Author: Kate Sloan

You’re Someone’s Favorite Flavor

Kate Sloan
Eating cinnamon/coconut gelato in Malta

While I’m a strong proponent of the fact that we’re all different and have unique perspectives and experiences, the subjectivity of attraction has always been hard for me to wrap my mind around. I’ve told countless friends and readers who felt unattractive, “There are people out there who would be so into you; you just have to find them!” but it’s often been tough for me to believe that about myself.

On free adult dating sites and apps, it can seem like we’re being reduced to how we look – and this can be discouraging for those of us who feel like our appearance is subpar in some way. I’ve thought of myself for so long as someone whose Tinder bio you have to read to truly understand my charm. This self-perception was so ingrained, I didn’t even believe my partner when he recently told me he thought I was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, the first time he laid eyes on me.

So it seemed like a good time to revisit a lesson I often impart on friends and readers when they just can’t comprehend or accept their own attractiveness. I call it “the ice cream metaphor,” and it goes like this:

Imagine you go out for ice cream with a friend. “I’m gonna get my favorite flavor,” they announce excitedly, rubbing their hands together.

“What flavor is that?” you ask.

And then they name a flavor you find absolutely vile. Cotton candy, butter pecan, rum raisin, whatever it may be… A flavor you can’t imagine anyone eats, let alone enjoys.

But you look at their big grin, and the spring in their step as they march up to the counter at the ice cream parlor, and the expression of total bliss on their face when their tongue first touches their treat. And you realize then that while you don’t agree with them that it’s a good flavor, you believe them when they say it’s their favorite.

This is how attraction works, too. You don’t have to agree with everyone who thinks you’re hot. In fact, when they compliment you, you may feel a full-body reaction of doubt and dismissal, because what you see when you look in the mirror certainly doesn’t register as “hot” to you. But you should still do your best to say “Thank you” and to believe what they’re saying. Their perceptions and tastes are different from yours. This happens in every area where humans can have preferences, from ice cream to music to, yes, people. Suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to accept that you are hot to somebody, even if you’re not hot to you.

You may be a flavor you personally wouldn’t eat if there was no other ice cream left on earth, but there are people who could lick you all day long and still want more. Know what I’m sayin’?

You’re someone’s favorite flavor. Don’t forget it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Honour Latex Skater Skirt

Kate Sloan

Wearing latex is one of many sartorial rites of passage for kinksters. If you want to flag as kinky with your outfit alone, you can pretty much wear latex (if you’re not allergic), leather (if you’re not vegan), or perhaps velvet (if you’re… me). Stretchy, shiny, skin-tight, and restrictive, latex oozes kink in the realms of both the visual and the tactile. When I see someone dressed in latex, I think, “That person’s a perv,” or maybe “That person’s a goth/punk/weirdo,” but I never once think, “Wow, that person seems totally conventional and vanilla.”

My first clear memory of latex clothing is the sexy nun costume my heroine Gala Darling wore for Halloween in 2008. Prior to reading her post about it, I had no idea that latex was so fussy: wearing it was “an arduous process, involving lots of baby powder… crazy shimmying antics… and rubbing the entire thing with liquid silicon to make it shiny,” she wrote. “It also feels like you’re wearing a swimming cap. And it makes a funny noise when you walk.”

Gala’s right that latex clothing is annoying to wear, and even just to own. Here’s a condensed version of the Holy Commandments of Latex Fetishwear (more info here):

  • Thou shalt wriggle into your latex with the help of silicone-based lube and/or talc powder.
  • Thou shalt not pull on or stretch the latex too much, lest thou fuck up its shape.
  • Thou shalt certainly not wear any sharp objects that could puncture or tear the latex, like rings, rhinestones, or even long nails.
  • Thou shalt not get any oils on your latex, including moisturizer, self-tanner, or even the small amount of oil that might seep out of leather.
  • Thou shalt NEVER FUCKING EVER put your latex in the washing machine; plain water in the sink is fine, or perhaps a small amount of soap if you spilled something on it.

