I built my own glamorous vibrator at CES and it was magical

I don’t need to know what’s inside my vibrator, I just need it to get me off. 

At least, that’s what I used to think before I had the privilege of building my very own vibrator at Crave’s Pleasure Factory on the CES show floor. At the activation, folks were invited to quite literally take pleasure into their own hands by assembling a Crave Duet (its flagship product) with the help of the very engineer who helped design it. 

Crave is, in essence, vibrator bling. It made a name for itself by creating clitoral stimulators that are not only fantastic toys, but also double as gorgeously sophisticated pieces of jewelry. The company’s most iconic product, the Vesper, is a pinpoint vibrator you can wear as a dangling necklace. 

At CES, Crave announced two brand new, glamorous additions: the Vesper Tease and Touch. These finger vibes are worn as a ring in either silver or 24k gold and come in two different sizes. Slated for release this summer, the Tease and Touch were in development for a whopping eight years — which goes to show exactly how much intricate engineering is required to balance these equal feats of beauty and function.

That’s part of the idea behind Crave’s build-a-vibe experience. By inviting people to make their own pleasure tools, it not only creates a safe space for them to talk openly about their desires, but also an opportunity to learn about the advanced tech that goes into making them.

As last year’s sex toy CES scandal demonstrated, the tech industry often has a hard time taking engineering in women’s pleasure products seriously. Or, at the very least, the gatekeepers of tech are often too uncomfortable to even consider them as legitimate technological innovations.

But when you see the nuts and bolts of what goes into the Crave Duet with your own eyes, it’s hard to deny. 

On the surface, the pronged vibe is all bespoke, sleek fashion. Just underneath the surface, though, there’s a powerful motor with focused vibration capabilities notorious for packing a punch beyond its slim weight class. There’s also a circuit board, making it USB rechargeable. In fact, in this special edition of the Duet, you can even hack the vibrator through a web application on your computer, allowing you to customize its pattern.

So much care and consideration goes into every piece of the Duet that I became obsessive about making my little vibrator baby absolutely perfect. I first chose her color, deliberating on red to reflect my fiery personality, purple for funsies, and black for my soul. I went with black. Then, I gently coated her parts in silicone grease, which ensured the vibe would be fully waterproof. After all was said and done, turning on my handcrafted Duet felt a little like bringing a small life into this world. Or, you know, at least a lot of pleasure.

That’s what so great about Crave’s whole mission statement — to not only provide pleasure, but also create a conversation starter. 

For a long time, vibrators were something we kept hidden and treated like objects of shame or even disgust. But the aesthetic beauty of Crave’s toys not only turn them into an opportunity for dialogue that normalizes women’s sexual pleasure, but also imbue the vibrator with the pride, dignity, and class it deserves. 

Men can keep their expensive watch culture or whatever. At least our expensive shiny toys let us cum anywhere we want to.

It’s not just naughtiness that makes it exciting to wear your vibrator around your neck or ring finger in public — it’s much more wholesome than that. There’s something special and revolutionary about making the decision to buy a tool that’s exclusively for your pleasure. It’s momentous. The relationship between a girl and her vibrator is almost sacred. At times, the significance of that can feel undercut by all the gauche and gauzy designs that still proliferate throughout the sex toy industry.

While building my Duet, the purpose of all its careful design and engineering became very clear: Women’s pleasure deserves this. We deserve luxurious indulgence. We deserve the best that engineering has to offer. And we deserve to literally wear our satisfaction with pride. 

Crave’s toys sure are a statement — but what they say goes far beyond just fashion.