How to Be Shamelessly Sexy 🫦
The ultimate guide to knowing what type of sex you want and asking for it.
Introduction
My mission is to help the world be shamelessly sexy. To me, that means not feeling ashamed about who you are or the type of sex you want to have. It means going after the things that you want in bed and in life.
Being shamelessly sexy looks different for everyone. It’s something you need to define for yourself on your own terms. Also, no one can ever be perfectly shamelessly sexy. That’s because shame is a normal human emotion that will continue to crop up in life. But being perfect is not the point, people! Not feeling shame is not the point, either. This is about self-discovery. It’s about living your own life that is pleasurable and “totally rad,” as the surfer dudes say. It’s about feeling aligned with yourself and courageous enough to pursue what you want.
I may be more shamelessly sexy now, but I wasn’t always this way. I grew up in London, where I was trained at all-girls private schools to be a prim and proper young lady. The red shoes of my school uniform were always perfectly polished. As I failed to color inside the lines in my lessons, I developed a dangerous curiosity.
One day, I secretly came across what one might call a “spicy book” or “smut” in my school library. Heavens! When I read it, I felt excited. It was a beacon, an acknowledgment from the adult world:
“There are other horny teenagers just like you out there. In fact, being a horny teenager is normal. All those boring adults? Well, they were once one, too.”
That day, my perspective on sexuality changed. That smut book opened my mind to the possibility that sex and lovemaking are some of the most beautiful things in the world, even if nobody overtly champions them. I still believe that it’s one of life’s greatest joys to love another person fully, honestly, and vulnerably. And yet, this is totally hidden in our culture, which makes us feel guilty for simply enjoying ourselves. To this day, that doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve come to wonder whether there is a screw missing in my brain or if it’s that I simply transcended the confines of the world I grew up in all those years ago when I read that smut book in the library. Now, I try to help others do the same: to love ourselves and our partners openly in our own unique, beautiful, and messy ways.
This piece is for heterosexual-leaning females because that’s my experience. Men experience shame differently, and I’ll address that in another piece. So, let’s dive into how we can get you there!
Defining Shame About Sex
In my article, “How To Be Shameless,” I shared Brené Brown’s definition of shame: “Shame is an epidemic in our culture” that is “highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders." She shares that "[f]or women, shame is: do it all, do it perfectly, and never let them see you sweat.”
Here’s an example of this in my friend Emily's day-to-day life. Emily is fresh out of a relationship, and she wants to feel good about her body. Last week, we identified where her ideas about her body and her sexuality are coming from.
Feminine conservatism from her mother: Emily’s mother is Catholic. For her whole life, Emily’s mother wanted her to cover her shoulders and wear longer, feminine dresses, especially when they went to her grandmother’s house for Sunday brunch.
Bikini bodies from Instagram: Emily saw a beautiful woman wearing a bikini on Instagram, so she ordered one. It has a G-string bottom that Emily is a bit nervous about trying, but since she lives by the beach, she wants to give it a go.
Pressure from her ex: When Emily was 18, she dated a guy who was 23, and he was more sexually experienced than her. He made her feel guilty that she had never had a threesome and that she didn’t want to watch porn with him. In his eyes, she was never sexually experienced enough.
Social Comparison: With her last boyfriend, Emily noticed when they passed other girls on the beach who were prettier than her. Those girls were tanned and wore the G-string bikinis like it was nobody’s business. Emily knew that comparison was the thief of joy, but she still wondered if her boyfriend wanted to be with someone prettier.
Emily’s experiences mirror exactly how Brené Brown described shame in women: “unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we are supposed to be.” Still, Emily’s situation confused me. If her sexuality and her feelings about her own body weren’t these messages from others, then what were they? This was something far deeper than her mother’s conservatism or her ex pressuring her to have sex. Perhaps this was something internal. Perhaps this was something to do with her “self,” and that required an energetic, internal transformation. We agreed that it sounded woo-woo, but her feelings about her sexuality and her body are a form of energy that she embodies.
Being Shameless Sexy
Emily and I agreed that being shamelessly sexy comes down to three fundamental things: knowing what you want, believing you deserve what you want, and asking for it. There’s a lot to say here, so I’ll address the tips for each of them separately.
Know What You Want
“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” (Terry Tempest Williams).
