I never thought I'd see vibrators dancing in the closing credits of a movie at Lincoln Center. But that's just what I saw at the world premiere of Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm (technologyoforgasm.com) at the Walter Reade Theater last month. The independently funded documentary was produced and directed by Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori and is based on the book The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines. It's a fascinating look at the history of vibrators and the female orgasm in America.
The film begins with Maines sharing some history about how the vibrator first came to exist. From as early as Hippocrates, doctors began diagnosing women with a condition called hysteria that had a broad range of symptoms, including anxiety, insomnia, crankiness, and nervousness, and that brought on erotic fantasies and heaviness in the pelvic region.
I am so going to try and make "getting heavy down there" into a phrase that means a woman is horny.