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Sexualities
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The ‘Pinking’ of Viagra Culture: Drug Industry Efforts to Create and Repackage Sex Drugs for Women

Heather Hartley

Portland State University, Oregon, USA

This essay will describe how the success of Viagra stimulated drug companies to create a women's sexual condition comparable to erectile problems in men for which they could market new sex drugs to women. The heart of the article focuses on two interrelated aspects of Viagra culture playing out in drug industry efforts to create and expand a market for sex drugs for women: (1) the industry's ‘Hunt for the Pink Viagra’ to treat the ‘disease’ of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and (2) the prescription and promotion of off-label uses of men's sex drugs to women. In order to contextualize these two trends, the article outlines key activities and actions that have enabled the drug industry to consolidate power and build capacity in this area, including: mass dissemination of estimates of disease prevalence; the institutionalization of FSD in academic circles, which includes strategic revision of disease definitions as well as the creation of a legitimized infrastructure for dissemination of supporting research and education; and public-relations stimulated mainstream media coverage. The article concludes with a consideration of the ongoing challenges to the medicalization of women's sexuality as well as to harmful corporate practices more broadly.

Key Words: female sexual dysfunction (FSD) • medicalization • off-label prescriptions • pharmaceutical industry • Viagra

Sexualities, Vol. 9, No. 3, 363-378 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1363460706065058
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