I could probably write a whole book with tips on how to help you figure out what you want in your sex life. I don’t claim to be a witch or a genius, so I’ll share what’s helped me so far.
Work On Your Shame.
As I explored previously, facing your shame can help you change your perspective and let go of the past. So, pull up a shameful memory or two from your past that involves your body or having sex. Try not to pick something too overwhelming to begin with. You might need to repeat this exercise multiple times if you have various memories bringing you shame about sex in your past. For this exercise, I picked Valentine’s Day with my high school boyfriend when I was 17 when my younger sister walked in on us trying to have a romantic bath together, and my dad found out and gave me the awkward sex talk. It was terrible.
Hold your experience in your mind’s eye. Remember as many details as you can about the situation. Notice what you feel. Do you feel any physical sensations in your body, your chest, or your throat? Where are you holding the shame in your body? Now, turn toward your younger self with compassion. Acknowledge the pain of the experience. Find a loving gesture you can give yourself for comfort. For this experience, I held my hand and told myself,
“Taking a bath is a rather wonderful thing to do with someone. That experience was cruel. You didn’t deserve that.”
If you don’t want to hold your hand, you could also hug yourself, squeeze your arm, or put your hand on your heart. Think of what a loving parent or a kind adult would say to your younger self now. What does your younger self need to hear? It could be something like,
“Experiencing shame is part of life. You’re not alone. You made a mistake. That doesn’t mean you are a mistake. I forgive you.”
The more you can give yourself love and acceptance, the less shame you’ll eventually feel about that experience. It is totally okay if you cry or feel a big wash of emotion. That’s a good sign that you’re processing pain and grief.
You can listen to my Misseducated interview with Dr. Kristin Neff, the world's leading expert on self-compassion, here: “How to Be Kind to Yourself, and Why It Matters.”
Keep a sex diary or journal.
Writing helps to make what we know subconsciously about ourselves conscious. For three years, I’ve written about my sex life on my blog, Misseducated. Exploring my experiences in pieces like “Why I Never Swallow Cum” has had an incredible benefit that I didn’t expect: it has helped me figure out what I like in bed. Writing about your sex life can help you figure out what you want to explore and where your limitations are. You can also learn the exact techniques that make you orgasm and how you like to receive pleasure (for me, the secret tip is always a little bit of butt stuff).
So, I encourage you to start keeping a separate journal where you can explore sexual experiences from your past and what you liked and didn’t like about them. Start with a prompt like “Losing My Virginity,” “My First Kiss,” or “The Best Sex I Ever Had,” and go from there. Try to bring in all the senses: what you saw, what you heard, what you touched, what you smelt, what you tasted, and what you felt. A candlelit dinner? Grinding at the club? It’s all part of your arousal and your sexuality. It can be as simple as a private note on your phone, which you can then giggle to yourself about secretly.
Subscribe to the Misseducated Calendar to learn more about when I host Sex Writing Workshops in the future.
Separate the voices of others from your own.
“We have lived quite enough for others: let us live at least this tail-end of life for ourselves.” (Page 271, Michel de Montaigne)
As you distinguish your voice in your sex diary, it’s important to keep the voices of other people separate. For example, you can make a quick list of self-critical words or phrases that often come up for you. Now, try to figure out where you learned each voice and to whom it belongs. Are these your mother’s words? Or did Mrs. Screech from 2nd Grade plug those into your brain?
Imagine your brain. Clear a dedicated little space at the back of it, which is solely reserved for your thoughts and feelings about your life. This is where you are going to store your unique thoughts. As the old French philosopher Montaigne says,
“We should aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establishing there our true liberty, our principal solitude, and asylum.” (Page 270, Michel de Montaigne)
Define success in your sex life.
What are your aspirations when it comes to your sex life? Would you like to orgasm or squirt with your partner at least twice every time you sleep together? Is it dancing bachata? Or is it throwing away your razor and just living like you want to, hairy armpits and all? Take some time to define success on your own terms. This exercise is about self-acceptance, not about judging yourself in any way or stressing yourself out. It’s supposed to be fun!
For me, success in my sex life does not involve jet-setting around the world to attend giant orgies every weekend (though it might look like that for you). It’s probably just having a loving relationship where I can enjoy plenty of butt stuff, and we can be open enough for an optional third person who we can play with together, and I can have lots of earth-shattering orgasms, of course.
De-stigmatize your body and other people’s.
