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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"Around the department, she and Chris were referred to as sluts, swingers, what have you," said Robert Thomas, who was a Burleson police officer in 2003 (he's now retired). "And I know people in the department began looking through the penal code to see what they could do about her business."
Although the city ordinances on sexually oriented businesses did not cover a direct sales company like Joanne's, someone found the clause in the state obscenity laws, passed in 1976, which made it illegal to sell anything that was being marketed as a device to stimulate human genitalia. Sex shops get around the rules by marketing their products as "toys" or "cake toppers" (gag gifts to be used at parties). To see how Joanne marketed her products, the police sent two undercover officers, a man and a woman, into Chris's business, where Joanne was sitting at the front desk answering the phone. Joanne showed them her catalog, pointed to the Nubby G, and then told the woman that if she maneuvered the Nubby G in a certain way, she would hit her G-spot. The officers bought the Nubby G and another vibrator, the Double Hot, drove back to the police department, and filed an affidavit claiming that Joanne had broken the law. A police officer called Joanne and said that she needed to turn herself in. Joanne and Chris, fearing that the police might raid their home, threw all of Joanne's products into a car, and Chris drove as fast as he could across the county line. He had become, he later said, a dildo runner.
After the arrest, Shanda refused to be interviewed, but Gloria did tell one reporter that a few women had come to her to say that Joanne's parties were ruining their marriages. She wouldn't go into detail, but the word around town was that Joanne had asked these women after the parties if they and their husbands would be interested in swinging with her and Chris. According to other rumors, she and Chris had invited well-known Burleson couples over to swim naked in their pool. Joanne had also supposedly tried to lure a handsome, churchgoing teenage boy into her bedroom to deflower him. "Your reputation in this town should have driven you out by now," wrote a Burleson citizen to the Webbs, one of many letters they received. "I wonder if your children know that you are swingers and whores."
The Webbs added to the uproar by refusing to address the swinging rumors. "It's no one's business what happens in someone's bedroom," said Joanne. "That is exactly what we were fighting for. No one should need to tell the world what their sex life is or isn't, and the world shouldn't have the right to know."
It was an admirable argument, but it only gave ammunition to people who thought Joanne was using her parties to turn Burleson into a giant mate-swapping orgy. As the uproar grew, the Webbs' teenage daughter, Katy, a member of the school's drill team and drama club, became so upset that her grades plummeted. (Ironically, she said, one of the students at school who remained nice to her was Shanda's teenage son.) Katy started taking antidepressants, and Chris began taking them too. Because of the controversy, his already faltering business had completely dried up. He was unable to make an $800 health insurance payment and their cars were repossessed, including Joanne's beloved convertible. What hurt just as much for Joanne was the news that the Ambassadors Club had voted for the proposed dress code. If Joanne wanted to remain an Ambassador, she would have to wear skirts that came almost to her knees.
BY THE START OF THIS YEAR, the Webbs were wondering if they should move from Burleson. Chris had filed for personal bankruptcy, closed his business, and was trying to make ends meet by hauling trash from construction sites. Joanne was bringing in about $1,000 a month from sales of her merchandise at out-of-county parties, which was hardly enough to cover the family's expenses.
But one day Joanne turned to Chris and said, "Honey, Shanda is not going to run us out of town." They showed up at the annual chamber of commerce banquet, Joanne wearing a black slip dress that stopped at mid-thigh. At the end of the banquet, the membership announced the names of the top two recruiters: Joanne was second, Shanda was first. Both women walked up on the stage to receive their awards, smiling widely and barely saying a word to each other.
Chris decided to protest Joanne's arrest by wearing a kilt around town, explaining to anyone who asked that he was a fighter for freedom just like the kilt-wearing Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, willing to stand up for the rights of "persecuted citizens" like his wife. He also went on a letter-writing campaign to the local newspaper blasting Shanda's brother Stuart, who was then running for mayor. He tried to get nonchurchgoers to the polls, saying that Stuart and his family were trying to keep Burleson in the dark ages. When Stuart lost the mayoral election to another city councilman by 24 votes—a shocking result, by all accounts—even he said that Chris's campaigning and the negative media attention over Joanne's arrest had possibly hurt him.
But in the most shocking news of all, in July the county attorney dropped the criminal charges against Joanne. The attorney would not comment publicly on why he dropped charges, but according to one source close to the investigation, he and other Burleson leaders had grown tired of the attention focused on their town, and they had also realized that if Joanne was ever thrown in jail, she would become even more famous than she already was, a national martyr for women's rights.
Besides, they had accomplished what they wanted: They had gotten Joanne out of business in Burleson. According to Joanne, a police captain made it clear to her that even with the charges dropped, the police still considered what she was doing a criminal offense and that if they received another complaint about her, they would investigate her business again. "It looks like the only way I can do business in Burleson is if I win my lawsuit," she said. But her chances of success are remote. Legal experts say previous challenges to obscenity laws have failed. "Just recently, a federal appeals court in Alabama struck down a challenge to that state's obscenity laws," said Rachel P. Maines, a Cornell University researcher and the author of the book The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. "When it comes to sex, the courts always endorse hypocrisy. As long as we don't say what we're doing with sex toys, then it's fine to do it. But if we're honest about what we're doing, then we're in a lot of trouble."
Shanda told me that she is not unhappy that the criminal charges have been dropped. For the past year, she said, she has been the object of great derision in the newsmedia, and she too is ready to move on. "Outsiders think I'm this mean, self-righteous woman," said Shanda. "But all I did was stand up and say we're a community that doesn't believe in promoting sexually oriented businesses. Is it really that awful of us to want a community driven by a certain kind of morality? I know that a lot of you who make fun of us would love nothing more than to have a place like this to raise your children too."
Despite the vibrator war, it is hard to imagine Burleson abandoning its famous moral tranquillity. Just weeks after the charges against Joanne were dropped, the Lighthouse Church opened a new 20,000-square-foot sanctuary, and Gloria Gillaspie was hard at work trying to fill it with more Burleson residents with whom to share the joy of living a Christ-centered life. Gloria told me that she would gladly welcome a visit from Joanne at the church. "I really think Joanne has a heart to help women, and she's been misdirected and missed her calling," said Gloria. "I think she could lead a biblically based women's ministry."
No thanks, said Joanne. She told me she loves teaching women about the joys of their own bodies. "There are women out there in their forties and fifties who still don't know all the ways they can have orgasms," Joanne said. "There are women who are devastated that their sex lives aren't working, and I know I can help them." When I watched her recently at one of her parties in a suburb not far from Burleson—the hostess had called the police department earlier that day to make sure she wouldn't be arrested for having the get-together—Joanne was indeed as animated talking about sex as an evangelist like Gloria is talking about heaven. Most of the women there were in their thirties, wearing shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops, carrying cell phones in case their husbands called. ("Our husbands are all sitting at home worried that they're not going to measure up to whatever we buy," one woman giggled.) They oohed and aahed when Joanne brought out "the big boys," and many of them slipped into the bathroom to try a sample of Joanne's best-selling product, the cream that supposedly can get a woman in the mood within seconds.
One young woman came out of the bathroom, her eyelids blinking rapidly. "My God," she said.
Joanne smiled. "It's spiritual, isn't it? And ladies, it's only $39.50 for a 2.5-ounce bottle."
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