In addition to all that, it’s usually recommended that you grease up the outside of your latex clothing with silicone-based lube to give it that signature shine, and that you skip underwear when wearing it because the shape will show through. And you have to be prepared to sweat, a lot, because latex doesn’t breathe. So. As I’m sure you’ve ascertained, this is a totally breezy and low-maintenance material to wear. *rimshot*

Nonetheless, I was excited when Honour Clothing offered to send me my dream latex item, a black skater skirt. Being fit-and-flare rather than body-hugging, this garment manages to avoid a lot of the most annoying things about latex, like the no-underwear thing and the oh-dear-god-I-can’t-stop-sweating thing and the how-the-fuck-do-I-get-this-onto-my-body thing. It seemed like a good introduction to this material, so I could see whether I liked it before considering buying more elaborate pieces. (This unbelievably sexy dress, for example.)

The thing that most surprised me about this skirt, when I first took it out of the packaging, was the way it smelled. It was – and still is, honestly – an onslaught on my nose, akin to someone opening a condom right in front of your face. While condoms are certainly a sexually nostalgic scent for me, I don’t know that I want to walk around smelling like one, you know?

I requested this skirt in size 2XL, because that seemed like the best fit for my measurements based on the on-site size chart, but I could have gone a little smaller. An XL probably would have clung to my 5’4″, 153-lb, size-12 frame a little better.

Aesthetically, I love it. It looks perfect with colorful crop tops and bralettes. The flirty shape twirls outward when I spin, sways when I walk, and makes me feel like an absolute vixen. It’s short, but not so short that I feel self-conscious in it – it lets my thigh tattoos peek out without also showing my ass. It’s not the sort of thing I would wear to, say, a family gathering or a church function, but for events where a little fetish flair is called for, it’s ideal. I like that it’s obviously BDSM-inspired while lacking the hard, severe aesthetic you see in most femdom fashion, because I am a softgirl at heart.

Sweetly and thoughtfully, Honour sent bottles of Skin Two Serum and Liquid Shine along with the skirt. The former is a dressing aid, to help you slide a latex garment onto your body more easily, and the latter is a spray-on liquid meant to bring out the shine of your latex. I couldn’t find ingredients lists for these anywhere, but as far as I can tell from reading latex kinksters’ how-to guides on the subject, silicone-based lube works just fine for both purposes. It is convenient to be able to spray the Liquid Shine directly onto my skirt, though.

Overall, my foray into latex clothing was a success! Aside from a sweaty waist and a nose full o’ condom smell, I’ve found no downsides of owning and wearing this latex skater skirt. It’s all fetishy sexiness, all the time.

 

Thanks so much to Honour Clothing for sending me this skirt to review! Check out their wide selection of latex clothing.

5 Things I Learned From Working in Sex Toy Retail

Kate Sloan
One time I worked on Halloween…

Though it’s been a year and a half since the last time I set foot behind a sex-shop sales counter, I still remember my sex toy retail days as some of my fondest. It was a job quite unlike any other in my employment history, and I say that as someone who had already been working in sex media for years at that point. Nowhere else do you get so up-close-and-personal with everyday people – not just the clued-in, sex-positive crowd – trying to expand their sexual horizons. It may be just another shitty retail job, but it’s also a magical and unparalleled experience!

Here are five big things I learned in my stints as a sex toy saleslady…

1. People are – still – really nervous and insecure about sex. People who sell sex toys wholesale or online get to see some of this, perhaps in the forms of email, Instagram DMs, and the like – but it’s working in a physical shop that really exposes you to customers’ fears and neuroses. I watched middle-aged moms pace the vibrator aisle biting their nails; I helped men pick out toys meant to compensate for the boners they feared they’d never get back; I showed giggling teenagers how to operate their first-ever vibes. It was always my mission to try to impart a sense of casual confidence around sex via my speech and behavior – which sometimes involved putting on a poker face – because what else is a sex shop employee really for?

