MOSCOW — According to a pamphlet distributed at Moscow’s main sex-toy fair, X-Show: An Exhibit for Adults, Russia’s erotic trade market is “one of the most dynamically developing ones” because the country’s citizens are getting richer.
The seventh annual X-Show drew nearly 200 people who buzzed around the small exhibition hall from May 15-18.
Attendees reportedly were there to ink distribution deals, build clientele, work toward opening sex shops, and learn the trade.
X-Show featured S&M toys, dildos, lifelike blow-up dolls, and a massive structure called the Pleasure Machine. Most of the sex toys and items on display were made in China and distributed by wholesalers based in the United States and Europe.
The pamphlet distributed at the show proposed a second reason for the growth of Russia’s erotic trade market: the fading notion that “sex is dirty and disgusting, something to be done in total darkness and in the missionary position, only to continue the human race.”
Claudine Seroussi, a European representative for the Los Angeles-based erotica company B Swish, said the growth of the sex-toy trade in Russia is partly due to increasingly liberal ideas about sex, particularly among women.
“There are lots of young Russians who want to emulate the West,” she said. “They watch shows like ‘Sex and the City,’ and now they have more disposable income. It’s a sign of things becoming much more liberal.”
