colour and design to create an ‘upscaling’ of sexual consumerism and reflects on what the emergence of up-scale female spaces for sexual consumption in the central city might mean in terms of theorisations of the intersectionality between agency, power, gender and class. The paper thus considers how the shifting packaging and presentation of sex-product consumption in the contemporary city alters both its acceptability and visibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Louise Crewe & Amber Martin, 2017. "Sex and the city: Branding, gender and the commodification of sex consumption in contemporary retailing," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(3), pages 582-599, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:3:p:582-599
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098016659615
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098016659615
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098016659615?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Phil Hubbard & Spike Boydell & Penny Crofts & Jason Prior & Glen Searle, 2013. "Noxious Neighbours? Interrogating the Impacts of Sex Premises in Residential Areas," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(1), pages 126-141, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doris Sommer & Pier Luigi Sacco, 2019. "Optimism of the Will. Antonio Gramsci Takes in Max Weber," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-31, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Witten, Karen & Kearns, Robin & Carroll, Penelope, 2015. "Urban inclusion as wellbeing: Exploring children's accounts of confronting diversity on inner city streets," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 349-357.
    2. Rhianne Fiolka & Zack Marshall & Anna Kramer, 2022. "Banishment through Branding: From Montréal’s Red Light District to Quartier des Spectacles," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-20, September.
    3. Taggert J. Brooks & Brad R. Humphreys & Adam Nowak, 2020. "Strip Clubs, “Secondary Effects” and Residential Property Prices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 48(3), pages 850-885, September.
    4. Taggert J. Brooks & Brad R. Humphreys & Adam Nowak, 2016. "Strip Clubs, “Secondary Effects,†and Residential Property Prices," Working Papers 16-17, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:3:p:582-599. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.