Dell Williams

Dell Williams (née Zetlin; August 5, 1922 – March 11, 2015) was an American businesswoman and advocate of women’s liberation, sexuality, and sexual health.^[1][2][3] She was the founder (in 1974) of the first feminist sex toy business in the U.S., Eve's Garden, in New York City.^[1][2][4] It was the first woman-owned and woman-operated sex toy business in America.^[5]

Career

In 1945, she enlisted in the Women's Army Corps. In 1974, she founded the first feminist sex toy business in the U.S., Eve's Garden, in New York City.^[1][2][4] Eve's Garden was the first woman-owned and woman-operated sex toy business in America.^[5] As Williams put it, "Eve represented all women and the Garden was symbolic of women taking responsibility for their 'own' sexuality."^[6]

She was inspired to found the business after she took a “Body/Sex Workshop” by Betty Dodson in New York and afterwards went to buy a Hitachi Magic Wand for use as a vibrator, but found that the salesboy at Macy's asked her a nosy question about it.^[1][7][8] Williams also attributed the founding of the store to having read Wilhelm Reich's The Function of the Orgasm in her early twenties.^[9]

Williams was an actress for a time and appeared in productions of The Vagina Monologues.^[8] Her most notable role may have been in a 1962 film, The Cliff Dwellers, a film which was nominated for an Academy Award. In addition to this, she was a singer, artists’ model, and writer during the 1930s and 1940s, and was later one of the first successful female advertising executives in New York City.^[2]

Personal life

She was the daughter of Isaac and Sarah (née Bronstein) Zetlin. She was briefly married once, to Ted Willms, a variation of whose surname she retained professionally although the marriage was annulled. She had no children.^[1]

Williams died in Manhattan on March 11, 2015, age 92.^[1]

Legacy

In 2005, her memoir, Revolution in the Garden, was published.^[2] Some of her papers are held as the Dell Williams Papers in the Human Sexuality Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library.^[10]