The Sex Museum

My recent trip to Amsterdam was actually my fourth visit there, and yet until this latest trip I had never been to the infamous Sex Museum. However, it was my sisters first time to the city and we wanted to do as many tourist-y things as possible, and visiting this museum was one of them. 

Now I'm not going to lie, I thought the museum would just be one big joke. I knew from friends visits that there were giant penis' inside that made for hilarious photos, and other outrageous models and such that were hilarious to take photo's of. So I thought this would be the same throughout the entire museum; a bit of a laugh, a bit of a joke.

How wrong was I! Admittedly, the first floor of the museum was quite funny, filled with humorous moving models that flashed you, 'peed' in your face, were performing sexual acts on each other and so in. It made me and my sister giggle, that's for sure. However, as we progressed to the second ad third floor of the museum, the tone of the museum totally changed. It was actually incredibly educational and informative- really!

The thing that got me and my sister most was the 'private' photographs that had been donated to the museum. These pornographic photographs were from as late as the 90's, which we expected, and they demonstrated couples, both homosexual and heterosexual, performing sexual acts on each other. I don't think I need to describe to you what the photo's were like- I'm sure you can imagine! 

What shocked us was how far back the photo's went. It might sound naive or stupid but I never thought of sex being "fun" until the 50's. Before then, I believed that sex was just for reproducing, you know? How wrong was I! The pornographic photo's went back to the beginning of the 1800's. And when I say they were pornographic, I don't just mean posing naked. I mean that they were using things like stocks to pin each other down and whipping each other with cat o' nine tails and brooms, getting into positions I haven't even seen in modern day porn, I swear to God! There was even a classic porn scene being captured, of teacher and student! It was truly incredible and I had no idea such exciting sex had existed as far back as the 1800's. 

I was stunned. When we speak of the Victorian times, we speak of women being seen and not heard. We hear all about the fact that women didn't have equal rights- and the fact that feminism basically didn't exist. But we definitely don't hear about how sexually liberated *some* of the women were. Visiting the museum and seeing these real life photo's was a genuine eye opener, and I couldn't believe I had been so naive up until now. 

The other thing I loved about the personal photo collection was seeing how women's bodies had changed throughout porn. I genuinely couldn't believe my eyes. In the beginning, in the 1800's and the start of the 1900's, women had bellies! And I'm not talking a size 10/12, lil' bit chubby (you know, Boohoo's idea of plus sized) I'm talking big bellies. Flab. Rolls and folds on the tummy. And they stood there, sexually confident. They looked sexy. They were attractive. I loved it. What I loved was that there was also skinny women too. Sometimes the skinny and large women were featured together, and it just looked great. It worked. It showed a real portrayal of women in sex. 

What I didn't love was watching how the women changed throughout the photographs. By the 1950's, women in the mainstream media and in these photographs weren't 'fat' anymore, they were more curvy (think Marilyn Monroe, and slightly bigger) but their stomachs were mostly flatter than in previous years, and everyone featured was pretty much the same shape. By the 1990's, the women were all stick thin, like Kate Moss. No flab, no rolls, no curves. Just thin, slender women. And yes, they were still gorgeous, they still looked sexually confident, they still looked fabulous! But I just couldn't believe what a drastic change I was seeing before my very eyes, with the variety of body shapes dwindling down to just one standard body; size 6. 

If 'fat' women were once perceived as sexy and attractive, why aren't they still perceived the same way today? When did this shift happen, and why? It just doesn't seem right. Again, it's probably naive of me but I always assumed models were thin the way they are today. I had no idea that 'fat' people were used as much as thin women are today, if not more. It baffled me and it made me sad about the women we see in mainstream media today. 

Overall, the trip to the Sex Museum was really educational for me. It gave me an insight into the sexual history of women to as far back as the 1800's and opened up my eyes to just how extreme the changes to women's bodies have been. I hope one day we will go back to having more diverse bodies being perceived in the media as sexy and attractive; we need a little more diversity and there is certainly room for it. What do you think?

Love from,

Florence Grace