We’re raised to believe love and sex should be connected, but most of the time that is not the case. The truth is that most people are having sex not because they are in love; most people are having sex because it feels good. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sex is about the most personal choice we can make, and it should be ours to make freely. Whether it’s random sex or committed-relationship sex or even celibacy, as far as I’m concerned there’s no right or wrong—it’s whatever works for you that doesn’t mess with other people.
When I was a contributing editor at Marie Claire, I collaborated with the magazine on a comprehensive survey of more than a thousand women in what was called “The Porn Project.” Here’s what the surprising results showed: Only 12 percent of the women surveyed said they watched porn with their partner, and only 17 percent said they watched porn because it helps them understand what their partner likes. However, a whopping 61 percent of the women surveyed said they watched it regularly (every week or a few times a month)—alone.
I was surprised and thrilled.
Using porn to cultivate one’s own sexual agency is a different story from the common wisdom that women feel threatened by it or watch it reluctantly in order to please their partner. Instead, the study showed that women are using porn to learn more about what they want and to figure out how to please themselves. What does this tell us?
Several things. First, a myth still exists that women aren’t as sexual as men. In a related survey, 60.8 percent of women polled desired sex three to five times a week. This flies in the face of the theory based on Darwinism, which contends that only men desire a lot of sex and therefore need to spread their seed far and wide. Nowhere does it say that women just want to fuck one guy and have him protect her, her baby, and her home for the rest of her life. This interpretation is patriarchy at its finest, and in my opinion Darwin’s theory needs an update.
Second, and more important, women’s sexuality is complex and multifaceted, and is not given the attention or priority it deserves.
From our first sexual experience onward, women tend to define good sex by how pleasurable it was for their partner, not how it was for them. This is in a heterosexual relationship—lesbians seem to focus more equally on each other’s pleasure, judging from an unscientific polling of my friends. On a positive note, at the beginning a girl doesn’t need any real skills whatsoever. If you’re with a fifteen-year-old boy, it’s likely going to be over while you’re still fully clothed.
But sex is reciprocal. It’s not about girls serving boys. Our experience is as important, if not more important, than the person’s we’re doing it with, and we have to be responsible for that experience. If we don’t know what feels good, if we don’t know what turns us on, if we don’t know what works for us, if we don’t know our bodies, we can’t expect anyone else to.
Unfortunately females are generally unprepared for their early sexual experiences. Orgasms—and periods for that matter—are bodily functions that all genders should be familiar with. I recently explained to my son what a period is: the biological benchmark that signifies a girl can be sexually active and have a baby. Yet in Western culture there is still a level of discomfort and embarrassment when a girl gets her period, as opposed to it being honored as a significant marker of transition from girlhood to womanhood.
And can we just talk about orgasms for a minute.
The first time I had an orgasm felt like an out-of-body experience. I knew nothing about orgasms and didn’t know what was happening to me. I was fifteen, and a boy I was fooling around with was going down on me whilst I lay on his shitty threadbare carpet. Suddenly, a wave of sensation, like pins and needles but different, rolled from my pussy up my torso and down my limbs. I felt as if I would black out, or as if I were leaving my body. The wave passed, and I thought, Whoa! What the hell just happened to me?
At the time I did not know that I had just experienced my first orgasm.
How then do we educate ourselves and our daughters about the power and wonder of our sexuality? First, we should look into something called the Dutch model. The Dutch start “sexuality education,” not “sex education,” in kindergarten, and it’s about so much more than anatomy and physiology, or even the act of intercourse. It allows for “honest, open conversations about love, relationships, and personal boundaries,” the program’s advocates say. As it progresses, children get frank information about “self-image, developing your own identity, gender roles, learning to express yourself, your wishes and your boundaries.”
Parents don’t need to wait for their kids’ schools to join the modern age. We can start talking about sexuality early and often. To avoid the topic for too long leads our kids to the inevitable secret online search for some clue as to how it all works. This may seem shocking, but the average age of googling free porn is nine. To fail to talk about sex is also to fail to talk about porn, which is pretty much the same thing as dropping your kids off in a war zone in the middle of the night and saying, “Good luck! Hope you make it home!”
I’ve already explained to my kids that porn is a genre of movie. Not a documentary, which tells the truth, but a fictional movie. There are horror movies, science fiction movies, comedy movies, and sex movies, all of which are make-believe. Anything you see in those films is not real. I’ve also said there are some people who think it’s a good idea to make films of people having sex, and many people like to see those kinds of things. There will come a time where you may have a friend who says, “I want to show you this,” or you may see something like this online. I want you to know that porn exists. I also want you to know that this is not how sex is. This is a movie version, so do not expect or think that this is what men look like, women look like, or sex looks like. Oftentimes porn is mean to women. And some porn will even seem like a horror movie.
Some parents may feel that this is TMI for ten-year-old kids, but trust me when I say, if you don’t have this talk, the internet will do it for you.
