Boobs to the right of you; phallic objects to the left of you; sexual innuendo in front of you. This, my friends, is a pretty typical subway ride in New York. The chance of your train coming on time is much smaller than the chance of coming across an in-your-face ad for breast augmentation or a trying-embarrassingly-hard-to-be-edgy poster for a dating app.
I’m not complaining about this, by the way. I’m not clutching my pearls here. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about subway ads because whenever I take the train I do what every normal person does: ignore everything around me and stare at my phone. I’m just bringing this up to provide a little context and demonstrate that the modern New York public transport system is not what anyone would describe as a puritanical environment. The Museum of Sex has had no problem advertising on Gotham buses; erectile dysfunction medication brands have had no concerns about using phallic imagery on subway ads; plastic surgery companies have had little issue papering train cars with cleavage shots. You know who has had a problem getting their ads up, though? Female-focused companies. Thinx, the period-proof underwear brand, had to fight to get ads on New York transit. Women-centred sexual health companies have also been prevented from advertising on trains.
It looks as if things are changing, though. After almost three years of legal wrangling, a women-owned sex toy company called Dame has just won the right to run ads for its fancy vibrators on New York transit. Don’t get too excited: the posters are very tame and, to be honest, slightly weird. (A sample tagline: “It feels like I’m growing flowers within me.”) Still, they mark an important step towards the normalisation of female pleasure. To quote some previous Dame ad copy: “Thank you from the bottom of my vulva.”
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
