I like Zoë Ligon immediately when I meet her. Yes, we jive on mutual interests, including a love of dildos and weird little indie horror games not enough people know about. But if I have to attribute it to anything, there’s just something extra special about a woman happily posing for a sexually suggestive photo while wearing a Gollum mask.

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Ligon, the self-named “dildo duchess,” doesn’t take herself too seriously despite doing seriously important work in the sex education field. She’s the author of Carnal Knowledge: Sex Education You DIdn’t Get in School, CEO and founder of the Detroit-based sex toy shop Spectrum Boutique, and has even played The Playboy Advisor for us in the past. Her approach to sexuality is fun, silly, and shame-free, which is something all of us could use a little more of.

PLAYBOY recently reconnected with Ligon to tell us her full story, which includes porn-fueled collages, why non-gendered sex toys are nothing new, and why she’s channeling her creative energy in a new direction.

PLAYBOY: Tell us about your interest in sex toys and sexuality and how it led into your writing career.

Ligon: I bought my first sex toy when I was shopping for a gag gift for my freshman year of college. I ended up getting this very toxic sex toy material jelly rubber dildo. No idea what it was made out of – one of those.

A couple years into living in New York, where I was going to school, I was making a lot of sexual collage art using vintage porn magazines. And someone said, “If you’re comfortable with the matter of sex, maybe you would enjoy working at a sex toy store.” So, I was basically just interfacing with the general public talking about sex [from that point on]. And there were so many conversations that came up during just being on a sales floor that I started writing about the common themes I was seeing on my then-Tumblr account. Some random blog wanted to republish it, and then I had a friend who connected me with somebody at Conde Nast and then all of a sudden I’m writing for Refinery 29, Vice, Cosmo, Allure, Bustle. It was 10 years ago that my writing really took off, so that’s how that snowballed into whatever this is now.

PLAYBOY: When did you decide to start building a social media presence and what was the experience for you?

Ligon: The article that basically made me go from having a normal Instagram account to basically waking up one morning and having every person random person in the world sliding into my DMs and having 10,000 followers overnight. It was called “I’ve Officially Slept with 99 People and Now I’m #LookingForMyHundo.” It’s funny that there’s all this discourse around it, but there’s so many people I personally know who have slept with thousands of people. So I was trying to be a little ironic about it, just kind of point out how silly the whole idea of body count is. It obviously resonated with people to the point where it got me from normal pedestrian Instagram to 10K in counting.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel like any portion of that huge reaction was about people judging you?

Ligon: I just remember people being like “Ew, gross.” But I think it was also because I did write in such a clickbaity way before I even knew what clickbait writing was. If you make people upset and angry, they’re going to pay more attention than something humble and positive.

PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about Spectrum Boutique. Tell us about the desire to launch it and how it came about.

Ligon: We launched right before the holiday season in 2015. It definitely would have been difficult to have any success if I hadn’t gotten that small little chunk of people following me because of my silly little articles. I already worked at a pretty open-minded and progressive shop, but I still found myself thinking some toys we sold were crap, that we were only selling them because it’s a good markup.

Back then I was like, I don’t want you to tell me how to talk about sex toys. I’m going to do that however I want and I think my way is better – which obviously has evolved so much throughout the years. I think I really went into business not as a businesswoman, but a person trying to do good in the world, which is why I was like I’m not equipped for the tenseness of it.

My recollection is that we were the only commerce website [at that time] that didn’t have gendered sections for toys where the top bar was for couples or man, woman.

PLAYBOY: There are more non-gendered sex toys on the market now. How do you feel about that?

Ligon: I think it’s a really good sentiment, but I think it also ignores the fact that there have been non-gendered sex toys pretty much since the beginning. The Magic Wand has never been gendered. Even though we think of it as a clitoral stimulation toy, that’s really just one function of it. I think so much of gendering toys is in the branding and not the product itself.

PLAYBOY: Next question: Carnal Knowledge. What was the experience of writing a book on these topics that have meant so much to you? Also, would you ever consider writing another book?

Ligon: It came out in the height of the pandemic, so I never really got to enjoy the typical fanfare of writing a book. It was actually something that started as an article. It was supposed to be sex PSAs. So it was my eight hot takes and Prestell, who’s a really lovely publishing company, was like, “We would like to turn this article into a book.” So I turned it into 52 tips. The material was easy because I basically went through everything I had posted the past five years, made lists of every subject matter, and then categorized them so I could update and expand on it. So I felt like the book was already written.

There were a couple attempts throughout my life to write more personal essays and things such as that, but right now I think I would be the most excited to write another book if there was an enthusiastic publisher, much like Prestell was, where they said, “We want you to make this. Elizabeth Renstrom is shooting the photos.” I think I’ve just been watching and waiting.

The way I write the most these days is by writing movie reviews. Which are purely for fun. I feel like I’ve shifted my writing energy from Instagram captions. I like all kinds of film, but particularly writing about sex and horror movies is something that has helped me really do some deep dives on certain subject matters. So I feel like that is where my creative writing passions lay at the moment.

PLAYBOY: Of course, we have to ask: what was the most recent sex toy that blew your mind?

Ligon: I’m pretty specific with what I like. I think that in a larger global trend way, I’ve been really tickled by how people have taken to the Snail Vibe. I wouldn’t say that it has become as popular as the rose in the sense that it’s not gone viral. I had been selling it for a couple of years before somebody wrote something that made people all of a sudden have it on their radar. But I’ve been really tickled by how much people are taking to that because it is quite an unusual design and now it’s being adapted into a bunch of different stuff. They’ve made a penis version where it unfurls as you insert the penis.

PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about the legendary Gollum in a thong photo.

Ligon: I went to Youmacon, which is Detroit’s Comic-Con, and I had never been to a Comic-Con or an anime convention before. I definitely appreciate some anime, but it’s not my main wheelhouse, but I was like, I’ll go with my friend. And she had a Gandalf costume and she was like, “I’m going to be Gandalf. You should be Gollum.” And, I was like, that’s great. Because I liked the idea of having a full mask walking around, being fully anonymous.

I wore a nude bodysuit and then made a fake loincloth for my pantaloons, and then I had that mask on. Every person was coming up. I was Gollum with Gandalf, and families, like old people, children, were coming up to me and my friend and being like, “Can we take a photo with you?” And I was just dying inside being “LOL, I like love being this anonymous mascot person taking photos with absolute strangers as though I’m like a New York Times Square Elmo or something.” I think that also really ties into really enjoying being a goofy clown for people. Not in the traditional sense, obviously, but I’m happy to put myself in uncomfortable or strange situations in order to bring joy to other people.

PLAYBOY: What do you think people get wrong about sex and sexuality most often?

Ligon: I think that a lot of people do a lot of projection of their own life onto fictional narratives, but also the lives of people around them, whether that’s what you saw your parents do growing up, what you see your friends doing in their personal life. It’s the same thing with choosing a sex toy where people will be like, I want this cause my friend has this. And it’s like, why don’t you figure out what you want? Because I think it’s highly unlikely you would want the exact same thing with all there is out in the world.

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I don’t think that’s necessarily something people get wrong. I just think it’s an issue with a lack of sex education. I think that having a certain amount or kind of sex is a big thing that people get wrong. Thinking that there is a certain frequency or that you must be having penis and vagina intercourse in order for it to be sex, that you must do anal in order to be cool and progressive or whatever. It’s like no, you don’t have to. There’s just a lot of assumptions about what a sex life should look like, and you’re not doing anybody any favors by putting that pressure on yourself.