How to Receive Desire When You Feel Undesirable

Kate Sloan

Honesty time: I may be a sex blogger, but I hardly ever feel sexy.

I’ve grown up with a chubby body and a face that’s definitely not “conventionally attractive.” But truthfully, insecurity and an ugly self-image can plague anyone, regardless of what they look like on the outside. Even the most gorgeous, magazine-worthy folks have their own self-love struggles to deal with.

Dissatisfaction with your appearance can cause problems in all sorts of areas, but one place where it feels especially weird is when you find yourself being wanted by someone. When you’re the target of desire and flirtation, it can feel foreign, misplaced, or even like a mean trick. Even after years of working on my self-acceptance, I still find myself assuming that compliments I receive from flirtatious strangers are really just a joke, and that they’re mocking me, Regina George-style.

That said, here are my best tips for how to deal with being desired when you feel undesirable. These work for me… most of the time.

• Work on your self-love. Everyone could use a boost in this area, I think. I am a fan of Gala Darling’s “Radical Self-Love” materials, as well as the book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay. You can also keep it simple by just paying yourself a compliment every day in the mirror. (Are you surprised to see hippie-dippy self-love stuff on a sex blog? Don’t be! Self-acceptance is mandatory for fulfilling, healthy sex, methinks.)

• Remember that attraction is subjective. Oh, this is a big one for me. I look at myself in the mirror and think, “That’s not hot!” and so I assume, implicitly, that everyone else feels the same. Well, they don’t! Everyone is attracted to different qualities and body types and personalities and faces. Sometimes it helps to remind myself of all the quirky-looking people I’ve been attracted to. They weren’t supermodels, but I adored them. And it’s perfectly understandable for people to feel that way about me, too.

• Invite more flirtatious energy into your life. I am an advocate of relationship models that allow for flirting with people other than your partner, because I think that flirty energy is enormously healing and uplifting for most of us. But even if you’re in a strictly monogamous relationship, you’re still allowed to enjoy crushing on others and being crushed on by others, though you may need to keep those feelings inside yourself. You can also watch movies or TV shows where there’s a lot of romance going on – I find that works almost as well as the real thing! The more commonplace those flirty, happy, romantic feelings become in your life, the easier it’ll be to believe that you can be (and are) the recipient of desire.

• Fish for compliments. Honestly, fuck people who tell you not to do this. (I don’t mean “fuck them” in the sexual way. I mean it in the “oh, fuck off, you asshole” way.) Obviously it’s annoying when someone is constantly complaining about how ugly they feel, in an over-the-top attempt to garner praise. But if you’re feeling shitty about yourself, you are allowed to ask for reinforcement and affirmation from those who adore you. You are allowed to say, “What is your favorite thing about me?” or “What is the sexiest part of my body?” I used to be a hardcore advocate of the idea that you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you, but then I learned that actually, hearing about how much other people love you can be a great way to shore up your own self-love reserves.

• Adorn yourself lovingly. Fuck what other people think looks good on you. What do you think looks good on you? What clothing, makeup, and/or hairstyle is going to make you feel your cutest and most fuckable? Put that stuff on (or go out and buy it, if you don’t already own it) and wear it as often as you reasonably can. Physical trappings may be deemed shallow by some, but they can work wonders on your self-image, so you may as well use them as the tools that they are.

• Choose, and embody, a sexiness role model. When you’re at a party or some other environment where you tend to feel like an ugly shrinking violet, choose a celebrity or real-life person who you view as strong, sexy, and desirable – and then pretend you’re them. Try to take on their posture, confidence, and energy. This is a “fake it til you make it” sort of approach, but it works. (Another similar thing I like to do sometimes: imagine your sexiness role model, or your latest crush, is watching you do everything you do. You will automatically act – and feel – sexier and cuter!)

• Improve your nutrition and activity level. This is boring and bordering-on-preachy, but I do find I feel sexier when I’m eating well, drinking a lot of water, and getting a decent amount of exercise. This is especially useful for those of us who don’t like our bodies. It’s hard to hate your body for how it looks when you simultaneously love your body for how it feels and what it can do.

• Consume more images of people who look like you. Make a Pinterest board or photo album of people who have whatever physical “imperfections” you don’t like about yourself: big hips, big nose, big feet, whatever it is. I promise you there are sexy-as-fuck people in the world who are totally rocking that feature that you hate on yourself, and I also promise that filling your eyes with images of these people will slowly-but-surely shift your perception of that feature.

How do you make yourself feel sexier when you feel distinctly un-hot?

Feminist Porn Week Rocked

Kate Sloan

It is kind of astonishing to me that I live in the city where Feminist Porn Week happens to take place every year.

