ABSTRACT
Anyone encountering Viagra for the first time through direct-to-consumer promotions of
the drug could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled onto a miraculous new elixir of
relational health and wellbeing. Viagra, according to drug company advertisements, will
generate not only sex, but also the restoration of closeness, romance, love and intimacy. It
will, in fact, protect against the very breakup of relationships threatened by ‘‘distance’’ – a
distance born, it is implied, of the ailing self-esteem and crumbling masculinity caused by
‘‘failure to admit’’ and therefore to overcome the condition of ‘‘erectile dysfunction’’ (see
Gavey 2005). And what is the route to such happiness and harmony? It is the biotechnological
production of a penile erection with all the qualities – of firmness and duration – required
for vaginal penetration and ‘‘successful’’ intercourse.