Going to clothing-optional events has brought me a lot of acceptance and love for my body. As I’ve shared, while it’s normal to feel nervous at first, I find being naked around other people very freeing. Attending an event like The Naked Bike Ride in Philadelphia has shown me that when you get a whole bunch of naked bodies together for a brief moment, the intensity of our insecurities and self-consciousness totally melts away.
The prospect of going to these events might terrify you. But just remember that our obsession with our bodies being perfect or looking a certain way is a social construct that we need to unlearn if we want to feel truly shameless about who we are. I hope you can find ways to explore de-stigmatizing your body for yourself, whether that be going to the sauna, skinny-dipping in a river, or going to a nudist beach.
Follow your curiosity.
Sexuality is a journey of exploration, constant evolution, and discovery. As I’ve shared previously, “God” is not going to part the clouds and bestow upon you your one true perfect sexual experience. What you’re curious about exploring may well just start as a whisper, which you’re going to need to listen for closely.
Imagine that sexuality is like a pair of shoes that you’re trying on in a shop. Does this activity or idea feel very “you”? Could you see yourself wearing those sparkly heels on the right occasion? Like Emily wearing a G-string bikini on the beach, try something new when you’re not sure if you’ll like them or not, and see how it feels. There’s power in courage, which, as Maya Angelou reminds us, is the most important of all the virtues.
Talk to yourself.
Talking to yourself is usually considered weird. But I highly encourage you to sit down and do it to figure out what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not. As Pauline said wisely in our interview about open relationships,
“Sexuality is an emotion…It depends on where you are in your mind…You always have to sit down with your thoughts and kind of like ask yourself this question: am I okay right now? Do I feel safe?”
Knowing your limits is a beautiful thing. For example, I consider myself a sexually open person, but almost four years ago, I experienced what can only be described as a doozy of a sexual assault. I still don’t feel comfortable with men I don’t know touching me, and I am so thankful to know that about myself.
If you feel like you’re crossing the line for any reason, remember what Pauline shared,
“I’m able to stop at any time. Like that's also something that is like really important…You can stop at any time and say goodbye. Like, I'm done. And it's okay. It doesn't mean you're a loser. It doesn't mean anything. It just means that right here, right now, you just don't want it. And it's okay.”
Make up your own rules.
Despite being a huge people pleaser for most of my life, I made up a rule that I would only allow a guy to stay over at my house once he was my boyfriend. I decided this because I noticed how disrupted my sleep gets when a guy stays over, and it often ruins my next day. Admittedly, I don’t always stick to my own rules when I’m hooking up with a dude who is particularly hot and cool (I’m allowed to make exceptions to my own rules, lol.) But the point is that I’ve taken time beforehand to identify my needs and figure out what is important to me.
Get some space and peace of mind. And while you’re alone, off on a solo adventure or single, go ahead and put your own rules in place. These could be rules about your sleep, your safety, and where you want things inserted into your body. Write these down in your sex journal, also. It’s easier to decide what you want when there is no one else in the picture because biology is a stronger force than anything else in the world, and having a hot guy in your life is incredibly distracting. And, of course, once you make a rule for yourself, don’t be pansy like me. The first step is to recognize that you deserve to have needs and boundaries. The second step is actually to enforce them.
Explore the underworld.
This is about getting a handle on what’s possible in terms of your sexuality. While porn is acting and often misleading, if you’re open to it, I encourage you to watch some. You can watch some female-friendly porn here and here. Watching porn is a good way to see what’s possible, and who knows, you might find it arousing.
I thought that everyone was like me and had watched porn in secret, but it turns out I have female friends who have never watched porn, who are virgins, and who have never had an orgasm. Everyone is on their own journey, and that’s a beautiful thing. I encourage you to meet yourself where you are right now and go from there. Also, try taking the BDSM test. It might help you figure out what type of sex you like to have. If some questions come up that you have no idea about, read the definitions and see if that’s something you might want to explore.
“When you're in a relationship, it shouldn't be the end of exploring your sexuality.” – Pauline, Open Relationships 101
Explore your body, guilt-free.
Planned Parenthood quoted research published in 1994, which said, “half of the adult women and men who masturbate feel guilty about it.” Quotes like this depress me because, as far as I am concerned, guilt is a totally useless emotion. Meanwhile, “the medical community considers masturbation to be a natural and harmless expression of sexuality for both men and women” (Masturbation Guide, WebMD).
