Popular Culture Review 30.1
culinary tourism works in the ( late- ) capitalist forge of the City of Los Angeles . He examines everything : menus , ribbon-cutting brochures , city-planning agendas . After sopping up the concluding chapter (“ Beyond Cooking and Eating ”), one is left with an obvious , unresolved question : Why doesn ’ t Padoongpatt have a Netflix series where he takes viewers on a real ( and visual ) tour of the impact of Thai people and culture in America ?
Dr . Lynn Comella is the more polished writer , having slugged it out in the deadline-trenches for print outlets as varied as Forbes and weekly culture magazine Vegas Seven . Her celebrated book , Vibrator Nation : How Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure ( Duke University Press , 2018 ), is a riveting account of how feminist-owned shops challenged and changed our collective notion of social activism , sex-positive retail , and women ’ s intimate lives . Twenty years in the making , it ’ s far and away the best and most important tome devoted to the issues of gender and power and capitalism in recent years . Furthermore , it ’ s just plain fun to read .
Vibrator Nation opens with a remarkable scene�a 1973 conference on female sexuality organized by NOW , the National Organization for Women , held in a public school on Manhattan ’ s Upper East Side . There , pioneering sex educator Betty Dodson knocked down the gate that stood between women and their own sexual liberation and pleasure by offering a slide show projecting a diversity of women ’ s vulvas . But what might have easily been a media circus ended up as something very different�an empowering “ speak-out .” As Comella states
Borrowing from the tradition of feminist consciousness-raising , in which women
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