2. There are soooo many weird sex toys out there. And I am using the word “weird” in the most affectionate way, I promise. The shops I worked at bought through sex toy wholesale suppliers, and sometimes just loaded up their orders with whatever looked interesting or sellable – which sometimes meant our sales floor would be stocked with giant fist dildos, glow-in-the-dark enemas, and vibrators that doubled as jewelry. You see a lot of strange shit as a sex toy reviewer, but I saw even more strange shit at sex shops, and it delighted me.

3. I like work that’s variable and challenging. Previous office jobs (not to mention, monogamous relationships…) had taught me that monotony saps the life force from my soul. Work that engages you is a privilege, and I’m so grateful I’ve been able to find it in so many forms. Working at a sex shop may get boring on occasion – for example, when you’re putting price tags on dozens of lingerie sets, or mopping the lube aisle after yet another spill – but the one-on-one interactions with customers were totally unpredictable from day to day. I could talk to a brassy grandmother buying her 8th Magic Wand, a meek teenager coming in for a harness and dildo, and a fast-talking sex worker picking up some lube before her next rendezvous, all in the same day. Amazing!

4. Even sex toys can get boring after a while. Look, I said the people were interesting; not all the toys were! I bet people who work in the lube production, wholesale sex toys, and sex toy marketing world also find this to be true: after a while, almost nothing can shock you anymore. Customers giggled daily at the giant arm-length dildos we carried, or the horse-tail butt plugs, but I was so blasé that I was just like, “Yeah? And?” This is why it’s funny to me when people worry that they’re going to freak out a sex shop employee with their “out-there” request… If they’ve been working there for a while, they’ve probably seen it all.

5. A little empathy goes a long way. I don’t mean this in a super-salesy way – “establish commonality with the customer so they’ll be likelier to drop some cash!” – but an empathetic approach to sex toy sales really does help. People want to feel listened to, understood, and normalized – and as a sex shop employee, I think you encounter more opportunities to do this type of emotional service than almost any other kind of retail worker. I never took that responsibility lightly.

Have you ever worked at a sex shop? What did the experience teach you?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Monthly Faves: Sword Cocks & Pink Sparkles

Kate Sloan

Nope, I’m not April-foolin’ you… Here are the sexy things I enjoyed in March!

Sex toys

• A trip away from home with less-than-satisfactory vibes left me appreciating my Eroscillator Top Deluxe and Magic Wand Rechargeable even more than usual. There are reasons they’re my near-constant go-to’s: their vibrations are rumbly, they’re intuitively designed, and I never want to throw them across the room mid-session for making me numb and keeping me from getting off. *cough*

• I used my good old NobEssence Seduction dildo a couple times this month, and damn, it’s still an out-of-this-world G-spot stimulator. I’ve also noticed that if I’m turned on enough, using enough lube, and angling it just right, it can graze my A-spot the tiniest bit. Neat!

• SheVibe sent me something new and weird: Blush Novelties’ Drago “sword” handle and a couple of lock-on dildos to go with it. Essentially it enables you to feel like you’re fucking yourself (or a partner) with a sword, which is certainly somebody’s fantasy! My partner and I tried it once and liked it more than we were expecting to. Full review to come!

Fantasy fodder

• My partner and I have been re-watching The L Word (well, it’s his first time watching it, but my… I dunno, 4th?) and I am struck all over again by how hot Shane, Bette, and Dana are. Almost everyone on that show is hot but those three are the ones I’ve pictured fingerbanging me with their strong arms in my private moments.

• M’dude tried his hand at rope bondage for the first time this month, in a hazy scene that involved me being blindfolded and in trance. It was nice to feel like a vacant-brained doll he could move around to suit his needs. I always forget just how much I love being tied up until it happens…

• Still reminiscing fondly on a blowjob I gave my partner while he was sitting in a gorgeous blue velvet armchair. I’ve been saying for ages that I might have a velvet kink and, uh, yeah, that’s a thing.

