It Happened To Me: I Was A Multi-Level Marketer

A Two Bossy Dames Exclusive With "Goddess 175" Herself!

This year is just about over. I’m ready to see it go but also fear what is coming next, I’ll be honest. Thank you, Dames Nation, for being with us in 2023. I hope your new year is happy, healthy, sane, and strengthening. Please read on for part one of an interview with regular Dames contributor Holly (you may remember her from A Monday With Magical Michael and The Absolute Heaven of Hotel Hell). As I’ve written here in the past, I’ve been enjoying Jane Marie’s podcast The Dream, which began by focusing on MLMs or multi-level marketing companies. I’ve also enjoyed MLM exposé documentaries like Betting On Zero and LuLaRich. Imagine my surprise when Holly told me she spent some time working for an MLM — a sex toys MLM! I had to know more and now you can too! [All names have been changed!]

Karen: Give me a little background on what was going on when you started with…let’s call it Aphrodite’s.

Holly: It was 2004; I was 29 and had two little kids. I was still married to my first husband who had just come back from Bosnia, where he’d been with the National Guard. Most of my professional experience was in kitchens — I’d been working in them since high school. When I started with Aphrodite's, I was between jobs. 

Karen: Did you have any experience with MLMs?

Holly: I didn’t know what MLMs were. Like a lot of people, I knew about Amway, Tupperware…

Karen: Avon, Mary Kay…but who knew those were MLMs, right? I remember my mom going to Tupperware parties and ordering Avon, but I assumed those were just sales jobs

Holly: Right, a few random aunties did Avon, but who knew Avon ladies were supposed to encourage other women to be Avon ladies?! By 2004, I had been to a few Pampered Chef parties, and they seemed like a bougie version of Tupperware parties. I liked them — it felt grown up and a fun way to get things for my house. Well, apartment, at the time.

Karen: Yes, I went to one of those around that time — again, did not know what an MLM was and that I was participating in a multilevel marketing situation.

Holly: Exactly. My best friend Erica went to an Aphrodite’s party at a bachelorette party and she told me about it and how fun it was. It sounded like a good time and maybe a way to make some money. My husband was on board after I told him I’d get some free stuff, ha ha ha. So I hosted a party, which was the first step, and this woman Brandy came and did it. Brandy was a doll — she was so nice and was about my age and also a mom. She was sweet but very matter of fact, which I liked — I wanted to be friends with her. 

The thing was, there wasn’t a lot of access to the kind of products they were selling around here. [Western Massachusetts, where we live now I had been to, like, a “sensuality shop” before but they only had really basic stuff, at least in terms of what was out and readily available.

Karen: Yeah, I know what you mean. I got my first vibrator when I was in my early twenties in the late ‘90s and I had to go to what was basically a Spencer Gifts on Newbury Street in Boston that had, like, glow in the dark condoms and edible underwear. The one I got was dick-shaped and blue, which I didn’t love — it literally had veins on its surface! But, I just kind of grabbed the first thing I saw and got the hell out of there and made do.

Holly: Right! My sex toy knowledge was super basic and Brandy showed me everything Aphrodite’s had and I was definitely impressed. They also had really nice lotions and soaps and things, which added to its appeal. 

Brandy gave me her whole pitch about joining up. It was $150 to start and get a very basic kit, which seemed reasonable, and she also emphasized that I’d be getting lots of free stuff and discounts. I was sold, and became a Goddess, which is what they called salespeople. I was Goddess 175, I think, meaning I was literally the 175th person to join. The company was based in Rhode Island and run by a woman named Amanda, who I’ll get back to in a bit. There was definitely a bit of an earth mother vibe about it, which I really liked. I also loved that Amanda was about my age and that it was an entirely woman-centric company. Their whole thing was about keeping it classy — nothing cheap, nothing tacky. All of their products were tried out by Goddesses in the upper echelon of the company who would report back on pros and cons before it was even sold. Everything was vetted! 

Karen: I feel like this was during a rise in very basic sex positivity in general, probably thanks to the internet becoming more mainstream. Like in 1998, Sex And The City did that episode on The Rabbit vibrator and suddenly sex toys were mainstream news. I actually bought one of those at a sex toy party — possibly an Aphrodite’s party?!?! It ended up being LUDICROUS! So spinny and loud and complicated! 

Holly: Yeah, we sold those and they were very popular, but I’d try to tell people they did A LOT and to be prepared! Other popular items were underwear that were a strip of fabric that went around the waist and then a few strings of pearls that made up the rest…

Karen, interrupting: THE PEARL THONG! That was also on an [extremely stupid] episode of Sex And The City!

Holly: …ok. Oh, and Nipple Nibblers, which were these tiny pots of flavored wax that were slightly tingly! They actually made great lip balms! [We laugh.] 

Anyway, these were all things that came in the kit along with two vibrators and some very basic lubes. They did immediately encourage me to spend more money and build out my kit because who wants to show up at a party and not have a good array of sex toys to show off? I got a rolling suitcase meant for scrapbooking because it had all sorts of little pockets that stored things well.

