12 Days of Girly Juice: 11 Favorite Blog Posts

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The ladies of The Blogcademy say you don’t really find your “voice” as a blogger ’til you’ve written about 500 posts. I crossed the threshold of 400 this year, so I’m not quite there… Nonetheless, I’m still pretty proud of most of what I wrote in 2015! Here are 11 highlights of the year from my blog…

In February, I wrote about how to bring more romantic energy into your life. This is a topic I feel passionately about – not nearly enough of us go through our day-to-day lives with hearts in our eyes and sparks in our hearts! This was also a prophetic post, because the later part of 2015 involved lots ‘n’ lots of romantic energy for me. Yay!

I loved interviewing poli sci professor/pro-level squirter Shannon Bell for a magazine article, so I wrote about her for this blog as well. I’d like to do more stuff like this in 2016: interviewing, profiling and highlighting people who do interesting work in the field of sex.

I wrote a fair bit about blogging and writing in 2015, and one of my favorite posts on that topic was about creating good content. I thought a lot this year about what kind of content I want my blog to include (mainly: fewer product reviews and more meaty, helpful, feel-good stuff!) so I was glad to be able to write about that. I also ended up leading a session on generating post ideas at a bloggers’ retreat, because according to Bex, I am the “queen of productivity.” Aww.

One of my favorite things is educating folks about little-known erogenous zones. I’ve known about my external G-spot for quite a while but finally decided to write about it in April. I’ve heard from several readers since then who’ve tried stimulating theirs, often with nifty results. Yay, pleasure!

It felt strange to write about how to date when you have anxiety, considering that I barely manage to keep my anxiety in check in most romantic situations. But mental health is a hugely important topic to me, and I wanted to contribute my limited knowledge and experiences to the field, just incase they might help someone.

Tina Horn is one of my sex-positive idols, so getting to interview her was a definite high point of my year. We talked about journalism ethics, kink exploration, and the time she sold horny goat weed lube to Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Amazing.

The award for “blog post that made me cry the most while I was writing and editing it” goes to 10 Reasons Why Sex-Positive Friendship is Important. I made some profound and lasting friendships with other bloggers and sex-positive weirdos this year, and it felt crucial that I write about them.

I’m not sure that any Twitter creeps actually read my post on how to reply to women on Twitter without disgracing your entire gender, but it was still fun to write. And I know that several of my blogger babes forward this link to disrespectful douchebags on the reg, so I think it’s served its purpose.

A Body Pride workshop made me ponder the 3 questions you can ask someone if you wanna fall in love with them a little. I still think these are great first-date questions.

It was fun to write about penis terror and blowjob anxiety. I like communicating bigger life lessons through sex stories from my actual life. And it’s powerful to take something that feels embarrassing and shameful and reframe it as a triumph – because, fuck yeah, I triumphed!

Just recently, I wrote about fatness, insecurity and desirability, and the reaction to it blew me away. Y’all supported me, cheered me on, empathized, and many of you directly shared my struggles and concerns. Writing and publicizing this post reminded me how important it is to write about what’s authentically bugging you: it’s cathartic, and it’s likely to help others who are going through the same stuff.

 

Fellow blogger pals: what were your favorite things you wrote this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice: 12 Femme Essentials

12 Days of Girly Juice is a year-end celebration of all things girly, sexy, pleasurable and fun. Y’all know the kind of stuff I write about: sex, relationships, beauty, fashion, self-improvement. That’s the stuff I’ll be highlighting on this here blog, in big juicy year-end lists, for all of December. Today, we begin with femme goodness. Enjoy!

 

I have the type of personality where I get obsessed with things for short periods of time and then move on. That’s especially true when it comes to objects designed to be used up, upgraded and replaced, like beauty and fashion items. (Oh, dat consumerist escalator. It never stops!!)

That said, there are some femme obsessions that endured through most or all of my 2015. Here are some of them…

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Lip Products

If I ever stop thinking Bite lipstick in “Violet” is the most beautiful hot pink I’ve ever seen, you have my permission to check my pulse to make sure I’m not dead. Because I have a feeling I’ll be in love with this babe for a very long time.

