Step into the Museum of Vancouver's new Sex Talk in the City exhibition and the first thing you'll see is a giant image of two naked and anatomically inaccurate Barbie and Ken dolls.
"To have children's toys with absolutely no reference to the genitals, it says a lot about the comfort level we as a society have about sharing this information with kids," says Viviane Gosselin, MOV's curator of contemporary issues and co-curator of Sex Talk in the City, during a tour of the 4,000-square foot exhibit one week before opening.
At the outset of the tour, Gosselin was quick to point out everything that Sex Talk in the City is not. It's not a detailed walk through Vancouver's sexual past (although historical artifacts and anecdotes abound), nor is it a how-to-please-your-partner expo (although the pleasure zone might spark some ideas in adventurous visitors).
So what is it all about? Through photographs, videos, and NSFW (not safe for work) artifacts, Sex Talk in the City explores how Vancouverites learn about, talk about, think about, and celebrate sex and sexuality.
On average, students in British Columbia receive a single hour of sexual education per year. Couple this with the fact that four out of five parents are just not comfortable talking about sex and sexuality, and children have no choice but to look elsewhere for information, Gosselin says.
Thus the tagline of the exhibition: the classroom, the bedroom, and the street. "Sexuality shapes cities, and so we looked specifically at how it develops in Vancouver," says Gosselin.
Like many children, Gosselin's adventures in sexual education began when she snuck into her parents bedroom and went through their drawers — and the exhibition recreates this thrilling and perplexing experience. Visitors are invited to open and peer into dozens of drawers that present some aspect of sexual identity that they might not have previously considered.
In one drawer, there's a booklet entitled A Guide for the Naïve Homosexual, which was self-published in 1971 by a UBC student who wanted to provide a go-to guide for youth wrestling with sexual identity. In another, there's a prosthetic penis and breast binder that might be worn by a pre-operative transgender male. Other drawers contain nipple tassels, kink wear, sex aids used by people with disabilities, and vintage gay pornography.
In the pleasure zone, visitors learn how vibrators have changed over the course of one hundred years. There's also a comprehensive display of birth control paraphernalia and condoms, historic photos of Vancouvers earliest Pride parades and sex trade workers, sex ed tools belonging to renowned educator Meg Hickling, and video projections of more than two-dozen Vancouverites talking about sex.
Two years in development, Sex Talk in the City — which was co-produced by Options for Sexual Health and designed by Propellor Design — was a team effort, with input from an advisory board that included the Vancouver School Board, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, public health experts, sexologists, education scholars, historians, artists, activists, sex trade workers, and youth.
As with anything containing the whiff of sexual content, Sex Talk in the City comes with its own parental advisory (children under the age of 15 must be accompanied by an adult).
"[MOV]'s motto is to lead provocative conversations about Vancouver past, present and future, so I think we hit the nail on the head with this topic of sexuality," says Gosselin.
Sex Talk in the City runs at the Museum of Vancouver from February 14 until September 2. For more information, visit MuseumOfVancouver.ca
