Chastity belts offer a key to your lover's heart

July 8, 2001

<h2>Chastity belts offer a key to your lover's heart</h2>

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Suzanne Starr/The Arizona Republic

Shelley Emling

Cox News Service

June

20, 2001 16:39

NEW YORK - Want to keep a really tight leash on your beloved? Just log on to the Internet and order a modern-day chastity belt.

Call it a backlash to Viagra and "Sex and the City," but that centuries-old symbol of virtue is making a comeback.

Several manufacturers whose promises of purity are garnering growing attention say the device is not just being bought as some sort of sexual fetish. Vendors say sales are climbing among those in committed, long-term relationships.

Paul Tooker, the owner of Access Denied in Lindenhurst, N.Y., said most of his sales of men's belts for $440 and women's belts for $375 are to couples who want to demonstrate their fidelity.

He said people have started giving their partners a key to their chastity belt as a sign of devotion, not unlike a wedding ring.

"Generally we aren't selling to the person who wants to wear a chastity belt for two hours on a Saturday night, but to people in little towns in Iowa or Tennessee who want to wear them for weeks at a time as a sign of affection," Tooker said.

Tooker, who runs the Internet business with his wife, Brigitta, won't give exact sales figures, but estimates he has sold several hundred chastity belts over the past year, mostly to couples.

In the mid-1990s, just about the only big manufacturer of chastity belts was England-based Tollyboy Products International. Tollyboy was founded about 30 years ago by Hal Higginbottom, credited with bringing the chastity belt into the 20th century.

Higginbottom designed chastity belts made of rust-free stainless steel and featuring a seven-pin radial lock. They are intended for long-term use, and wearers can both bathe and perform normal bodily functions in them comfortably.

His version, which is supposed to fit like a second skin, has long dominated the marketplace.

Today, though, Tollyboy has plenty of competition. A quick check around the Internet turned up a dozen or more companies peddling a wide range of chastity belts.

Besides Access Denied, which sells stainless-steel models, there are companies such as Jamin' Leather of Myrtle Beach, S.C., which sells leather and brass chastity belts for both men and women.

In Nevada for the past two years, Frank and Doris Miller have been selling a chastity belt so light it's supposed to be undetectable under pants.

Their belt, the CB-2000, weighs less than five ounces and is made out of plastic. It is guaranteed not to set off the security alarms at airports.

"We sell to doctors and to lawyers and to all sorts of people, but mostly they're people in committed relationships," said Doris Miller. "We have sold thousands of these chastity belts over this past year, and the number just keeps increasing like crazy."

A clear version of the CB-2000 goes for $159.95. It's an extra $10 if you want it in hot pink. All styles come with an optional brass padlock.

So what made the Millers design the CB-2000 in the first place?

"Frank felt that, with more and more people going away on business trips, this would be a device couples would want so that they could keep their partners from straying," Doris Miller said. "He was right, because now we're selling to people all across the country."

"Say a husband wants to go for a night on the town with the boys - his wife's not going to mind as long as he's wearing a CB-2000," she said.

Jennifer Bass, a spokeswoman for the Kinsey Institute for Research, said she wasn't aware that chastity belts had resurfaced, but that it wasn't all that surprising.

"People are worried about HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and everyone is always worried about cheating," she said.

Adding a technological twist to the chastity belt is an Italian psychologist, Giuseppe Cirillo, who has created a "chastity timer" that uses microprocessors to record the frequency and length of time that one's undergarments are removed. The device, the size of a cigarette packet, is attached to the elastic of a pair of underpants.

Eventually, Cirillo hopes to market a more advanced version that would ring a partner's cell phone if the mechanism registered an unclothed state for longer than five minutes.

Certainly the chastity belt has come along way since medieval times, when it was invented as a way of ensuring that wives stayed faithful when wars kept their knights far from home.

Doris Miller marveled that, once again, chastity belts are being purchased to ensure fidelity. But she says many couples also are buying them to spice up their sex lives.

As the company's promotional material promises: "When he's wearing a chastity device and you are holding the key, his attention is on you!"