It is truly so amazing and fantastic that it feels like a gift, a glorious coincidence, a joyful miracle. I do not take it for granted.

This year I live-tweeted the whole Feminist Porn Conference, and it made me even more hyper-aware of what was going on around me – in a good way. Reading other people’s moment-by-moment tweets, and composing my own, allowed me to process and enjoy the talks and panels even more.

I won’t write an exhaustive summary like I did last year, because frankly the #FPCon2 hashtag is full of fantastic accounts of what went on. But I will write a little about the most memorable moments and experiences that happened to me during Feminist Porn Week.

The fisting workshop. I will be honest: I bought my ticket not so much because I wanted to learn about fisting (which is still, I think, well out of my vagina’s conceivable grasp), but primarily because I wanted to see Courtney Trouble… in person… fisting someone. I mean, how amazing is that?!

The “fist-ee” was Zahra Stardust, the adorable pink-haired Australian porn princess who ended up winning Heartthrob of the Year at the FPAs two nights later. I developed an intense crush on her from the way she talked intelligently about porn laws down under and then took Courtney’s fist with seemingly no effort. She squirted on the people in the front row. Courtney fucked her powerfully and intensely and it felt so intimate that I shouldn’t be looking, and yet I couldn’t not look. It was beautiful and educational.

Dylan and Danny’s talk. Um, I may have mentioned how much I love Dylan Ryan and Danny Wylde before. They are my favorite porn stars, ever. But I love them even more now, because of the wonderful talk they gave at the conference. They spoke openly and candidly about “getting in and getting out” of the porn industry and how those transitions have affected their identities. They are both amazingly smart and thoughtful. The room was positively packed, for good reason: it was one of the best talks of the conference.

Tobi’s talk. Tobi Hill-Meyer is a trans woman who makes feminist porn, so of course, she’s no stranger to receiving criticism. Her talk was about how to deal with criticism effectively. Of all the sessions I attended, this one had the most pertinence to my real life, and I think many people there felt similarly. When you work in a controversial area like sexuality or feminism, no matter how peripherally or centrally, it is useful – nay, vital – to know how to respond gracefully to critics. I will be sure to start implementing some of the strategies I learned in Tobi’s presentation.

Aussie porn. Australia has some fucked-up porn laws. A lot of it is illegal, and they are very strict about things like fetishes, BDSM, squirting (which they classify as urination and therefore a type of fetish), and fisting. The Aussie porn session, run by the very articulate Ms. Naughty and Zahra Stardust, screened several films, many of which were political and commented directly on the injustice of the porn laws there. I also discovered that Ms. Naughty’s company, Bright Desire, makes the exact kind of porn I’ve been longing for all my life: female-gaze-oriented, female-pleasure-focused, sensual, sexy, soft, yet also hardcore. Hey, my birthday’s in about a week; I’d gladly accept a Bright Desire subscription if you’re not sure what to get me! Wink wink.

Courtney Trouble’s keynote. Oh my fucking god. Everyone was speechless. Not literally – we were all tweeting up a storm and cheering our hearts out – but figuratively, we had the wind knocked out of us by what Courtney had to say. I will embed the video below, because you MUST watch it; there’s little I could say about it that could embody just how powerful it really was. Courtney, if you read this, thank you, thank you, thank you, for saying so many things that badly needed to be said. Every single person I’ve spoken to has said that this speech was one of the main highlights, if not the highlight, of the conference.

Were you at any of the Feminist Porn Week events? What were the highlights for you?

Heads up: there’s a sponsored link in this post!

Review: Tantus Flirt

Kate Sloan

Lately I haven’t been in the mood for anal stimulation, like, ever. My butt’s been highly resistant to poking and prodding. Which is why it’s taken me so damn long to get this review written.

Tantus sent me the Flirt months ago. I had actually requested a smaller plug, the Little Flirt, but I was nonetheless happy to see the regular-sized Flirt when it arrived in my mailbox – because it looks sexy as hell. Glossy, black, curvy, flexible. Mmm.

If you ask me (and you’re reading my blog, so I assume you’re asking me), Tantus is one of the few companies that really gets anal toys right. They don’t cause my butt pain or discomfort. They just feel good.

The Flirt is no exception. Its gently swelling curves slip inside me with minimal warm-up, even though the toy is 1.4 inches across its widest point. The curve from the head to the middle of the shaft is just delicious, and feels gooooood going in and out of my ass. Combined with clit stimulation, it’s a knockout. As with many other Tantus butt toys, the sentence that comes to mind is, “This is what anal play should always feel like.”

