Sex store does well in Boston

``There`s a saying in the industry: `This ain`t your daddy`s porno,` `` said Kim Airs, Boston`s pioneering sexentrepreneur who puts the nice in vice and the fab in fetish. Indeed, Mommy might feel at home in Grand Opening! Airs` women-oriented sex boutique in Coolidge Corner in Brookline celebrates its first decade with a not-ready-for-family-hour party tomorrow. From the artfully displayed sex toys and massage oils to the erotic novels and explicit videos, Grand Opening! sizzles with sensuality and wacky good humor, aimed at putting customers at ease while they comparison-shop vibrators and lubricants. ``I had never been to any store with any kind of sex toys before I was taken there,`` said Sally, a 47-year-old Boston woman who asked that her real name not be used. ``I was really impressed with the general atmosphere, which was friendly and upbeat and knowledgeable.`` Ten years ago, when Airs proposed opening a sex boutique here, she was told it would never fly in Boston. It did. She offered classes - on stripping, writing erotic fiction and masturbation. ``Sex ed classes at a sex store! Unheard of!`` was the reaction. But the classes were packed. Airs has now opened a Los Angeles store, and envisions opening a chain of boutiques one day. ``Women have proven to be consumers of this stuff,`` she said. Indeed, carnal clout is not an all-male terrain. According to USA Today, more women are going to upscale strip clubs to socialize (while secretly comparing themselves to the naked bodies on stage). Women represent a significant percentage of online pornography customers; nearly one in three visitors to adult Web sites is a woman, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings survey. Popular culture steams with increasingly sexualized images of women:the bad-girl mouth-to-mouth of Madonna and Britney, ``Striperella,`` the Pamela Anderson cartoon show and the gold-digger tarts of reality TV. From HBO`s ``Sex and the City`` to Eve Ensler`s one-woman show ``The Vagina Monologues,`` women are being portrayed as sexual creatures, with lust as great as - although often different from - that of men. Likewise, Airs has seen a huge expansion in the sex toy industry, with better quality products and advanced technology. Women are also producing adult videos with - shocking! - plots and character development. Sex toys have joined Tupperware as the focus of girls`-night-out parties. Yet not too long ago, such partygoers would have been dismissed as sluts and strumpets. Attitudes about women`s sexuality began to shift after Alfred Kinsey`s 1953 landmark study, ``Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.`` ``There has been a shift in America from a focus on female sexuality in the service of others - family, nation, race, men - to an emphasis on women`s sexual self-determination,`` said Estelle Freedman, Stanford University history professor and author of ``No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women.`` Freedman will give the keynote address at a conference on ``Women`s Sexualities: Historical, Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives`` at Indiana University in Bloomington, Nov. 13-15, which marks the 50th anniversary of Kinsey`s study (www.indiana.edu/(tilde)gender/conference.shtml). Yet, Freedman said, two often-conflicting forces fuel today`s shifting attitudes: the consumer society and feminist politics of self-determination. Sex sells products and services, yet public sex education is banned. Many women feel the sexual juggernaut hasn`t really taught them much about their own sexual needs. And, they say, society still sends a dual message: Be sexy but don`t be slutty. ``We have one of the most provocative media; sex is everywhere,`` said a 21-year-old Boston-area nurse who asked her name not be used. ``At the same time, it`s one of those things people don`t talk about. People are unwilling to admit in a factual way the sexual part of their lives. ``We`re encouraged to be sexy and sensual but don`t talk about it. Good girls aren`t supposed to talk about that stuff but everyone likes the bad girls on TV.`` Society still pigeonholes women into sexual categories, she said. ``If I go out at night, I dress attractively. (When) I say, `I`m a nurse` (I`m told) `No way, you`re not a nurse.` I get that all the time.`` Skin on the screen hasn`t always translated to naked honesty about what women really want. ``I never really talked about sex before the last couple of years,`` Sally said. ``When women talk about it now, it`s with a little air of defiance.`` Airs admitted, laughing, people often are amazed when they meet her: ``You look so normal.`` She added, ``I shock people, I`m so comfortable with this.`` This is Airs` law of lust - that sex is normal. You don`t have to have the body of a supermodel or the pecs of an action hero to enjoy bedroom gymnastics. To prove it, the Grand Opening! birthday, held at the venerable Cyclorama tomorrow, will feature vendors, miniworkshops, an erotic ice-cream eating contest, a ring toss aimed at a replica of a certain bit of anatomy and an appearance by actor Ron Jeremy. Leave your hangups at the door.