Good Vibrations
How a woman who sold sex toys in Burleson became public enemy number one and survived the bad buzz.
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Shanda told me that several chamber of commerce members came to talk to her about Joanne's role with the Ambassadors. "Not just the older members were bothered by Joanne, but the younger ones too," she said. "They asked me, 'Is Joanne the image of Burleson we want to present to other people?' I'll never forget when Kelly Clarkson came back to Burleson for a citywide celebration [after her American Idol victory]. When Joanne came up onstage to give a speech and present Kelly with an honorary Ambassadors jacket, she was wearing a skirt that really did look like a loincloth. A teenager came up to me and pointed to Joanne and said, 'Mrs. Perkins, is that woman a prostitute?'"
In many ways, Joanne had become Burleson's version of the Barbara Eden character in the old movie Harper Valley PTA. There were a lot of people wanting to know what she was really up to as she flitted around town with her little skirts and her bouncing breasts. Some women had heard that Joanne was an exhibitionist. In fact, the owner of a Burleson beauty shop had been in the Webbs' house one day (her husband was working with Chris at the time) and taken a peek inside the master bedroom. Hanging from the wall in Chris's bedroom closet, the beauty shop owner later related, were seminude photos of Joanne. Other women suspected that Joanne was going to try to sleep with their husbands. One day two married couples came to Shanda and told her one of the most shocking stories she had ever heard. They said that at the end of the 2001 chamber of commerce gala auction at the Holiday Inn South, they went with the Webbs to the hotel bar. Everyone danced, and when the bartender announced last call, Joanne and Chris asked them if they would be interested in coming upstairs to a hotel room. The Webbs clearly didn't want to have a few after-hours cocktails, the couples told Shanda. It seemed to them as if the Webbs wanted to engage in "sexual mate swapping"!
At one point, the pastor of the Webbs' Baptist church met with Chris to discuss complaints he had been receiving from church members about Joanne and her outfits. (Among the complaints: When she had bent down to pick up a hymnal during a choir rehearsal, her miniskirt had slid up to her waist, upsetting some of the other choir members who had been closely watching her.) The pastor also said that some church members were uncomfortable about Chris's wearing shorts when he came to the church's Wednesday-night dinners. According to Chris, the pastor asked the Webbs to submit themselves "to the authority of the pastor" and change their attire. Chris replied that the church should not judge people on how they look. He and Joanne had been loyal members, he said, contributing time and money to the church. The pastor, however, suggested that if Chris and Joanne couldn't submit to his authority, then they needed to look for another church.
Devastated, Joanne and Chris moved to an interdenominational church in Burleson. But even there they sensed that people were talking behind their backs. "I kept asking myself, 'Why are so many people in Burleson so bothered by us?'" said Joanne. "'Are they really that repressed?'''
In fact, Joanne began to wonder if there was anything she could do to make her enemies more tolerant, more easygoing, and more fun-loving. Eventually, she came up with an idea. She decided to get Burleson buzzing.
IN THE SPRING OF 2003, JOANNE joined a California-based direct sales organization called Passion Parties, which had a nationwide sales force of about three thousand women, all of whom used home-based gatherings to sell the company's sex toys (or, as the company prefers to call them, "sensual products"). The top saleswomen made up to $250,000 a year, which was an appealing factor to Joanne, who had been looking for a job to help with the family finances.
Joanne held her first party at her home. She invited about twenty women—Burleson housewives, mothers, and a couple of grandmothers—served them chips and dips and some wine, and then had them sit in her family room while she told them about the way they could spice up their marriages. She showed them everything from a cream they could put on their genitals so that they would be "in the mood" when their husbands came home from work to a cream that they could put on their husbands to prevent premature ejaculation. And Joanne said that for those nights when the women were especially restless, she had just the thing, whipping out power toolsize vibrators with such names as Decadent Indulgence, Jungle Jiggler, Nubby Satisfier, and Chocolate Thriller.
