Remember When Women Took Viagra?

There was definitely a moment in time, around the turn of the century, when women began experimenting with Viagra to find out if it had the same kind of beneficial properties for them as it did for men. Couples partied with it, and studies found that there was no harm in trying the drug to see if it increased blood flow to the clitoris. But it turned out, anecdotally at least, to not be all that for the ladies. Women moved on, as did pharmaceutical companies who began a race to find a working female equivalent to cure sexual dysfunction. (And they might finally be close to a solution.)

But today, in a weirdly out-of-left-field ’90s retro piece replete with a Seinfeld reference, journalist Joyce Wadler writes for The New York Times about her own experience with taking Viagra after chemotherapy had snuffed out her sex drive in 1998. She tried it out alone first. It gave her a headache and a wet dream. Then she tried it out with someone else and it was so-so.

Then she fell in love and went to Mexico and they bought every kind of erectile dysfunction drug available and partied with them in the hotel room which apparently involved using a camera. (Kinky!) Granted, it’s for her column targeting middle-aged baby boomers, so maybe it’s not for everyone else to relate. But still…what is the point of writing about a trend 14 years later? To let women who wouldn’t even bother trying erectile dysfunction drugs know that they aren’t that great? If that’s the lesson, then considered it learned?