The Pleasure Principle

Inspired by the global call for equality and empowerment, female creatives are taking their protest from the street into the design studio, giving everything from ceramics to graphics anerotic makeover. As JAMIE HUCKBODY discovers, sisters really are doing it for themselves.

- Jamie Huckbody

IT WAS YOUR VAGINA colouring-book that was the turning point,” Monica Nakata says. “That’s probably when the seeds of Par Femme were first sown.”

It’s not exactly the answer I was expecting from the former fashion magazine publisher when I ask how the concept for the pioneering Australian “independently run online destination created by women, for women” came about. Nevertheless, it seems that my stocking filler of choice for Christmas 2008 — Tee Corinne’s Cunt Coloring Book (an educational tool first published in 1975 to show the variation in women’s genitals, and since reprinted and sold in London’s luxe emporium of female erotica Coco de Mer) — made quite the impression: Nakata realised there was a need for an Australian-made space where a curated selection of intimate adult toys could sit happily next to well-designed underwear that didn’t subscribe to the clichéd ‘sexy’ norm. “Very rarely has erotica come from a female perspective,” she continues. “We decided it was time to change that; to empower women and help them take back control of their bodies.”