My only issue with the Flirt is the base. I think it’s due for a redesign. It’s roughly the same width as the widest part of the plug, so it doesn’t feel completely secure; I get the sense that I have to hold onto it or it might drift inside me (though I don’t know if this is actually possible or if it’s just a feeling I have). It’s also circular and wide, so the Flirt isn’t really “wearable” as a plug; it’s more of an active toy, to be used during fucking, than it is one to be worn inside your underwear for hours at a time. (I have other plugs for that.)

If Tantus gave the Flirt a wide, crescent moon-shaped base like their Juice plug has, it would be useable as an all-purpose butt plug. For now, I’ll only be using it for in-and-out-fucking. But it does that very, very well.

Merci, Tantus!

Two-Year Blogiversary!

Kate Sloan

That’s right, Girly Juice is two years old today!

With that in mind, here are 10 things I’ve learned from the past two years of sex blogging:

1. “I have a sex toy blog” is a great conversation starter. Whether or not you can tell from reading what I write here, I’m pretty shy in real life. I tend to be that person who hangs out in the corner, smiling and nodding, until someone asks me a question. And if the question is “What do you do?” or “What are you up to?” then I always have a great (and sometimes show-stopping) response…

2. Sex toys do lose their appeal… eventually. Well, some of them. I’m no longer impressed by run-of-the-mill vibrators, standard dildos, or “innovative” gimmicks. A toy has to actually feel good and work well to get my attention – which means, unfortunately, that many things I receive these days just don’t thrill me. I often get asked if sex toys start to “get old” when you’ve tried dozens of them, and the answer is: the mediocre ones do.

3. Materials matter. I used to have a somewhat laissez-faire attitude about materials – I knew to avoid jelly at all costs, but I assumed everything else must be at least passably safe. Well, I was wrong. I’ve learned that porous toys can give me infections, and that phthalates can be present even in toys that claim to be phthalate-free. I grow less and less trusting of mega-sized toy companies by the day, because they seem to lie about their toys’ materials so damn often. My vagina is healthier and happier now that I stick to non-porous, legitimately phthalate-free toys.

4. Rumbly vibrations rule. When I first started reviewing toys, I was kind of unimpressed with vibrators, because the only ones I’d tried had been buzzy as fuck, always making me numb within minutes and leading to disappointing and difficult orgasms. The first super-rumbly vibe I discovered was the Wahl (thanks to Epiphora, whose recommendations are always stellar), and it changed my life. Suddenly, orgasms were easy. And not only that, but they actually felt better. Since then, I’ve discovered my favorite rumbly vibes, the We-Vibe Tango and Salsa, and I use them on a near-daily basis because they’re just that fantastic. This is the kind of success story I wish on anyone who pursues greater pleasure through sex toys.

5. Strap-ons aren’t just for lesbians or pegging… Men can use them on women too. I should probably write a whole post on this topic, and maybe I will. My boyfriend, ever the mature and sexually giving hero of my life, has happily strapped on various dildos over his flesh-and-blood dick to add some variety to our sex life from time to time. If I’m in the mood for something huge, something tiny, or something with a more intense texture than a natural penis can provide, I can get it. Of course, my boyfriend’s penis isn’t neglected – he just knows it’s not the only tool in his toolbox, and I think that’s wonderful!

6. Everyone wants to review sex toys, but most people don’t know (or don’t want to know) what it actually entails. As I discussed in my sex toy reviewer FAQ, playing with toys is actually a pretty minimal part of what goes into making a blog like this happen. I spend most of my work hours writing, editing, answering e-mails, managing ads, and generating endless links. I’m not saying it’s not fun (hell, I love writing!), but I think it’s pretty different from what most people are envisioning when they excitedly ask me, “How can I get into your line of work?!”

7. The sex-positive community has fewer creepers than you would think. While I complain about deceptive fetishists and other people of that ilk, 90% of those encounters have happened to me in non-sexual sectors of the internet. When I talk openly about sex in a way that’s smart and thoughtful, I find I tend to attract mostly people who want to talk about sex in similarly smart and thoughtful ways. It helps that the sex-positive community is all about consent and tends to shun people who lack respect and decency. There will always be those weirdos who silently favorite all the tweets where I mention masturbating, but those people are greatly outweighed by folks who are genuine, kind, and only sexualize me with my explicit consent.

8. My vagina is capable of more than I thought. Toward the beginning of my sex blogging career, a 1.5"-diameter bulb tripped me up. Nowadays, I can handle pretty big dildos if I warm up and lube up properly. I’m not quite a vaginal superhero, but I can do more than I thought I’d ever be able to do. (And hey, I’m going to a fisting workshop next week – that’s something to aspire to!)

