Book Reviews

Book Review: The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked

Kate Sloan

I discovered this book in a random way. A few weeks ago, while getting ready for a Body Pride workshop, I suddenly realized I was on my period. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to sit on a stranger’s floor for hours while completely naked and menstruating, but it seems like risky business. So I opened up Google and started searching to see what other people recommended.

The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked came up on Google Books, because there’s a small section about periods in it. It told me to wear a tampon with the string shoved inside – which I did, and everything worked out great. Intrigued, I decided to buy and read the rest of the book.

It’s not written by actual strippers, but rather, by women who interviewed hundreds of strippers. I admit I would have found it more interesting if the book was primarily direct quotes from real strippers discussing their real techniques, rather than just a summary of what was gleaned from interviews. But there’s still a lot of valuable stuff in here.

I was reading the book mostly out of a desire to look better while doing casual naked activities – lying in bed, maybe playing Strip Scrabble at parties, that kind of thing – and not so much to learn about how to actually strip. So, I mostly skimmed over the parts about dance moves, choosing songs to get down to, and how to set flattering lighting for your show. But that stuff is in here and many aspiring bedroom dancers would find it useful.

What I really appreciated were the aesthetic tips and tricks: how to choose a flattering hairstyle for your body type, how to achieve a strippertastic “smoky eye,” how to make your boobs look bigger with bronzer, and so on. There were also some quirkier tips, like how to create a makeshift bra out of masking tape and how to do a beauty routine if you’re stuck at your boyfriend’s house with no supplies on hand. This is all good info for any femme lady – though I don’t know if it’s stuff you need to buy this book for. Much of this information can be found in beauty magazines and YouTube tutorials, truth be told.

My boyfriend, who was reading over my shoulder for part of this short book, thought it was funny that the authors recommended massaging coffee grounds into your ass to temporarily reduce cellulite. As for me, I thought it was funny when they recommended using a handheld vibrating massager to get fat deposits moving – with no mention whatsoever of using it to vibrate more interesting areas. Come on, ladies!

So, while The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked was a fun read, I’m not sure I actually learned much from it that I hadn’t seen in Cosmo or Vogue or maybe even Seventeen. But if you’re thinking about making stripteases a regular part of your life, this would be a good primer.

5 Books That Have Shaped My Sexuality

Kate Sloan

I don’t read as many books as I’d like to. This is partially due to the fact that I spend zillions of hours a day on the internet, reading blogs and articles and other web resources. Still, though, I owe a lot to the books that I’ve read on sexuality, and I wanted to profile some of them today.

1. Butch Is a Noun (S. Bear Bergman)

Bear is perhaps my all-time favorite queer author. At the time that he wrote Butch is a Noun, he still identified as a butch and used gender-neutral pronouns (he’s since started identifying as a trans man and uses male pronouns now, from what I’ve seen). Bear visited my high school at one point and read aloud from Butch at one of the first Queer-Straight Alliance meetings I ever attended, and I was immediately enthralled. His writing is richly descriptive and often hilarious. This book helped me refine my ideas and fantasies about what I, as a queer femme, am looking for in a partner: a chivalrous, old-fashioned gentleman (though not necessarily male-bodied or male-identifying), who is nonetheless well-versed in new and progressive ideas about gender and sex.

2. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships (Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá)

The “polyamory bible” used to be The Ethical Slut, but ever since Sex at Dawn came along, it’s pretty much reigned supreme in poly circles. It presents countless fascinating arguments for the idea that monogamy doesn’t come naturally to humans, using plenty of evolutionary psychology and bonobo research to prove its central point. This one is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in delving into consensual non-monogamy or have already made that plunge.

3. The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler)

In a world that shames, commodifies, and minimizes vaginas, it’s unspeakably refreshing that a play like this could get so popular and be talked about so often in the public eye. This piece is a must-read if you, like so many of us, suffer from vagina shame, or just don’t think about your lady-parts all that often (although, if you’re reading this blog, I doubt that’s an issue of yours). I also encourage men to read this, if just to gain some perspective on the pussy.

