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Women have smaller lungs. Google that and a plethora of information will emerge about how members of the fair sex cannot inflate their lungs quite as large as men.
"Female lungs tend to be smaller and weigh less than those of males," explains researcher W.M. Thurlbeck in a landmark 1982 report for the medical journal Thorax. "The number of alveoli per unit area and alveolar volume do not differ between boys and girls, but boys have larger lungs than girls."
So, how can women smoke the same J's or inhale from the same vapes? It could be dangerous for their petite lungs to stretch to inhale vapor from a normal concentrate.
Enter Freya. She is not just the ancient Nordic goddess of love but also the namesake for a local company's new lady-oriented vape.
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"This is something completely different," says Paul Amsbury, who tells me his wife, Stacey, came up with the idea. "We had to design all the parts specifically. The diameter of the battery is even smaller." It's daintier, for little lady hands, and "delightfully feminine, beautiful and strong," according to the company's promo copy.
It turns out, they're right. These pretty little pens are roughly the size and heft of a 1-gram pre-roll and come in three varieties: indica, sativa or hybrid. They're disposable and deliver about 100 hits. They also look like a cigarette—maybe a cigarette as designed by Gwyneth Paltrow.
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Freya does not have less THC, deliver fewer puffs or look smaller than her non-gendered e-joint counterparts. I've used similar devices and can attest to how convenient and discreet they are. There's no resin, hardly any odor and no cumbersome paraphernalia. But I don't necessarily want to carry around the Superman blue version made by EZ Vape named "Mr. Nice." Freya has a pretty damask pattern on the end where you put your glossy lips and a heart on the end that glows an incandescent white when you inhale into your diminutive lungs.
If we rank Freya's usefulness to the female population, it falls somewhere between Kylie Jenner's SkinnyMint Teatox and Amy Poehler's Smart Girls. That is, it won't cause you to shit your brains out for the sake of beauty, but it's not donating feminine hygiene products to homeless shelters, either. And the waste generated by disposable e-joints will give any eco-goddess pause. Freya is like Paris Hilton's first iPhone, reported heavily in March 2011. It is sleek, slips in a clutch for stealth hits at a concert, and says, "I've matured beyond bedazzling my pink Razr and waiting for Jared to pass me the pipe."
Gender-neutral e-joints cost up to $100 for the all-black JuJu Joint. With Freya retailing for around $60 at the five Portland dispensaries that have picked it up so far, the price is on par with wage discrepancy in America.
GET IT: Freya is available online at freyacanna.com and in Portland at Kings of Canna, Thurman Street Collective, the Dispensary, Divine Kind and Oregon Weedery.
Willamette Week