Having an active, fulfilling sex life is more complicated today than ever before. The advent of the digital age has hugely changed the playing field. What used to be written in private diaries (my own excluded) is now captured on camera and shared via social media, creating a record of sex acts that can never be erased. We all know this, yet the compulsion to share all aspects of our lives has overridden common sense.
Remember the infamous “Hollywood hack” where a number of famous actresses had their intimate nude photos released on the internet? Aside from the obvious privacy breach, what struck me most was that none of the high-profile names were those of famous men. Among the leaked images of lady body parts and sexcapades, there was not a single dick pic. Not surprising, as no women stole and leaked the images.
At what point did it become normal for us to assume that if a woman takes private pictures of herself, she should expect them to eventually be circulated online for countless men to jerk off over?
So what to do then? Should we all stop being playful for fear of being humiliated down the road?
Photographic expression of your own sexuality can be a beautiful thing, but only if it is consensual. Leaked nudies, and the resulting stigma, are the most public version of slut shaming there is. This horrendous invasion of privacy delivers a disturbing message that women cannot be openly, joyously sexual without severe consequences.
It took me years to recover from having my diary published and my private life publicized in ways that I’d never expected and that left me traumatized. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for anyone who has experienced this violation.
The slut shaming I encountered in my teens continues to this day. In 2016, when I interviewed Hillary Clinton on The Conversation, a UK tabloid ran a story about my sexually provocative teen years, as if to prove that, even though my work has earned me the opportunity to interview America’s first female presidential candidate to be nominated by a major political party, we mustn’t forget that Amanda is really a slut because she had
sex when she was fifteen.
Really?
I refused to allow myself to be taken down by some tabloid printing untrue stories about my dancing on a table without underwear in a pub half a lifetime ago. I’m optimistic that the more women gain positions of power, particularly in media—whether it’s in journalism, publishing, TV, movies, or digital platforms—the less our sex lives will be used to define us.
Female sexuality evolves over time, from puberty on through menopause. One of the biggest adjustments occurs after you have kids, when you might not even recognize your own libido. I often get asked, “Do babies really fuck up your sex life?”
Sorry to say this, but much of the time they do. I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of a natural drop in desire—our body’s way of protecting us from getting pregnant again before we’re ready—and the reality that a new mom is tired as fuck. Or should I say too tired to fuck.
New moms ask me all the time, “When did you feel like having sex again?” There’s no concrete answer—we are all so different. I could say, “In three months on the dot, you’re going to remember you have a vagina again.” But honestly, until your baby is at least a year old, don’t let anyone tell you that you “should” be having sex on a regular basis. Anyone who tries can probably be described as follows:
1. Has a penis
2. Has never had a kid
3. Does not really like you
The simple truth is that our partners should not expect much action for quite a while postpartum. This reality is unlikely to be accepted with a smile, but it’s a conversation that mothers need to be comfortable having.
There are many stories about men cheating when their wives are pregnant, or just after the baby is born, because they’re not getting laid. It’s a lame excuse. Sorry that you’re not getting sex as often as you want, New Dad. I’m breastfeeding a baby all night with swollen tits; I’m sleep deprived and probably experiencing some postpartum depression as well.
All this aside, the bottom line is that in my home a happy man is a man who is getting laid regularly. So despite everything I’ve written about owning and respecting your own sexuality—and as disempowering as it may sound—to sustain any sort of long-term partnership or marriage that involves a dude, sometimes it makes everyone’s life easier to just do it.
I am aware that this sounds extremely contradictory to many of the things I am telling you, but I have to tell you the truth, and this is just the reality, at least it is in my house.
For the extremely busy or tired lady, relationship experts recommend scheduling sexy time. That’s not a bad solution, even though there’s nothing less sexy than scheduling sex. Sexuality thrives on unpredictability and spontaneity. And unfortunately, raising kids requires the opposite—routine, consistency, and reliability. It’s a perfect conundrum. Going away for the weekend and getting out of your routine can also reenergize your sex life . . . when it doesn’t create even more pressure to have sex, which it often does.
There is the time issue. There is the lack of sleep issue. There is the new person or people in the house issue. For the first year after our twins were born, I always had at least one baby in the bed and one baby attached to my boob. For the record, that did not stop my husband from trying to have sex with me, giving new meaning to the word multitasking.
There is also the way we feel about our bodies, which is always a big component of sexuality. Many new moms feel shitty about themselves. In addition to the emotional side of giving birth and being a mom, your body is going through huge changes. And heads up, there might be some permanent physical changes in areas that you didn’t expect.
Yes, even your vagina can change shape during and after pregnancy. I had twins vaginally, and no question, my vagina has never been the same. I gave my husband, Nick, the option between a C-section and a vaginal birth: “Do you want a floppy stomach or a floppy vagina? Pick one.” He opted for the floppy vagina, so whenever he mock-complains, I say, “Dude, you chose this.”
