body image

Have you ever thought about your body from the point of view of your skin?

Hello! You’re dealing with a situation that’s very familiar for many teenagers (and ex-teenagers like myself): You’re growing into your body and…you’re not sure how you feel about it. But just because this is a common stage of human development doesn’t mean you need to sit in silence, and I’m so…

When it comes to sex, women are often portrayed as nothing but warm vessels there to validate male partners’ egos. The widespread cultural acceptance of a woman pursuing pleasure for her own sake is a relatively new one (at least in West’s modern history), and we’ve still got a long way to go. It’s no small wonder that many women have a difficult time asking for what they want in general, let alone when it comes to sex.

Sexual shame hinders women in far too many ways. It’s a difficult beast to tackle, as it assumes so many nuanced, subtle forms in our daily lives.

Contrary to a common public opinion, there’s no right or wrong way to have sex.

Women get a whole lot of messages about body hair. So how do you figure out what you want in terms of shaving and other personal grooming?

When we have sex, all of our bodies’ small idiosyncrasies, quirks, and so-called “flaws” are on display. Our natural functions are part of life.

I’m just going to lay it down for you: sex will not be great unless you’re mentally and emotionally prepared. But “prepared” means something different for everyone. For one person, it might mean a solid, committed relationship. For another, it might mean having overcome some body image problems. And for yet another, you might just genuinely feel ready right out of the gate. We all require different things in order to be truly prepared to have sex for the first time. Some of us might require a lot, and some might require almost nothing. Sex might have a lot of emotional or moral meaning for one person, but for another, it might have no such weight behind it at all.

Many women and girls feel insecure about sex, especially when it’s new. How can we build some sexual confidence?

I realized that I was uncomfortable associating myself with genital herpes. Will people think I have it? Why else would someone write about genital herpes and risk that association if they didn’t have it, right? So I pressed on, putting myself at the center of an itty-bitty social experiment that resulted in some pretty big stuff.