Sexcetera

• I’m officially a columnist at Herizons magazine now! The first edition of my “Body Politics” column, which focuses on consent and culture, came out this month. It’s about forgiveness narratives and victim-silencing, and you can check it out digitally or in print.

• I submitted my first-ever Make Love Not Porn scene, so if you’ve ever wanted to watch me get high, jerk off, unexpectedly squirt on the floor, and accidentally knock my computer over, go rent it!

• I had occasion this month to reflect on how transformative it can be to pose for sexy photos taken by someone who thinks you’re hot AF. My love took some cute portraits of me in new lingerie and they made me feel better about my body at a time when I was pretty mad at it.

• Sextistics: this month my partner and I had in-person sex 15 times and phone sex 21 times, totalling 36 sex sessions!

Femme stuff

• I am obsessed afresh with Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower, the bewitching scent I first sampled ages ago because it’s Helena Fitzgerald‘s favorite. It’s somehow both as fresh-scrubbed as a blonde soccer mom at a PTA meeting and as ruthlessly sexy as… that same mom, later, in lingerie she knows’ll make her husband wolf-whistle.

• My new phone case from SupplyBlingsShop is the sparkliest, most over-the-top item I own. It is truly on-brand. They also make a super gay one, if you’re into that.

• I’ve been getting back into a slouchy star-print cardigan I bought in 2013 and wore throughout university. Sometimes it’s nice to wear cozy old favorites and feel like you’re rubbing shoulders with the version of yourself you used to be.

Media

• I read a lot of books this month but one of my faves was Nobody Cares by Anne T. Donahue, a series of confessional essays about everything from social media to alcoholism to anxiety to death. It’s been optioned to become a TV show, so apparently I’m not the only one who loved it!

• The other best book I read this month was High Heel by Summer Brennan. It’s a brilliant meditation on the high-heeled shoe as a microcosm of gender politics.

• The Japanese House – a.k.a. the musical brainchild of androgynous wunderkind Amber Bain – has a new album out, Good At Falling. It’s a stunning reflection on loneliness, told through a bunch of absolute bops.

Little things

Didion and Pinter. Solo date nights in the Distillery. The way new clothes can reignite your sense of sartorial panache. Scribbling in a Moleskine with a Palomino pencil over a hot toddy at a cocktail bar. Wearing powerful lipstick to the airport so as to feel braver. Marathonning Brooklyn Nine-Nine with Bex while high. Good aftercare spreads. Interviewing people I find fascinating, and having them say, “Good question!” Tons of good theatre (Sondheim, [tos], MacIvor). The most beautiful hotel I’ve ever stayed at. Hanging out in a mysterious, exclusive park you need a key to get into. Writing naked in the morning. Scotch and ginger. Kale salad. Loading up on my fave strain. Good doctors. Blue leather. Eating fancy food while super high. Queer Eye. Afternoon naps with an eye mask on. Pictures of your beloved that really capture their beauty.

Reviews: FemmeFunn Diamond Wand + Bunny Massager

Kate Sloan

I’ve never been much for aesthetics when it comes to my sex toys. The way I see it, if all I’m doing with an object is shoving it inside me or holding it on my clit while I stare at porn or my partner, then who really cares what it looks like?

But of course, that view is reductive, and doesn’t take into account the broad range of ways sex toys’ aesthetics can feel affirming or exciting to their users. Just because I don’t look at my sex toys during use doesn’t mean nobody does. A toy that feels in line with your gender presentation and ideal aesthetic can take a sexual experience from good to delightful. That’s part of why I’m so glad FemmeFunn exists.