The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports that requests for labiaplasty, which reduces the size of the labia minora (and costs around $7,500), increased 15 percent in 2015 alone. In 87 percent of the cases, according to the International Society for Sexual Medicine, women underwent the procedure for “cosmetic purposes.” One stat I came across claimed that in Los Angeles alone, two thousand women per day are getting so-called saddle surgery in order to have a so-called designer vagina.
In my experience it’s rare that women don’t like the look of their own vaginas, but I’ve heard plenty of women say their husbands and lovers have complained. Which is heartbreaking.
Nick loves my body at every shape and size. Whether I’m 210 pounds—my weight before I gave birth—or 160 pounds, he is happy. Never has he told me I was overweight, or commented on what breastfeeding has done to my boobs, or judged the silvery stretch marks on my ass. That’s the kind of man I married. And even if I could have a hall pass, I’d still take my hubby over anyone in the world.
Except maybe Louis CK (weird, I know) . . .
5.
Porn Culture, and Its Effect on My Vagina
If you’re like me, you probably know the details of your girlfriends’ below-the-belt grooming habits, whether playboy or playkini, Brazilian or landing strip or seventies bush. But the trend I’ve noticed on my outings to the all-female, all-naked Korean spa I frequent?
Bald. No hair. Totally gone.
I don’t know if you’ve ever taken off the whole lot. I did it once, just for the hell of it. It was fucking brutal. (Never get a wax when you are about to get your period—it’s that much more excruciating.) I screamed and cursed so loudly the beautician asked me to be quiet or she’d leave me with a half-waxed vagina. After my shearing was complete, I reached down to touch my newly hairless vagina and felt remnants of sticky wax on my labia. In fact, as I awkwardly felt around, I realized that my labia were stuck together.
“Excuse me, miss,” I said, “um, my labia are sealed shut. There seems to be some wax you left down there. How do I get this off?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Let me put some oil on you and that wax will come right off,” she said, reaching for the baby oil.
“Actually, I’m not entirely comfortable with you rubbing my genitalia. Give me the oil and I’ll do it. Myself.” I think I was partly horrified, and partly worried it would feel inappropriately good. I also debated whether to tell my husband about this (like the time the foxy masseur started rubbing my boobs with massage oil whilst I was asleep on the massage table).
I’m not sure which option offered less dignity—having her oil me up or lying on the table and doing it myself while she cleaned up the wax strips now covered with the hairs that, for so many years, had covered my mons. I don’t mind having someone inspect every inch of my vagina at a gynecological exam, but to go through that for vaginal vanity? Not so much.
Removing all my pubic hair revealed some big surprises. The first one being that I have stretch marks. Big silver lines, snaking their way from one side of my pubis to the other. They look like a dry riverbed seen from space, winding across a once fertile land.
I carried three people inside me for fuck’s sake, I think, defending my stretch marks to myself. Who wouldn’t have these?!
Wait a minute, don’t tell me I’m affected by the Perfect Pussy Syndrome (PPS)?! I remember being horrified by a story I once heard about a young woman whose delightful boyfriend had told her she had “beef curtains” because her labia hung down. What kind of asshole says that to his partner? Perhaps someone who wants a trophy and not a person.
And now, here I am looking at my naked, imperfect pussy. I immediately remind myself that my brain does not control me but that I control my brain. I can tell it whatever I want it to latch on to. I start to go down my “Amanda Is All Right” go-to list that I recite when I feel some self-shaming coming on.
1. I am kind.
2. I care about other people.
&nb
sp; 3. I am a mindful mother.
4. I have a healthy body.
5. I am a loyal friend.
6. I am honest.
7. I have a perfect vagina just the way it is.
Then I climb off the waxing table, which is when the second surprise reveals itself. I look down, and there it is, undeniably visible: Hanging above my newly naked vagina is a lip of saggy flesh that my friend Amber V. calls a FUPA. Yes, I have a fat upper pussy area. I do. It was hiding under my seventies bush all that time. Who knew?
Now I get why some women schedule cesareans with a tummy tuck on the side. I could never understand why a perfectly healthy woman would opt for a surgical birth. Until now.
If I hadn’t opted for that natural twin birth, I would not have this offending piece of flaccid flesh hanging off my body. So much for that great choice, Amanda. Now look what you’ve done to yourself.
Oh, there it is again, that negative, demeaning voice telling me a bullshit story—one that I know isn’t true but seems true for as long as I let it run. I reel my mind back in again.
My body has held three full-term, healthy, strong, fully formed babies. People I love. With all my heart. Be thankful, Amanda, not resentful.
Fuck you, negative thinking. I don’t care if I have a FUPA, or if I have stretch marks, or if my tits are pointing in different directions and I have nipples the size of a dollar coin. I thank you, beautiful body, for giving me those gorgeous babies who make my life worth living.
I repeat this under my breath, like a mantra, as I pull on my size 14 knickers over my ample ass and newly befriended FUPA. I leave the beautician a big tip. After all, removing the entirety of a seventies bush was a big job, even if she did stick my labia together with her Egyptian, hypoallergenic, organic, rash-free honey wax.
It's Messy Page 5