4. O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm (Jonathan Margolis)

I’ve never heard another person talk about this book. It’s just not very well-known, which is a shame, because it’s brilliant and quite possibly my favorite book on the topic of sex. Margolis, with a surprisingly balanced and empathetic attitude for a straight cis guy, leads us through the history of the human orgasm. Of particular interest is his in-depth description of the Victorian era’s stuffy attitudes about sex, which hid all the suppressed, lascivious shit that was going on under the surface. His main hypothesis is that testosterone has been the most influential hormone in our history, and he may well be right.

5. Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (Elissa Stein and Susan Kim)

As you might expect from a book about menstruation written by two women, this book has a serious feminist bent and leans heavily toward anti-establishment. Stein and Kim write about the male fear of menstrual blood, the various products that have been invented to make it disappear (often at the risk of women’s health), and alternatives to these sometimes crippling “solutions.” Definitely a book for the hippie-mama within, but still a great read if you’re tired of the world telling you to stuff a “dry wad of fuckin’ cotton”* up your vag every month.

*This is a quote from The Vagina Monologues about tampons. Yet another reason to read it.

Progress Report: G-Spot Orgasms (Revisited)

Kate Sloan

The last time we spoke about G-spot orgasms, I had only just started to experiment. I’d given a stack of towels a permanent home on my bed, and I’d invested in some highly-praised G-spotting toys. But I’d barely ventured into the world that is G-spot pleasure.

I’ve been playing with my G-spot a lot more lately, so I thought I’d give you a little update on how it’s going.

I was reading Deborah Sundahl’s squirting bible and she mentioned that some women find it easier to incorporate a steadily-lessening amount of clitoral stimulation over time, as they learn to master their G-spots. This idea sounded much easier and more appealing to me than just dropping clit stim cold-turkey in favor of concentrating on my G-spot.

Today, I started with my Amethyst, a favorite but oft-forgotten dildo of mine. It’s glass, and fairly skinny, so it requires little to no lube and is great for warm-up. Plus, when inserted, it makes a freaking bee-line for my G-spot, immediately triggering that need-to-pee sensation.

Normally I need a little clit play to get me going, but the Amethyst felt good right away. I wish it were always this easy to get started. (Maybe it would be if I always started with the Amethyst!)

After a while, my pussy started to crave something bigger. The small, tapered end of the Amethyst just wasn’t cutting it anymore, so I pulled out the Pure Wand. The G-spotter to end all G-spotters. A pound and a half of glorious steel.

Like glass, steel barely needs any lube – I just stuck the Wand’s larger end in my mouth for a second and that was enough to get it to slide in. My G-spot was pretty swollen and aroused at this point, so again, it felt good right away. I thrusted and rocked and tilted and manoeuvred. Good god, the Pure Wand knows what it’s doing.

After about 15 minutes of that, I started to feel a little stuck – like my arousal wasn’t progressing anymore. So I grabbed my Eroscillator, kitted out with the fingertip attachment, turned it to the lowest setting and held it on my clit while continuing to thrust the Pure Wand. I increased the speed of my thrusting, and a few times, I felt the glimmer of an oncoming orgasm somewhere in the distance, but it didn’t happen.

I should tell you that the Eroscillator’s lowest speed is not normally one that gets me off. I always click up to the second and third speeds to finish the job. While using it in tandem with the Pure Wand, I occasionally felt a momentary desire to increase the power of the oscillations, but when that happened, I knew it was only because I was focusing on my clit too much. Ms. Sundahl says achieving G-spot orgasm is about shifting your awareness from your clit to your urethral sponge, so I knew that’s what I had to do.

I left the Eroscillator buzzing at a low speed on my clit, while thrusting very fast with the Pure Wand. I focused all my mental energy on the way the big steel ball felt as it slid over my G-spot again and again. I revelled in that sensation, that unusual pleasure that I don’t typically encounter without the help of toys. And before very long, I came.

It wasn’t a full-on G-spot orgasm – I felt some of it in my clit, and was hypersensitive afterward in a very clitoral sort of way. But I definitely feel that I now know how to shift my orgasms into a deeper part of my pussy, at least somewhat… and that feels like an important step.