Sam Roddick

Biographical Details
Sam Roddick is the daughter of Gordon Roddick and Anita Roddick. In 2001 she founded the "up-market sex emporium Coco de Mer in London's Monmouth Street." Saatchi & Saatchi worked on her launch for free. "Her shop, Coco de Mer, which she describes as an "erotic emporium", sells everything from lilac mink-lined crotchless panties to clitoris creams. From it, Roddick jnr organised a naked street protest against the war in Iraq with members of the International Union of Sex Workers...

"The idea, says the shop's owner, who sports 10 tattoos beneath her sensible clothes, is that the shop is very " female-centric" and celebrates sex without exploiting women. Her mother was not convinced. Anita Roddick just last year hit out at the sexualisation of contemporary culture, in which young women aspire to dress like Beyoncé or Britney Spears – that is, she said, like high-class hookers – and celebrities talk about visiting lap-dancing clubs...

Sam "claims to have a WWF endorsement that her dildos are made from naturally-felled wood."

Sam "work[s] with human rights organisations such as the Helen Bamber Foundation, Reprieve, and the Angola 3 [Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox who have spent 35 years in solitary confinement in a rural Louisiana prison." Sam notes that in the past: "I lived off nothing for four years. We'd go to organic shops and get all the misshapen oranges or cucumbers and carrots and cook for the homeless with a group called Food Not Bombs. I was living in a squat, wearing clothes I got out of a free box, hanging out with dubious anarchic characters, not spending a penny."


 * Advisory Panel (2009), Resurgence

Related Sourcewatch

 * Brooks
 * Bondage for Freedom