Creamy, pigmented, and long-lasting, its formula is so gloriously on-point that I can throw it on and not worry about it for the rest of the night. And the shade – somewhere between fuchsia, purple, and Jem-and-the-Holograms neon pink – lights up my whole face and just makes me feel like me.

Another favorite lip hue this year was NARS Audacious lipstick in “Charlotte.” I stalked it on swatch sites, ogled it at Sephora, mercilessly Googled it, trawled its Instagram tag. I was a girl possessed. When I finally got my hands on it, it wasn’t quite all I had hoped – it gets crumbly and patchy if I dare to drink a coffee while wearing it, let alone eat an actual meal – but that color. Oh, that color. It is the sexy cranberry of my most glamorous Christmasy dreams. I dutifully reapply as needed, even if that’s 3 or 4 times a night, because it makes me feel like a starlet in a climactic, snowy love-confession scene.

My lipstick list would not be complete without MAC’s “Fashion Revival.” It came out in MAC’s limited-edition Matte Lip collection and I SNAPPED THAT SHIT UP because it is the most, most, most perfect fall/winter color. Described as a “deep raspberry,” it’s somehow a pink with all the drama and glamor of a great red. Fuck. Yes.

While TokyoMilk Salted Caramel Lip Elixir doesn’t lend any color to my lips, I had to include it in this list because it’s been my go-to “gonna-get-kissed-tonight” product since I got it. It’s thick and moisturizing without being sticky or gross, and of course, it tastes like caramel. I’ve known a lot of boys who refuse to kiss lipsticked ladies, but it’s hard to turn down kisses from someone who tastes this good.

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Other Makeup

Laura Mercier translucent loose setting powder was a recommendation from Jaclyn Hill and I’m sure glad I listened to her. I dust this on top of my foundation with a brush, or pat it on with a makeup sponge, and it keeps my face oil-free for… well, until I next wash my face, whenever that might be. As someone whose T-zone would ordinarily make a fantastic Slip ‘n’ Slide for tiny people, I have to say this is pretty damn impressive.

MAC Liquidlast eyeliner is the real deal. Cry, walk through a rainstorm, sweat, rub your eyes, get fucked with your face buried in a pillow, and the rest of your makeup may smear but your eyeliner will still look fresh as hell. It’s gloopy and hard to apply and the brush is weird, but it’s still the only eyeliner I’ll wear if I think I might be crying, sweating, and/or having sex. Which, let’s face it, is most days.

I used to be terrified of blush, because I blush a lot as is. Tarte Amazonian Clay blush in “Natural Beauty” converted me, though. It’s super pigmented and easy to blend, and the color really does look natural. It also straddles the line between pink and red, so I can pair it with just about any lipstick. Perrrrrf.

I would be remiss to leave Anastasia Dipbrow Pomade off this list. It’s such a daily staple for me, such a given and a must-have and a “duh!” part of my beauty routine, that I almost forgot it. But it is vital to my look. My eyebrows are like Samson’s hair: without ’em, I’m nothing. Thanks, Dipbrow, for another year of power brows.

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Clothing

I’m cheating a little by lumping all my polka-dot dresses into one item on this list. OH WELL. When I look back at what clothing made me feel reeeeal femme ‘n’ fabulous in 2015, these dresses take the cake. I bought blue and black ones at Loveless Boutique, a goldmine of rockabilly gorgeousness I serendipitously discovered next door to my hairdresser’s salon one day. The green one was a thrift-store score, and makes me feel like a Scooby Doo character. Too lovely!

I’ve been obsessed with thigh-high socks for a long time, but this was the year when I started wearing them on a regular basis. Whether rainbow-striped or sporty, from American Apparel or Sock Dreams or anywhere else, I just love them. And as a bonus: in my experience, wearing thigh-highs gets you a lot of sexual attention…!

