Behind The Cover: Sex Issue, April 2015

Suzanne Boyd | March 9th, 2015

WORD OF THE ISSUE: SEXY

WITH APRIL COMES SPRING, a season often associated with renewal – buds and blooms; romance – the song “April in Paris” springs to mind; and, yes, S-E-X, or the birds and the bees if we want to be quaint.

This issue marks our third themed one covering that three-letter word. It’s a big word that can mean so much and so many different things to people of various ages, genders and preferences that we decided to celebrate it with two cover treatments. We approach the topic head to toe, inside and out with perspectives on what boomer men and women want and don’t want between the sheets.

Regular readers of Zoomer know that we often report on sex through the health lens, in that studies have shown that regular intimacy and lust actually aid happiness and longevity.

Indeed where would our sex lives be without a little medical intervention – Viagra anyone? For what exactly science is and isn’t doing to help women of a certain age, writer Carolyn Abraham reports on in her story “Sex Pot.” But as experienced folks like us who have seen a thing or three in our times, and given the fact that S&M has come out of hiding with the Fifty Shades of Grey phenom, in this year’s sex issue we decided to explore alternative lifestyles. For that we turn to an unlikely place: Victoria. The image many Canadians have of Victoria is that of a pretty, quiet town populated by sturdy descendants of the British Empire who spend their days pruning roses before taking their daily cuppa at one of the city’s ye olde tea rooms. But accord- ing to two recent surveys, B.C.’s capital belies its image; this place really swings, so much so that it’s earned the title of both the most romantic and naughtiest city in all of Canada. While the rankings are admittedly nonscientific, PinkCherry Adult Toys reports that Victorians purchase the most sex toys, adult novelties and lingerie per capita of any city from its online store. And when Amazon.ca analyzed its own sales, it found that residents of Victoria (remember, it has the fourth highest median age of all big cities) buy more romantic books, music and movies per capita. North Vancouver and Lethbridge, Alta., were the only other cities to finish in the top 10 on both surveys. Noticeably absent on either list was Toronto, whose failure to score high in the romance or naughty category probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. Perhaps the old description of “Toronto the Good” still holds true.

And if you rather not read about sex, you can just look at the pictures with our first-ever lingerie shoot, “Me & Mrs. Jones.”

And if that fails, I bet you can hear the birds chirping and those bees buzzing – it’s spring, after all.