Brewer slipped her a business card: "Passion Parties by Linda".
Passion Parties is a direct sales company that offers products at in-home parties, during which women place orders with a salesclerk in a private room.
But in truth, Passion Parties is one of the country's tamest, most pro-family peddlers of sexual paraphernalia.
But in their own way, Passion Parties and its competitors grew out of the women's movement too.
Linda Brewer, a 60-year-old high-school dropout living in Arkansas, happened to be the top seller for Passion Parties, a Tupperware-style direct-sales sex-toy company.
Passion Parties, which is based in the San Francisco suburb of Brisbane, Calif., is one of the largest such companies, with 3,200 saleswomen.
Last November, passion parties surfaced rather unexpectedly in the news when one of its representatives, Joanne Webb, was arrested for selling two vibrators to undercover agents in Burleson, Tex.
Before the company's current president, Patricia Davis, took over three and a half years ago, Passion Parties' image was a bit more risqué.
That same year, with two of her daughters, she attended a gathering sponsored by a local representative of Fun Parties, a forerunner of Passion Parties, and purchased $180 worth of products.
According to the Direct Selling Association, the South dominates the direct-sales market at 36percentt, compared with the next-largest region, the West, at 26. Passion Parties' main competitor, Pure Romance, also does a solid business in the South.