9. It’s my blog; I make the rules. I went into this loosely modeling myself after sex bloggers I admired: people who wrote erotica, people who reviewed sex toys, or people who wrote clever how-to posts. Over time, I’ve grown to realize that I don’t have to stick to what’s already been done. I can write tirades about oppressive language, I can wax poetic about gender identity, I can give advice I wish someone had given me. There are no hard rules. When it’s your space, you can do what you want – and often, sticking to the truest part of yourself is what will attract more readers, reblogs, and retweets!

10. If you want something, take steps toward getting it. Sounds obvious, maybe, but 3+ years ago I never knew there was a way I could acquire sex toys that were out of my modest student price range and have a significant platform from which to speak my mind about sexuality. I also idolized people like Tristan Taormino, Epiphora, and Courtney Trouble, never anticipating that I would ever have Twitter exchanges with them or review stuff for them. If there’s someone you want to know, reach out to them. If there’s something you want to do, start – today. If you want to make something, get the materials together and begin. You never know what could happen!

Thanks for reading my blog, lovelies! What’s your favorite post from my past two years? What type of post would you like to see more of in the future here?

Review: Lelo Ida

Kate Sloan

I never knew a toy could make me scream in pain until I tried the Lelo Ida.

I didn’t see it coming, and neither did my boyfriend. So we were both pretty horrified, since pain wasn’t supposed to be on the agenda that night (and vaginal pain isn’t the kind I find hot, anyway).

The Ida is an overhaul of Lelo’s previous couples’ vibes, the Tiani and Noa, meant to be worn inside the vagina alongside the penis during PIV sex. Incase you didn’t know, Lelo got into a legal tussle with We-Vibe when the latter accused the former of stealing their unique toy design, and We-Vibe won, so Lelo had to scrap everything and start from scratch.

I assumed the Ida would be like a poor man’s We-Vibe, and it is, but it’s worse than that: it’s an assault on the genitals. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into my round hole.

I think my major problem with it is that the internal portion is SO BIG. No, it’s not big by dildo standards, but when you try to shove a penis in underneath it, it digs into the vaginal wall and feels appallingly out of place. It reminds me of those occasional awkward moments when my boyfriend’s penis jams my NuvaRing into an odd position and it hurts, except the Ida is so much worse than that, because it’s firm and it’s rotating.

Yep, the internal portion rotates. I thought this would be my favorite feature, because historically I enjoy internal rotation, but actually I can barely feel it. When my boyfriend’s penis is inside me, I can’t tell if the added girth is stopping the rotation entirely or if I just can’t feel the silicone arm’s slow stroking over the wave of pain I’m experiencing. Either way, it doesn’t do a damn thing for me.

The external part of the toy doesn’t cause me pain like the internal part, but it’s still a pretty massive failure. Traditional couples’ vibes have a slim external part, made to tuck neatly between the labia so it can access the clitoris easily and directly. The Ida, instead, has a large round disc, almost as big as my palm. Ain’t no way a disc is fitting in between my labia, so it just sits on the outside of my vulva, the vibrations ever-so-slightly reaching my clit but certainly not enough to induce an orgasm. I would imagine this problem would be even worse for people with thick outer labia.

I had an orgasm from the Ida once – once – and here is what I had to do to make it happen: I had to use it by itself (no penis, no dildo), I had to turn it up to the highest setting so my clit could perceive the vibrations, and when I got close to orgasm, I had to physically press the disc against my clit to give it enough sensation. When the ordeal was over, I felt so drained and disappointed that the orgasm hardly felt worth it. And that was the best session I’ve had with my Ida.

With my partner, no amount of lube and warm-up and patience can make the Ida pleasurable or even comfortable. It just feels like I’m getting stabbed in the vaginal wall. I scream into the pillow and push my boyfriend away. He gets upset and distressed that he has hurt me. And then we give up on the Ida and have sex normally, which still kind of hurts after the Ida’s onslaught on my vagina. This happens every time we use it. I have had enough.

Did I mention that you have to pay $200 for the luxury of getting poked in the vaginal wall with a piece of rotating silicone?

There are other details I could mention in this review – the Ida has a remote, it’s waterproof, it has two high-tech motion-sensitive settings, it’s made of smooth body-safe materials – but really, none of that matters, because I cannot recommend this toy to anyone. I refuse to.

If you want a comfortable couples’ vibe to wear during PIV sex, try the Noa – it’s the only one I’ve ever liked, and it’s half the price of the Ida. If you want to have more control of your experience, try holding a long-handled or small vibe against your clit during PIV: I recommend the Eroscillator, Mia 2, or Tango.

But please, don’t get the Ida. Or if you really want the Ida experience, try putting a sharp rock in your vag next time your partner’s about to penetrate you.

This toy was sent to me for review by Lelo. Dear Lelo: I still love you, even though I hate the Ida.