Spice Things Up

Haven’t been to Passion Parties yet? Here’s a primer for as-yet-uninitiated local women on this new way to buy, um, toys.

Impulsively buying items you might or might not actually need from a cheerful and convincing consultant seems to be a rite of passage into the I-need-to-own-my-own-pots-and-pans life and beyond. In the past six months, I’ve attended my first-ever Pampered Chef and Arbonne parties. When I started to hear about Passion Parties and Slumber Parties (the seemingly scandalous adults-only version of your moms’ innocent Tupperware parties), it was something new. Instead of selling shampoo with tea tree oil and kitchen gadgets with lifetime guarantees, the consultants at these parties sell flavored massage oils and personal gadgets with, well, other guarantees.

I’ve recently been to a Passion Party and a Slumber Party (given by two competing companies that sell, in your home, items dealing with all things sex). And now, I’m here to tell you what to expect when you go to your first party of this kind. If you’re familiar with Mary Kay parties, that’ll help you understand… a little.

Expect Giggles

There was humor at both the Passion and Slumber parties. In the beginning, it was nervous giggles from first-timers, and there was a definite need to break the ice. (This was the case at both parties I attended, and both times I was in the company of outgoing women without much of a filter.) Perhaps that’s why the Slumber Parties consultant started her demonstration with goofy, intentionally funny items such as pasta noodles shaped like certain anatomy and other gag gifts. Rachael Ryder, consultant and executive director for Passion Parties, had an overall sense of light-heartedness to her presentation. She started by saying, “In the spirit of the party, let’s all put our cell phones on vibrate.” The products for the first half of the presentation are mostly innocent-looking things in bottles, such as massage oils, moisturizers, bath
products. The battery-operated products are brought out at the end.

Expect Earnestness

Instead of being kitchen-centric or make up–centric or jewelry-centric, Passion Parties and Slumber Parties are simply woman-centric. They function under the idea that women attend these parties, and women enjoy sex, and there’s not a darn thing wrong with that. Ryder attributes the growing popularity of Passion Parties to a changing attitude toward sex in our society. During the past four years, she says, she’s noticed people becoming more open-minded and interested in getting information, education and products in their homes. Are these the new Tupperware parties? She thinks so. Women are social creatures, she says. Throwing a party to learn about a shared interest seems natural. The only obstacle, perhaps, is acknowledging that you and your friends do want to talk about sex, even if you normally don’t make a habit of it.

And there’s no beating around the bush when it comes to explaining what the products are for and how they work. The explanations and terminology don’t feel clinical, but they don’t feel overly flippant either. There’s a good comfort balance. Nearly every product comes with a verbal warning about whether or not it’s edible. As Ryder said when she started the edibles part of her presentation, “It’s now safe to eat the things that I’ll be passing around.”

Expect Privacy

At both Passion Parties and the Slumber Parties, all ordering takes place in a separate, private room behind a closed door. Unless you choose to share, the whole room won’t know what you are buying.

Expect Samples

Although you will pass around plenty of examples of the companies’ battery-operated products, these are obviously not the ones you get to try out. What they do offer for brave partygoers to try are things like a stimulating cream that doubles as a plumping lip balm (for real) and similar but slightly more X-rated products, which they dole out to people interested in trying them in private.

At the Passion Parties event, we tried a scented brown-sugar scrub. At the Slumber Party, we tried a pheromone perfume. At both parties, the general sense seemed to be that if it came out of a bottle in liquid, cream, gel or oil form, it was probably sample-able in some non-scandalous way. So use your imagination.

(To book a party, head online. Rachael Ryder’s local Passion Parties website is ozarkspartypassion.com; the corporate sites for Passion Parties and Slumber Parties are passionparties.com and slumberparties.com.)