Lately, my Facebook feed has been filled with ads for the Embr Wave, a personal temperature control device. This wrist-worn high-tech doohickey senses skin temperature and emits warming or cooling signals in response. According to the ad: “Embr Wave activates the parts of the body and mind that control thermoregulation and pleasure, so it can help with comfort, stress, and sleep.”
I have a few thoughts. First, why did no one ever tell me that my wrist was a pleasure center until now? I have to reorganize my entire sex life around this new information! Second, did they test this device out on hot-flashing women because I believe I could short out the Embr Wave in half an hour, either with profuse sweating or my wildly fluctuating body temps, “She’s hot! She’s cold! Damnit, she’s hot again! Abandon the mission!”
Finding a way to help us feel more comfortable is an admirable use of technology. It’s definitely much more admirable than Microsoft’s plans back in 2013 for a “mood bra” that was supposed to sense your mood in an attempt to prevent stress-related over-eating. I’m not sure how this was supposed to work and whether it involved shocking your nipples, but that’s what I imagine. Maybe it came with nipple rings hooked up to a taser. If so, those don’t appear on the vague blueprints of the bra.
I bet they decided not to go ahead with mood bra development because a woman walked by and whispered, “Yo, dudes! We already know what mood we’re in!”
But as long as there are rooms full of engineering and coding types looking for things to stick Bluetooth and sensors into, here are a few personal devices that would really make women’s lives easier:
- Cell phones with sensors that can measure our blood alcohol level through our fingertip and prevent us from texting or tweeting if we’re over the legal limit. This has got to be #1 on every woman’s list.
- An energy vampire device, perhaps worn as a pendant, that emits a series of silent vibrations when we meet someone who will suck the energy out of us if we allow them to become our friend.
- A ring that when we tap it on a hard surface produces the screams of a toddler long overdue for a nap. This will allow us to easily drive creepy dudes of all kinds away before they have a chance to tell us to smile or insist on buying us a drink.
- Diva cups with sensors that let us know when they are almost full so we can avoid embarrassing moments and ruined clothing.
- A pregnancy shield, designed much like the shields protecting the USS Enterprise on Star Trek. Before a pregnant woman goes anywhere in public, she can activate the shield to prevent strangers from touching her belly and offering unsolicited advice.
- A brain wave sorting system that automatically organizes our thoughts in order of importance and types them onto our online calendar. Bonus if it could also stop us from revisiting past mistakes over and over.
- An eyeroll decoder app for those of us with preteens and teens so that we know whether they’re angry, hungry, or in need of a sex talk refresher.
- IUDs that also get Netflix.
- Pantyhose with manspreading sensors that quietly announce in a gentle tone, “You have violated someone’s personal boundary. Please air your balls out at home.”
- A wrist vibrator. Hey, now that I know I have a new erogenous zone, I want to maximize my pleasure!
Please, someone, get to work on these right away. In the meantime, maybe I’ll volunteer to be a menopausal test subject for the Embr Wave.
