sex parties and rampant rabbits how ann summers took female pleasure mainstream
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Ann Summers’ CEO,

Jacqueline Gold

It’s difficult to imagine a time when sex toys were a complete taboo. Or even when they weren’t something most of us kept stashed in the bedside table – or proudly on top of it. Remember when Charlotte was so blown away by her first vibrator – a Rampant Rabbit that she borrowed from Miranda (while we admire the sisterhood, we don’t recommend sharing sex toys between friends for health reasons) – that she refuses to leave the house?

Charlotte – and all of us – have Jacqueline Gold to thank for that one.

If you’ve ever crowded around a living room sipping wine and giggling as you and your friends pass around lingerie and vibes, yes, you have Gold to thank for that, too.

Gold, the CEO of Ann Summers - who shaped the brand from a highstreet underwear store into a shorthand for women’s pleasure - has died at the age of 62. The entrepreneur passed away on Thursday night after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Her family described her as a “trailblazer” and a “visionary”.

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Among her many accomplishments, including a CBE, Gold was the brains behind the Ann Summers’ party, which reshaped the sex toy industry forever. Under her watch, Ann Summers introduced the Rampant Rabbit to the UK - seven years before Charlotte got her hands on one.

Gold joined Ann Summers as an intern in 1981. The company had been bought by her father Ralph Gold and uncle David Gold nine years prior, back when it was two separate, floundering highstreet stores selling underwear.

Her first move would define the now combined brand for decades to come: the Ann Summers Party. Gold took the idea of tupperware parties, which were very chic in the 70s and 80s (basically a way for housewives to make a little extra money by inviting over their friends and neighbours for a ‘party’ where they could try and buy Tupperware) and applied it to lingerie and sex toys. The Party Plan exploded in popularity to become a worldwide phenomenon. In 1984, they launched in Germany after an Ambassador (the name Ann Summers’ uses for its party hosts) moved there with her husband.

Ann Summers parties became a cultural touchpoint; spawning multiple replicas, tropes, and references. Women would gather their female friends together (these were back in the days where you could tell someone you were having your girlfriends over to look at sex toys and they’d assume you were all keeping your clothes on), banish their boyfriends and husbands from the house, and pass around knickers and rabbits. While it always carried an air of semi-irony and bashfulness, for many women, Ann Summers’ parties were where they bought their first sex toys. Sex educator and broadcaster Alix Fox fondly remembers hers: “It was called Rodger The Rabbit and gave my 18-year-old self an orgasm so strong I saw stars,” she confessed.

As well as a fun night in, Ann Summers’ parties helped normalise owning and talking about vibrators. Instead of needing to go into a sex shop - an experience that can be intimidating now, but particularly before the days of sexual wellness and rose vibrators - Ann Summers’ parties brought the experience of buying lingerie or sex toys to the comfort and privacy of your own home.

Gold was determined to bring women’s sexual pleasure out of the shadows and into the mainstream – and so much of our acceptance and celebration of female sexual pleasure is indebted to her work. “I couldn’t understand why it was acceptable for men to talk freely about sex or visit sex shops and not women,” she told Klarna in 2021. “You couldn't buy sexy underwear back then and women were too embarrassed to go into a sex shop. I just knew something needed to change.”

But Gold and Ann Summers didn’t just revolutionise the way sex toys were sold, they revolutionised sex toys themselves. And that’s where the rabbit came in. Launched in 1991, the Rampant Rabbit – which combined internal stimulation through its scary-looking-but-great-feeling rotating ‘pearl’ dildo, with clitoral vibrations through the name-sake bunny ears. The toy has come a long way since its not so humble beginnings to a whole range of double stimulation options.

sex parties and rampant rabbits how ann summers took female pleasure mainstream
The Rabbit has come a long way

Soon, a rabbit sold every two minutes in the UK - and thirty years later, it remains the most popular sex toy in the world. Ann Summers still sells one every three minutes, an impressive feat given the competition.

Through both Ann Summers parties and the Rampant Rabbit, Ann Summers’ put sexual pleasure firmly back into the hands of women. As the brand grew, sex toys became something that women could talk about among themselves, and for themselves - both in terms of self-pleasure and self-employment.

Over the course of four decades, Gold became one of the most well-known and recognised business women in the world, awarded a CBE by the Queen in 2015 for services to entrepreneurship, women in business and social enterprise.

By 2018, Gold was the 16th richest woman in the UK and was spearheading not only women’s empowerment through sex, but through business. “I set out to empower women in the bedroom and now I want to empower women in the boardroom,” she once said. And it’s hard to disagree that she achieved them both.