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Jewelry

If you’ve seen me in person at a sex-related event in the past few months, I’ve probably forced you to look at my vulva ring. It’s a custom job from Catstache Accessories and I’m obsessed with it. There is nothing quite like the reaction I get from people when they realize it’s a vulva… and then when I tell them it’s my vulva, specifically.

My other fave accoutrement this year was my eyeball necklace. I spotted the pendant in a display case at the Lincoln City glass studio where we made our own glass dildos, and it was so strange that I just had to have it. I threaded it onto some white suede string and now it often holds a place of honor between my breasts, staring creepily back at anyone who dares to ogle me.

 

What were your favorite beauty-and-fashion items in 2015, my loves?

Monthly Faves: Bruises, Tongues & Glitter

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November was possibly the most sexually active month of my year so far, so that’s pretty rad. Here are some of the things that made that possible…

 

Sex toys

• I had loaned out my Pure Wand to a friend, and when she returned it to me mid-month, I sure made up for lost time. I used it on myself during a threesome, and during many a solo sexytime session thereafter. It still provides a more intense sensation than I usually find pleasurable, but when I get into the right mood for it, nothing else will do.

• I bought a Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble this month. (Yes, feel free to “ooh” and “aah” here.) Mine is blue because it was the last remaining toy from the limited-edition “Dreamy Daze” batch Fucking Sculptures made in May. Swooooon. I will review it, eventually, when I can pry myself away from it for long enough to write a review…

• It’s hard to come up with a 3rd item for this list, because I honestly didn’t use a lot of toys this month. But I did have one particularly memorable session with the Tantus Uncut #1 that reminded me how lovely it is. Unf, dat foreskin.

 

Fantasy fodder

• I bought a Bright Desire subscription and I’m so very glad I did. Hot female-gaze-oriented porn filled with cuties. A database easily searchable by keyword. Behind-the-scenes director’s comments available for practically every clip, incase you’re a porn nerd (which I am). Too too too good.

• Please help me: I still have fantasies about a hot guy from my past who turned out to be a total asshole. He’s just… so… attractive. Do you ever struggle with this dilemma? Does it leave you feeling guilty and depleted after you come incredibly hard? ‘Scuse me, I’ll just be over here in the corner, hanging my head in shame.

• Remember that Danny Wylde/Dylan Ryan scene I’ve been obsessed with for literal years? Yep, still in love. I pulled it out a few times when I was having trouble reaching orgasm, and it always helped. How are these two SO HOT? How is that amount of sexual chemistry even legal?!

 

Sexcetera

• After feeling kind of “meh” about cunnilingus for the past year, I got some incredible head from two different guys this month, and remembered how much I love it. I still haven’t come from oral in about a year and a half, but I’m confident that it will happen one of these days…

• At various times this month, I had a bite mark on my neck, a bruise on my breast, and scratches up and down my torso. Only two out of those three were actually sex-related, but, damn, still pretty neat.

• I got spanked a lot this month. Hell yes. Isn’t it fantastic when you find someone who loves to do the things you love to have done to you (or vice versa)?!

 

Femme stuff

• I bought my metallic blue Doc Martens when I was 18. I don’t know when or why they fell out of my regular shoe rotation, but it’s a travesty that they did. I pulled them out again for Playground Prom and now I kinda wanna wear them every day. How can you ever be sad when your feet look like laser beams?

• I’ve been really into sequins lately. As above, this was also kickstarted by Playground Prom, where the theme was “glitter Candyland masquerade.” I went shopping for New Year’s Eve clothes with a femme friend and bought a gold sequinned tube top, because I am a 16-year-old girl from 1984, apparently.

• Very, very enamored with EmMeMa’s lingerie. Also, she’s a total sweetheart. You should buy pretty things from her!

 

What were your November favorites?

