Size Envy

Most of the time I don’t even think about this, and it’s not something that triggers me every time we meet new people or go to our club… but sometimes it does come up for me.

I remember at 13, thinking This is it? This is all I get up here?

I like my tits a lot, but sometimes I wish they were bigger. So much is made of boob size in our media, and while I believe the vast majority of people probably just like tits, because, well, they’re tits, I get hung up on the fact that someone might not like mine because they’re small. (I used to have more of a body image issue with my tits, but Rational Emotive Therapy, which I wrote a post on a while back, really did help me rework some of my internal messages about my body and tits. It was extremely helpful.)

This is not just a female-bodied issues either. Messages about cock size are another force to be reckoned with. The research about partner and self preference about cock size is fascinating to me. Because the majority of nerve endings are in the lower third of the vagina, studies have shown that most female partners report pleasure with most cocks. “Most” people, not “average.” Almost all. They come in all shapes and sizes, and yet they pretty much all feel good. I recognize this is easier for me to say since I don’t have a cock, and I don’t have to deal with all of the external messages and internalized tapes telling me that my cock looks wrong for whatever reason.

Instead I have to deal with those messages about tits. Can I apply my same logic? All tits are fun to play with and are sexy. I have never had a partner tell me mine aren’t because of their size. And yet I see movies and TV shows and advertisements where characters are liked based on their boob size or are valued for boob size or express that having bigger boobs equals a more satisfied partner, a better sex life, or being liked more by others. “Bigger is better” is still the prevalent message, even if the people in my life contradict these messages.

Another thing that gets me in a weird way is that I get turned on playing with someone who has tits larger than mine, and I get turned on when I see J having sex with someone with larger tits. But I simultaneously get super frustrated because I want to feel what it feels like to have larger tits. It’s this weird frustrated turn-on. *sigh* Just another way for me to grow and accept myself, my turn-ons, and embrace the ways in which we are all different.

The L Word: What is Cheating?

Here is my next media recommendation: 
Season 5 of The L Word, Episode 10 “Lifecycle.”
Here is a link to watch the episode: http://www.lwordseries.com/page/2/

The characters are sitting around a campfire, playing “I’ve never,” and they all discover they have all cheated on a girlfriend. Interestingly, they all have different ideas of what “cheating” is. (Here’s my plug for everyone discussing with their partner(s) what they think of cheating so that they are sure to know what their boundaries are.)

Start at minute 42:15 and watch for about three minutes.

We were both impressed with the fact that “monogamy” and “open relationship” made it into the conversation. Not only do I love this show for its hot eroticism of lady sex, but it does a pretty solid job of exposing different relationship and LGBTQ issues.

Weeds: Masturbation Lesson

We just started watching “Weeds,” and the show is as entertaining as 30 Rock and The Office for us (nothing compares to Seinfeld, of course!). 

The following clip exemplifies why I love this show so much. The uncle, Andy, in the show gives his nephew, Shane, a lesson on masturbation. His lines and delivery are great, and I love all of his different names for come. While there is some less-than-ideal information (such as using honey as lube- I don’t really think that’s a great idea- sugar=yeast, right??), the last bit about how you can’t masturbate too much because it relieves stress and boosts immune function is awesome 😀

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzOQTFwRBE

I wish more sex-positive, and accurate, information could work its way into mainstream media. I just have to appreciate it when I see it.

Mmm Quite the Weekend

We met some new sexy friends, and they rocked our world!! Love that! Meeting other attractive, intelligent (emotionally, socially, sexually, cognitively), thoughtful, and yummy people undoes J and I. It is so awesome. We hadn’t met a couple that we clicked with and felt chemistry with in so long. It was refreshing and amazing. Yummy pretty much describes it. Yuummmmm 😀 It also amps up our sex… which is so much fun! Cock sheaths + my Hitachi = heaven.

We went to the big Halloween party at our swingers club, and we went as a politician (Eliot Spitzer) and his call girl… haha! When I went to buy a dress, the women at the lingerie store said “Well, you definitely need something with leopard print!” Is that a stereotype of sex workers? Leopard print?? We completed the look with J wearing his sexy smokin’ suit and an American flag lapel pin, and me with cash sticking out of my barely-there dress (when I brought it home, J was like “Oh! That’s you dress?? I thought you were showing me a shirt!” hahaha). Anyways, as our friend who works there described it, it was definitely a “show night”: so many people who were there were “once a year” swingers, or people who went so they could tell their vanilla friends that they had gone to a swingers club. There were definitely orgies going on, which is not that common for a regular weekend night. The number of people in there was overwhelming for both of us, and so although we may have otherwise played there, we stuck to socializing, meeting new people, and dancing. It was really great 😀

And even though I bought new shoes for the night, and my feet were killing me, J convinced me to dance in the cage and take off my dress. And I absolutely loved it. Even though I have been dancing, the experiences of dancing as work and dancing in our club are two completely different things for me. I dated a girl for a bit a while ago who used to dance, and she was astounded that people just got naked at our club. I remember her saying “I’m used to people paying me to take off my clothes. I am not going to take mine off for nothing!” It was so interesting, too, because last night a girl got in the cage and she clearly had stripper moves. And she didn’t take any clothes off. What is it about stripping that makes some dancers value their nakedness so much? Well it’s obvious, I guess. If your naked body is now a commodity, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that you would show it off for free. And yet, I have not felt that for myself. I still totally get off dancing at our club. It feels so much more like “my space,” and because I clearly recognize it as not work, but as going out and having fun, and because it was a favorite activity of mine before I started dancing, there would be no reason why I wouldn’t still enjoy it.

