New York Tribune 1913 ad for an early electric vibrator.
To the left is an early ad for the electric vibrator featured in the Sunday edition of The New York Tribune on January 5, 1913. It appears at the end of Part III (“The Sunday Magazine”) and right before Part IV (Financial, Real Estate, Music).
According to the testimonials in this ad the vibrator could do everything from helping gain weigh, curing anxiety, helping digestion, to curing dandruff! Yet, at the time the main use of the vibrator was to cure women of “hysteria.” I will not be giving you a history lesson on female hysteria (see further reading at the end). However, it is important to know that hysteria was to many considered a disease, to some considered another way for men to control women, and it ‘affected’ mainly middle and upper class women. Symptoms included “anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema, and vaginal lubrication.”*
Female hysteria has been a topic of numerous articles and as well as a film in 2011. But what I find interesting about this ad is its public nature and the public nature of female sexuality. The ad featured here stresses the health and beauty value of the invention, the vague, suggestive writing alludes to the other uses:
Can you imagine an ad like this in a newspaper today? I can’t. Not even because of what is being sold but how it is being sold. The vibrator here is being advertised as “Power For You.” In many forms of current media, sexuality is used to exploit, not empower. Even though the ad encourages women to use the vibrator for beauty and health, it seems to also empower women to use the vibrator to ‘cure her own hysteria. ‘ Sounds like sexual empowerment to me!
What do you find interesting about the ad? (I also like the “mail in” offer).
What about the lack of change in the views on female masturbation? Was it taboo then, why is is taboo now?
For some further reading:
History of the Vibrator
Vintage Vibrator Museum
The American Journal of Clinical Medicine Vol. 15, issue 1 1908
Victorian Visual Culture 
This throws all of my preconceived notions of Victorian culture to the wind. Interesting that the vibrator is said to bring power to women. I think today there is almost a backlash against women having power, but it is more subtle. Today a woman might not be considered powerful if she were to buy this product, as in the ad. But I defer to the Gender Studies students.
By: mattechnology on September 18, 2012
at 3:40 pm
[…] Power For You (victorianvisualculture.wordpress.com) Share this:PrintStumbleUponDiggEmailTwitterFacebookPrint & PDFPrint & PDFLinkedInPinterestRedditTumblrLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. This entry was posted in Humor, Imagination, Movies, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← Yet More on the Bonnets […]
By: Hysteria | I choose how I will spend the rest of my life on September 19, 2012
at 9:51 am
Before I returned to school I worked as a full-time smut peddler at an adult novelty store. At least twice a week we would get customers asking for items they had seen advertised mail order in the back of Cosmo, US or Glamour. I think there is something interesting about the way “marital aides” have been advertised historically and the way they continue to be advertised in female- centric periodicals.
By: thedawsonrewatch on September 22, 2012
at 7:08 pm
[…] be feared as their own wombs could cause hysteria, which…led to some other interesting cures, advertised with the usual subtlety. Another intriguing cure idea was mesmerism, which leads nicely onto the next […]
By: Prostitutes and progress: the Victorians « Madeleine Swann on February 21, 2013
at 7:26 am