Playground Diary, Part 2: Macarena, Mollena, & Mac & Cheese

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Where I left off, Bex was patiently waiting for me to put my makeup on for Playground prom. (Applying silver glitter eyeshadow can be a fairly involved process, as you might know.) We put on our sparkly dresses, grabbed Greek takeout, and shoved it messily into our faces while riding the subway back to the hotel. (We classy.)

The prom was sooooo much fun, and I say that as someone who normally hates anything involving a club-y or dance-y atmosphere. Usually that sort of vibe gives me massive anxiety and introvert exhaustion in short order. But the entire Playground Conference was set up to be a safe(r) space, and there were so many friendly faces everywhere I went, that I didn’t feel nervous at all. I danced my ass off with lovely humans the whole night: we literally stayed until the DJ said goodnight and they turned the lights back on.

Some prom highlights: Shrieking with excitement when a Justin Bieber song came on. ♥ Rogue (who is more outgoing than me, and therefore more capable of interacting with strangers) asking the DJ to play the Macarena on my behalf, and then getting to Macarena real hard with a bunch of other enthusiastic weirdos on the dance floor. ♥ Remembering midway through the evening that I had a paddle in my bag, and letting folks use it on each other. ♥ Laughing so hard at a cute boy’s Christopher Walken and James Spader impressions that I had to immediately announce “I have a huge crush on you,” which caused him to kiss me. ♥ Shrieking along with the high notes in Senorita. ♥ The total acceptance with which Lavender was greeted when she decided the dance floor was too hot and took her dress off.

There was to be a sexy after-party when prom ended – after all, post-prom is the time to lose your virginity… or, um, have a kinky orgy in a hotel room… – but I was too tired to party any more, so I ended up going home to sleep in a handsome man’s bed. (No, really. Just to sleep. I was tired as fuck from all that dancing!)

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After creeping home in the morning to shower and get dressed, I subwayed back to the hotel just in time for JoEllen and Stephen‘s talk on sex and depression. There was a remarkable feeling in that room: it felt like the crowd was hungry for the information being shared. Like all of us who’ve suffered from depression, and who have struggled with our sexuality as a result, were dying to both hear about others’ experiences in this regard and share our own. It’s true what JoEllen says about sex and depression, that it’s a difficult topic because it’s the intersection of two taboos – and that’s also what makes it so intensely freeing when you do get to hear about, and talk about, that intersection.

That session was fantastic, but also quite heavy, as you might expect. So when I received an invitation to a hotel room cuddle party immediately afterward, I accepted on the spot. Cuddles with sex-positive cuties are an excellent treatment for the sads. We took the elevator up, and our cuddle party devolved into a sleepy sex-pile. (I mean… It was a sex conference. Did you really expect our cuddles to be chaste?)

12224521_1132535596757421_182425694_nWhen the owner of the aforementioned hotel room had to check out of it, we were faced with the task of finding a new location for what had become an emergency threesome. I hesitate to write too much about the fun and funny fuck-times that ensued – I’d rather keep it in reserve for Tell Me Something Good or more private settings – but let’s just say it was gooooood.

Threesomes, and group sex in general, make me nervous as hell in theory. It feels like there’s so much that can go wrong, so many ways that one person can feel like a third wheel or that everyone can feel awkward and uncertain. But luckily, that hasn’t been my experience with either of the threesomes I’ve been in. I guess I know some good people!

We finished up and got on a streetcar back to the hotel, where we arrived just in time for the final keynote with Mollena Williams and Herr Meister. It was a really wonderful ending to the conference because it was so low-key: instead of being a structured speech/talk, it was really just a dialogue between Mollena and her Master about their relationship. I think it was exactly the emotional cooldown we needed to help us transition back into “real life” – almost like non-sexual aftercare.

In her closing remarks, Samantha suggested mac and cheese as a viable self-care strategy for dealing with con drop. Bex and I took that idea and ran with it. After hugging folks goodbye – and returning the threesome-location key we’d borrowed – we returned to 7 West for massive quantities of comfort food. We ended up talking for 4 hours or more, just debriefing about the weekend, and it was truly the perfect conference wrap-up. ♥

Thanks so much to Samantha Fraser for making the Playground Conference happen, and to all the folks who traveled from near and from far to attend it. It was ridiculous amounts of fun and I feel so grateful to be a part of this community. Love love love!