Today was the first day that I felt some hesitation about going to work. I think is has more to do with the fact that I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep this weekend than anything to do with dancing, but I want to make sure to pay attention to those feelings. I ended up having a pretty fun shift, and am looking forward to working tomorrow 🙂 

Candy Girl: Favorite Passage Rings True

“So when–why–did my little red Corvette veer onto the freeway of indecency? I think I’ve finally got is sussed. Most girls get into stripping because they’ve discovered a fast crowd, are mired in financial woe or have lived with dysfunction for so long that they’re naturally drawn to the fucked-up family dynamic in strip clubs. For me, it was the polar opposite. I had spent my entire life choking on normalcy, decency and Jif sandwiches with the crusts amputated. For me, stripping was an unusual kind of escape. I had nothing to escape from but privilege, but I claimed asylum anyway. At twenty-four, it was my last chance to reject something and become nothing. I wanted to terrify myself. Mission accomplished.”
~Diablo Cody, Candy Girl, pg 210.
This was her story; not mine. So obviously that passage doesn’t fit me one hundred percent. But it hits close to home for me; I feel a lot of truth in that passage with my own story. Claustrophobic and smothering normalcy along with reclaiming my body and sexuality and disengaging from my mom emotionally during counseling and exploring my exhibitionist side and learning about an under-represented and un-heard population and getting to exercise and getting off while working… that’s my story. So far. 🙂 The whole terrifying myself part though? I think that part is relevant. I am definitely not adequately terrified yet. I have hardly quenched my thirst.

This book was spectacular. And clearly a fast read since I read it one day. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an insightful, funny, pained, and heroic perspective on the experience of this unlikely stripper. 

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper

We had family in town for a bit this weekend, and so naturally we headed to the big bookstore with the millions of books… because damn it, it’s cool. And also, I wanted to find Gloria Steinem’s book with the essay “I Was a Playboy Bunny.” (Which, by the way, I did find, and I can’t wait to read it. I’m sure there will be a post about that soon!)

Lo and behold, on the same aisle as “Feminism” and “Feminist Studies” there was also “The Sex Industry.” Gah, so many good books!! I couldn’t help myself. I also bought Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody, and Strip City by Lily Burana. I started the first this morning, and oh em gee is Cody hilarious. I am only twenty pages in and I already recommend it. It’s the book I wanted to write, if I was going to write one about stripping. She is fantastic and entertaining. I’ll write a full review once I am done, but basically it’s about her experiences at 24 stripping in Minnesota. The second book is about an ex-stripper who decides to make a year-long goodbye tour of the US, visiting clubs all across the country as a means of saying goodbye to dancing. I’ll blog about that one, too 🙂

I’m also trying to finish up Not Under My Roof by Amy Schalet, which I was trying to get J to blog about since he finished it like four months ago. Sociologist Schalet compared Dutch and American culture with regards to who parents treat the topic of sex with their teenagers. Spoiler alert: we are very different from the Dutch. It’s fascinating, and resonates so much with my experiences growing up (and J’s, too). And makes me want to move to the Netherlands, because they clearly have less hang-ups about sexuality.

No Dating For Now… But Can We Fuck?

The emotional aspect of dating is something I have not been up for. Going through a messy break-up a couple of months ago coupled with my weekly intense counseling sessions means that I don’t have much emotional capacity for another romantic relationship. It has been very rewarding for me to intentionally take a step out of the dating scene and focus on my emotional needs in a way that I haven’t… maybe ever. The sexual and physical aspects of swinging and more casual encounters… those are things that I am up for.

The reaching out, the emails, the time and energy it takes to get to know someone else on my own… it all sounds intense (and kind of exhausting, to be honest). I just don’t have the interest in doing all of that. When I am interested, though, the time and energy that dating takes are hardly factors I consider. The energy it takes to meet couples feels different for me, because they are activities and processes that I do with J. It feels like we help each other out, in terms of communicating with people, remembering details about other people’s lives, and feeling out new situations. Meeting couples does take a lot of the same intentionality, I realize: I have to write emails, and meet people in person. But like I said, it feels differently for me because it’s a shared activity for J and I. It’s almost like our energy feeds off of each other and my energy grows for meeting people together (and doing people together, ha!). I don’t have enough motivation and interest on my own in building a separate romantic relationship.

I have a few crushes in my life right now. And the feelings I experience from them are really nice. I love that warm feeling in my stomach when I see that person, and the excitement that results.

And part of me wishes we could just… you know, get it on. But for some people, I think it just seems to rushed and too casual. (I know I definitely feel that way at times. Sometimes I really do want that time to build more of an emotional connection and relationship, and often I need that as well. But not in my current space.) Casual sex with someone I am really attracted to sounds so hot. If it was that easy… I think I would enjoy casual sex more often than I do.