Eight of the women at that party were so thrilled that they told Joanne they wanted her to do parties at their houses for their friends, which she did. Soon, word was flying through Burleson that Joanne was selling vibrators. The Gillaspies were horrified. "The Bible teaches us that sex is a sacred act between a man and a woman, blessed by God," Gloria told me. "And adding some kind of rubber toy into the sex act only diverts attention away from your partner, which is where God wants you to focus." What disturbed Shanda was that Joanne had registered her business with the chamber of commerce and sent an e-mail to the Ambassadors asking them to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony at her husband's office, where she had put a sign in the window advertising her business: "Passion Parties by Joanne—Where Every Day Is Valentine's Day!"
"If she had done this quietly out of her home, that would have been one thing," Shanda said. "But she was getting the chamber to help publicize her sexual beliefs. She was using the chamber to cram her ideas about sex down our throats."
Shanda said she did not put pressure on the chamber's other 23 Ambassadors to boycott Joanne's ribbon-cutting. But someone did. Only 4 men and 1 woman arrived for the ceremony, and when it was time to take the photograph that would appear later in the Burleson Star, the woman hid behind one of the men. Joanne still gave an enthusiastic speech to her tiny audience about the wholesome virtues of erotic appliances. "You guys," she declared, "if I can open communication between couples, if I can save marriages from crumbling, then I have been successful!"
There was a silence. Finally, one of the male Ambassadors said, "Well, I guess women have got to buy this stuff somewhere."
Not long after the ribbon-cutting, Joanne was informed that a series of meetings had been called at the chamber to discuss a proposed dress code for all Ambassadors. The code, if approved, would prevent the women from wearing any dress or skirt shorter than an inch above the knee. At one of the meetings, the fur finally flew. An enraged Joanne accused Shanda of waging a smear campaign against her. Shanda said she had had nothing to do with arranging the dress code meetings, but she did say that the Ambassadors needed a more professional look. Joanne replied, "Let's be honest here. This is about me, isn't it?" Shanda then unloaded on Joanne, telling her that she was harming the good people of Burleson. She said that she knew all about Joanne and Chris trying to seduce two other couples at the Holiday Inn South. The other Ambassadors gasped. Joanne and Chris? Swingers?
Joanne shouted that Shanda was spreading lies. "Shame on you, Shanda," Joanne said. "Shame on you for receiving that kind of gossip about us and shame on you for spreading it here!"
Before the meeting ended, Joanne told the other Ambassadors that no matter what any church or chamber of commerce wanted, she was never going to change the way she dressed. Sure enough, at a subsequent ribbon-cutting ceremony, she arrived in a white lace top and a matching short skirt. From where Shanda was standing, the outlines of Joanne's nipples were visible through the top. Some of Shanda's supporters were so worried that Joanne would physically attack Shanda that they made sure to stand between the two women.
Shanda told me she went to city hall to ask for a copy of the ordinances banning sexually oriented businesses, ordinances her mother had been instrumental in drafting in 1988. But she said she took the ordinance only to chamber executives, trying to persuade them that they should not officially sponsor what was obviously a sexually oriented business. She insisted that she did not go to the police. "I did not believe Joanne needed to be arrested," she said. "I just wanted someone to talk to her."
The police, for their part, already knew about Joanne. The Burleson police chief had been with her and Chris that very year on a chamber of commercesponsored cruise to Mexico. At one point in the trip, some of the Burleson crowd walked out to the pool to sunbathe—and froze in their tracks. Joanne was already there in a thong bathing suit, her butt cheeks glistening in the sun. "Hey, y'all," she said, waving. She then participated in one of those cruise-ship games where the women are asked to jump in the pool, grab pieces of fruit that are floating in the water, and stuff as much as they can into their bathing suits. Because of the size of her suit, Joanne came in last, though she was able to get a banana under the straps of her thong.
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