I also had to go to a few parties before doing my own in order to get some ideas on how to run a party and what kind of shticks to use when selling. Brandy was my “Mama” — they called the person who’d brought you in your Mama so I went and observed her, and like I said, I liked her kindly, matter of fact, “I’m your knowledgeable best friend” style. I also went and observed this woman Jackie, who was Brandy’s “Mama,” so I guess she was my Grandmama?! Jackie was older — probably the age we are now — and had a completely different vibe, hahaha. In fact, she actually drove a Pontiac Vibe, and it was entirely on purpose so she could talk suggestively about “her Vibe.” She also had a bumper sticker that said “If you’re going to ride my ass, at least pull my hair!” It was all part of her brand — she was loud, crude, and kind of an asshole, frankly, but was REALLY good at selling sex toys. She had huge hair and wore tons of jewelry and actually got reprimanded at one point for wearing clothes that were way too revealing! Like, this was the time of the Wonderbra and she liked being TITS OUT! 

Karen: Was there a dress code?

Holly: Not really, but you were definitely supposed to be cute and approachable. I was still dressing like I’d always dressed at that point — band t-shirts, lots of black, kind of goth, kind of punk, but I went to Fashion Bug and got what I thought of as Aphrodite’s blouses. One was flowy and rayon with a flower pattern and another was cute and laced up the front. That part was fun for me because I didn’t have other opportunities to dress up. I had two little kids, I mostly worked in kitchens, my husband and I were going to punk shows if we could find a babysitter to go out at all, so it was a way to be someone else for a bit, which I really liked.

Another thing I liked were the monthly and quarterly sales meetings. They would be at a hotel and we’d all meet and they’d talk about how amazing we were and how great the company was doing and then we’d all go out and get drunk at, like, Applebee’s. And things would get kind of wild! Once we were driving back to our hotel from Applebee’s — luckily, there was this one woman who was weirdly religious compared to everyone else and didn’t drink and she always had to drive us around. Someone flashed someone else and the next thing I know, the woman who got flashed is having us all flash her so she can use our tits as our picture in her phone?! So we’re all flashing each other and trying to get the poor woman who’s driving to do it too and she’s just so irritated. The woman who was taking pictures actually tried to get my ex and I to swing with her and her husband.

Karen: WHAT?!?!

Holly: Yeah, Loretta. She was wild — she was in my upline somewhere. She might have been my “Great Grandmama”! She’d been with the company forever, so about five years, and was Goddess 10 or something. Loretta and her husband also had kids and they invited us to bring our kids over for dinner. We’re just sitting in the living room while the kids are playing somewhere else. They start telling these “Oh my god, this one time” stories and eventually her husband told one about a “wife swapping thing.” This was the first time I’d met the man and the first time my ex had meant either of them! Eventually, we started making “time to go” noises and they said “Oh, the kids are having such a good time, let’s all just have a sleepover, heh heh heh!” We declined. Eventually, it came out that head Goddess and CEO Amanda and her husband were swingers and half the company were all swinging with each other, but that night was my only exposure to any of that. 

Karen: WOW! So perhaps all of the early Goddesses were people Amanda knew from the swinging community?

Holly: Maybe! 

Stay tuned for part two in the new year!

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Dame Sophie’s Link Buffet

• Best TV Needle Drops of 2023: Writing this heavily annotated Top 10 list was the work equivalent of enjoying a massive Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Identifying and enthusing about some of the best moments of TV of this year, as seen through the lens of the songs paired with them by thoughtful music supervisors? Ugh, fine, bring me the (metaphorical) chocolate & peanut butter pairing of my dreams!

• Do you miss The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Mad Men? How do you feel about plucky ingenues from the North? Say hello to Funny Woman, which follows the adventures of Barbara Parker, a natural comedienne and stone fox, as she makes her way to comedy stardom in 1964’s Swinging London. The series is an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel Funny Girl, and its six episodes start airing on PBS on January 7. I recommend the trailer not just bc it gives some sense of both the sweetness and anarchy of the show’s vibe, but also because if you like it, you will probably also enjoy my weekly recaps at Telly Visions, starting on January 8!

• This week in things I learned, I watched Bell, Book, and Candle for the first time, and while I enjoyed Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak navigating their human-witch romance a great deal, the element of the movie that’ll stick with me the longest are the costumes. Novak (who, as my friend Stevie pointed out, manages to turn in a winning performance while also appearing to be super-stoned throughout) looks sensational in every scene. Her wardrobe mainly consists of shades of red, black, and cheetah print, the necklines are a dream, and this maroon winter wonderland get-up was defffffffinitely an inspiration to Taylor Swift’s costume designers for the sumptuously witchy evermore segment of the Eras Tour.

It turns out that designer Jean Louis, whose name was new to me, is one of those artists whose work you know whether you’re aware that you know it or not. He designed costumes for all sorts of films and TV shows over the years, from Thoroughly Modern Millie and A Star Is Born to Gilda and From Here To Eternity. He won an Oscar in 1956 for his work on The Solid Gold Cadillac.

If Jean Louis’ career were to be summarized by one garment, it would be the famous nude dress he made for Marilyn Monroe. You know, the “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress? The dress Kim Kardashian very controversially borrowed to wear four five minutes at the Met Gala last year? That one! Turner Classic Movies has a great little gallery of film clips and trailers featuring his work.