Sex Toys after NAFTA: Transnational Class Politics, Erotic Consumerism, and the Economy of Female Pleasure in Mexico City

This article focuses on the rising upper middle and upper class of twenty- and thirtysomething women in Mexico City and how examining the consumer practices of this privileged segment of Mexican society reveals the contours and intersections of pleasure-seeking (as an embodied, vernacular performance) and neoliberalism (as a macroeconomic philosophy dependent on global connectivity). The author argues that the visual, rhetorical, and architectural influences of furnishing homes, retail spaces, and the urban landscapes of Mexico City with limitless possibilities for erotic consumerism nevertheless fail to facilitate social and civic spaces with real opportunities for feminine and female-identified pleasures. Moreover, the economy of female pleasure in Mexico City unfolds within a transnational landscape that increasingly pits women who consume against feminized laborers who produce sex toys in Chinese factories.