It was circumstance that led Johan Rizki, a French-American investor, to locate Amora, his "Academy of Sex and Relationships," in London. But it's a choice he feels confident about. The British, he says, are not prudish—they're progressive, keen to learn and open to self-improvement. This remark stayed with me as I wandered around Amora, reading about foreplay etiquette, feeling a variety of dildos, designing my perfect partner on an interactive screen and prodding a plastic model in order to learn about erogenous zones. Confusingly, the lucky man's inner arm lit up in response to my efforts, but his flaccid penis did not.
Plastic models abound at Amora, but in the words of Sarah Brewer, director of exhibits, "there are no mothy, musty waxworks." Amora is not, its promotional material assures us, a "sex museum." So what is it? The centre, which opened earlier this year, aims to be a sensual experience that will make "your world a sexier place." It also wants to provide responsible information on what people do, and how. There was a need, felt Rizki, for something located between the "sleazy, seedy" world of pornography and the "dull" world of sex education. Amora is indeed unique in that it contains in one space elements usually kept separate: the realm of the sexual health clinic, and that of sexual exploration and kinkiness. But aside from this, it is a disappointment. It does not represent a "bold new departure"; and it is, in fact, distinctly unerotic.
Situated in the Trocadero, close to London's Piccadilly, Amora's interior is very pink. With swirling floral designs, vaguely ambient music and a distinctly heterosexual focus, it feels like the pages of Cosmo magazine brought to life. With the help of video screens, visitors are taught how to undress sexily, give massages and play erotic food games. Handy hints are proffered: when it comes to oral sex, "you've got to give it to get it, so be generous in lavishing your lover with oral treats and they'll be more inclined to return the favour." A formidable array of sex toys are on view. Cross-sectioned plastic models encourage you to insert your finger in order to locate the prostate gland and the G-spot; my explorations gratifyingly elicited a manly "Oh yes!" and a breathless "Oh! That's it!" In the "Fantasy and Fetish" room, you are given a paddle with which to spank the long-suffering plastic models, bent over obligingly. The last section, entitled "Wellbeing," is a forbidding trundle through an STD "wheel of fate," information on erectile dysfunction, vaginal discharge, painful sex, fertility, and a finger-wagging section on drugs and alcohol. Then out you pop into the lounge and bar, from where the (overpriced) boutique beckons.
Amora is permeated by a porn aesthetic. Rizki insists that the video footage visitors see, some of it shot specially for Amora, emphasises "real people," or "girls and boys next door." But these men and women didn't look like "girls and boys next door" to me. Penises were of intimidating sizes; many of the women seemed to have cosmetically enlarged breasts; I saw not a single strand of female pubic hair. Of course, a porn aesthetic—or what Ariel Levy has labelled "raunch culture"—has to a significant extent permeated mainstream culture, and it could be argued that Amora is merely reflecting this. But it seemed to me that Rizki's protestations about Amora being "separate" from pornography were either naive or disingenuous.
Interestingly, Amora seems to be targeted mainly at women (who, according to Rizki, instigate most visits). This makes it curious that it should feature many more representations of women than of men. I saw many more ecstatic female bodies than male ones, and many more explicit images of female than male genitalia. Amora, in other words, is yet another place in which women are implicitly invited to self-scrutinise, to assess their own bodies in relation to an ideal.
They are also presented with a fantastical ideal of sexual performance. Peppered throughout are references to the hyper-orgasmic heights women can reach. We are told that one orgasm is "not enough to satisfy the average female," and that women's sexual desire increases with age and continues into the menopause and beyond. The point is not whether these claims are true, but that their presentation, in juxtaposition with images of insatiable, über-orgasmic women, makes possible in both men and women an acute dissatisfaction with their bodies, techniques and "results."
Amora thus exemplifies the extent to which pornography and eroticism are now seen to overlap. But it also translates the expression of a fantasy, which in our private lives can be exciting and powerful, into a standard of real performance against which we must measure ourselves—and, more often than not, find ourselves wanting. When we consume pornography, we don't imagine that its tremulous protagonists and their lives are real. But Amora, by exhorting us to "become better lovers," encourages exactly this identification.
In the world of Amora, eroticism is reduced to pure technique. There are "ten types" of kissing. We should "use toys for twice the pleasure" and to "improve" our orgasms. We are told that we mustn't "forget to take turns" when it comes to oral sex; "it's rude to talk with your mouth full"; "never push someone's head down"; "eat sweet to taste neat." This language communicates an idea of procedural, mechanical progression through to some standard endpoint. It's a clinical ten-step programme for sexual fulfilment.
The real endpoint, however, of Amora's exploration of technique—and, I suspect, the real rationale for its existence—is the elevation of the sex toy to the status of indispensable tool. Amora is, fundamentally, an elaborate marketing suite for sex products. Using toys can be great fun. But why is our use of them increasingly predicated on an understanding of ourselves as failing to live up to an ideal?
Manufacturers of sex toys increasingly appropriate medical language in their marketing, and the distinction between toys and medical products is blurred. The manufacturers of Vielle, for example, a disposable clitoral stimulator sold in Boots, refer to statistics about the incidence of sexual dysfunction. Will Intrinsa—a testosterone patch recently licensed by the European Medicines Agency for post-menopausal women to help restore sex drive—be marketed as a sex toy or a medical drug? At its heart, according to Rizki, Amora is a "respectable hub" for pharmaceutical companies and health professionals, where sex-related products can be launched and professionals can receive training.
And this medical and public health component is in fact crucially related to Amora's vision of "successful" sexuality—a vision where the vagaries of desire, function and feeling can be communicated only through a medical language of failure, dysfunction, and disorder. If we are not the mechanically perfect porn stars of our dreams, if our lives aren't a cornucopia of orgasms, then we're unsexy, dysfunctional failures: this is the cultural fantasy that Amora expresses. It promotes the idea that we don't have everything we need to be happy sexually.
Amora is depressing, and doesn't really work. Its naivety, disingenuousness and mechanical view of sex made me yearn for some real eroticism, or even some good old-fashioned sleaze. The hectoring tone of its health advice ("be vigilant and check your prospective kissing partner for any unwanted coldsores"), its behavioural and technical exhortations, and the contrived jollity and kinkiness in its injunction to buy sex toys, made me feel bullied. By all means go forth and play, I say. But don't waste £10 being "taught" how to achieve sexual happiness.