Playground Diary, Part 1: Biscuit Porn, Short Skirts & Special Brownies

Ha. Remember last week when I prophesied that Playground would be “one of the best weekends of my year”? Yep, I was right.

imageMy Playground adventure began with a Thursday-night porn party hosted by the beautiful and wonderful Kate Sinclaire. Kate knows porn: her softcore site Cherrystems and soon-to-launch porn site Ciné Sinclaire are the cat’s pajamas. She showed us some stuff she’d been working on, all of which was hot and fresh and compelling. Then we watched various other clips, including this adorable one in which Zander Storm shows you how to make biscuits, while wearing nothing but an apron. CUTEST.

I got to meet several cool folks at that get-together who I would see intermittently for the rest of the weekend – including Rogue, who has been a Snapchat buddy of mine for ages! Yay!

The next day, I had two psychology exams practically back-to-back, and got through them only by reminding myself that I was going to Playground that night.

imageBex came over to my house and it was sooooo good to see her again. (We last hung out at SHE and, before that, at DildoHoliday.) She waited around for me while I got ready (a recurring theme of the weekend – sorry, Bex) and then went for dinner at my fave, 7 West. From there, we headed over to the hotel where Playground was taking place.

We missed the opening keynote but arrived in time for Tell Me Something Good, the monthly sexy storytelling event which is always one of the highlights of my month. I got to see (and introduce Bex to) a bunch of my favorite folks from the local sex-positive community. We got drinks, listened to stories, and laughed our asses off. (Dan and Tynan are two of the most hilarious people I know.) I even got to tell a story of my own – in a very, very short dress. Whoops.

We went upstairs for a tiny, intimate hotel room party that involved “special” brownies, Truth or Dare, and ridiculous mispronunciations of the word “boudoir.” Ooh la la.

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Bex and I began our Saturday morning at a talk on solo polyamory, given by Eva Dusome of Polyamory Toronto. I am just at the veeeery beginning of my foray into poly life, and while this workshop wasn’t the 101-level introduction I probably needed, it still gave me a ton of insight and food for thought about what kind of poly person I might want to be. By the time the session ended, my brain was positively abuzz with thoughts of autonomy, connection, individuality, introversion, the illusion of control, and the ways in which self-care is vital to relationships.

After that, we went to Create Your Own Porn, a panel featuring (among others) Kate Sinclaire, Sophie Delancey, and Taylor J. Mace, three of my favorite pornographers who also happen to be three truly delightful people. Also there was Sonya JF Barnett, whose work I remembered from a feminist porn screening I attended earlier this year. They shared many useful tidbits about the technical and back-end side of porn creation, probably launching the careers of several audience members with porn ambitions!

imageAfter lunch, we had intended to go to the Spit erotic boudoir shoot, but there was a huge lineup (yay, good for them!) so we went back down to the exhibitor room instead. I bought some fancy lingerie from EmMeMa and we also ogled leather kink goods, stainless steel sex toys, and fetishistic femme hair accessories. It was truly a cornucopia of Cool Sex Stuff.

It was fitting that I followed up lingerie shopping with a panel on femme identity. Some femmes on this panel I already knew, and some I didn’t, but all of them brought perspectives to the table that opened my eyes and engaged my heart. This was easily the most emotional session of the weekend for me, because femme erasure, femme competition, and femme underappreciation are all things I’ve experienced and things I’ve felt stupidly alone in. So much of what the speakers said was relatable, not only to me but seemingly to everyone else in the room. The sense of crowd-wide solidarity was palpable and it took a lot of restraint for me not to cry – but I don’t think anyone would’ve judged me if I had.

After that last session, I located Bex and we headed back to my place to get ready for prom night… (This story to be continued in part 2 of my Playground diary!)