FemmeFunn makes – as their name suggests – whimsical, feminine-looking sex toys. While there’s some debate about whether femme means feminine and whether a sex toy can, in fact, be femme, I have sometimes felt my femme identity being affirmed by toys like these. Not all of this company’s products are super girly – they have a range of realistic cocks and some masculine-coded butt toys – but girliness is what they’re known for and it’s what they do best.

I requested two toys from their line: the insertable Diamond Wand and the clitorally-focused Bunny Massager. Let’s get into it, shall we?

It’s easier for me to talk about the Bunny Massager because my opinion on it is simple: I’m not a fan. I’d hoped I would like it because I’ve previously liked other two-pronged clitoral vibes, like the We-Vibe Gala and Jimmyjane Form 2. I like the way they wrap around the clitoral shaft rather than attacking the head of the clit like so many vibes do. It often makes them a better option for those of us with hypersensitive clits that protest when touched too directly.

This bunny’s flexible ears are optimally shaped and spaced for this type of stimulation: my clit fits comfortably between them, and their soft oval shape lets them stimulate both my clitoral shaft and the internal portions of my clit with aplomb. Or rather, it would, if this toy’s vibrations were rumbly at all.

But alas – this toy is buzzy as fuck. There’s very little gradation in intensity between the 7 different speeds and patterns, so it starts too strong and just gets stronger. The high-pitched, surface-level vibrations just annoy my clit and make it feel battered by sensation. I could get off with this toy, maybe, but it would take forever and wouldn’t even feel good, so what’s the point?

The Diamond Wand, by comparison, is a dream. Its bigger motor is rumblier, though still probably too buzzy to satisfy devotees of the Tango or Mona. Despite its name, it’s not a wand in the traditional sense – it isn’t Hitachi-sized or designed solely for external stimulation – but it does serve up power the likes of which I’d expect from a wand. My friend JoEllen even liked it, and she usually favors big-ass wands like the Doxy.

The Diamond Wand’s shape makes it useable either clitorally or vaginally (but not anally – no flared base), and I’ve enjoyed it both ways. Inserted, it lacks the curve it would need to please my G-spot or A-spot, but its vibrations are powerful enough that it still quakes those zones indirectly. Used externally, its pointed tip, bulbous head, and textured shaft all seem to conduct the vibrations equally well, so you can position it however feels best for you. It’s also got a fair amount of flexibility to it, which, as JoEllen points out, allows it to “wrap” around the body a bit, so you can stimulate, for example, the labia and vaginal opening at the same time.

Like the Bunny Massager, the Diamond Wand has very little variation in intensity between its many speeds and patterns – but it’s less of an issue with this toy because I can move it to different spots of my vulva more easily if I want to mitigate the sensation. The most annoying thing about this vibe, which is true of the Bunny Massager too, is that you have to scroll through all the modes using only one button. A single-button system is fine if your toy only has a few modes, but the Diamond Wand has twenty-one. Yes, that’s right: if you get overstimulated on a high vibration setting and want to get back to a lower one, you have to click a button about twenty times. I am someone for whom moment-to-moment shifts in vibration strength can make or break an orgasm, so this is a huge drawback for me and is the main thing keeping this toy from achieving top-drawer status.

So what’s my final verdict? At $74.99, the Bunny Massager is way pricier than a cheap watch-battery bullet and will numb you out just as badly, so you might as well not bother. FemmeFunn’s bestselling Ultra Bullet is much rumblier and only costs $69.99 (nice). The Diamond Wand is $89.99, and I think that’s a fair price for this versatile, vivacious vibrator – though if you tend to decrease and increase vibration speed a lot when you use vibes, you’d be better off with something that has more than one button, like the Lelo Gigi 2 or Jimmyjane Iconic Wand.

While these toys haven’t made their way into my top drawer, they do look nice on my nightstand. I’m pretty sure no object has ever distilled my gender identity quite like FemmeFunn’s bright pink and turquoise vibrators.

 

Thanks so much to FemmeFunn for sending me these products to try! This review was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.