Every time you feel guilty about touching yourself, buying a new toy, or feeling hot as fuck, just remember that there are literally 5,000 worse things you could be in the world than being a masturbater. You could be a murderer. You could be intentionally stomping on all the flowers in your neighbor’s garden. Masturbation is harmless, pleasurable, and fun. So, take time for it like you take time for a friend who wants to get coffee and talk about her most recent breakup. Seriously, give yourself an hour at least and see what you can do. And also, put what you discover in your sex journal.
Question everything.
Something is only “normal” because some people in our society decided it was. So, take all the assumptions you have about yourself, your life, who you can be, and what you can do, and turn them upside down. As Pauline expresses beautifully:
“I deconstruct a lot by myself, about like patriarchy, about like me as a woman, like sexuality…And a lot of stuff, you're like, “But why the fuck am I doing this?”… Why are we even like, I don't know, blowing candles for a birthday? Like a lot of questions. And yeah, you know, why? "Yeah, it's normal.” I'm like, “No, it's not. Like how the fuck we ended up doing this?”
Why the fuck do we blow our candles on a birthday cake, indeed?
Believe You Deserve What You Want
This next step is about self-esteem. It’s about standing up for your needs, saying fuck yes to people or fuck no to people, and not feeling guilty either way.
Be selfish
Wikipedia defines selfishness as “being concerned excessively or exclusively for oneself or one’s own advantage, pleasure, or welfare, regardless of others.” I find this definition so funny! Because being socialized as a woman, it’s clear to me that women are often branded as being selfish for having any concern for ourselves at all. The example comes to mind of my mother calling me selfish because, at age 28, I refused to share a bed with my brother, who is 6’5” tall (195cm), on the family holiday. In the world I grew up in, I wasn’t really allowed to have needs, let alone express them.
It’s a crime in our society for a woman to put herself first. Yet, this is the moment when we decide to stop being doormats, even if we risk being branded as “difficult” in the process. I wholeheartedly encourage you to start being selfish.
Believe your pleasure matters.
In the bedroom, this means taking up space and time to make sure you get the pleasure you deserve. As someone who has written a lot about the orgasm gap and experienced it firsthand, I know that we are simply not there yet. According to the International Academy of Sex Research in 2017, quoted in the Guardian,
“95% of heterosexual men said they usually or always orgasmed when sexually intimate, followed by 89% of gay men, 88% of bisexual men, 86% of lesbian women, 66% of bisexual women, and 65% of straight women.”
I’ve explained how the world would be a very different place if straight females were orgasming 65% of the time. I estimated I had orgasmed with 8% of my partners and maybe 25% of all the times I have had sex. To be shamelessly sexy, we have to believe that our pleasure is just as important as our partner’s pleasure. We’re talking about getting equal pleasure for equal measure.
Remember that nothing is wrong with you.
With shame being blasted at you from all directions, it’s easy to believe that it’s your fault for being alive in the body that you’re in. I fundamentally disagree with this. Books like “Invisible Women” teach us that the reason why nothing ever seems right for us is because the world was not designed with us in mind. Literally, the people who designed airbags in cars, sidewalks, and even medications didn’t bother to test them on female bodies, and this has real-world consequences. If you’ve ever had weird side effects from medication, just remember that women were all but left out of medical research until 1993. This costs female lives.
It’s not that there is something with you. It’s that there is something wrong with the world. Nothing is wrong with you. You are simply a woman, and because of that, you will never be typical or be the default.
Prioritize your relationship with yourself.
The harsh truth is that our relationship with ourselves is the only constant relationship we will have in until we die. Everyone else will come and go—friends, partners, parents, lovers, siblings, and children, even. Your relationship with yourself is the only one that truly sticks.
So, for God’s sake, put yourself first. What you think about yourself matters much more than what other people think of you. And don’t be like the guy from The Onion article titled, “Man Waiting Until Parents Die Before Doing A Single Thing That Makes Him Happy.”
Your experiences are valid. Your feelings are real.
I used to have very low self-esteem until I started going to a 12-step Program called ACA. Over time, I learned from the program to ground myself on the basis of my experience rather than constantly defining myself by the actions of other people. One example of this new thinking came at the end of my most recent fling. Here’s how I can choose to react:
My old self says: “He doesn’t want a relationship with me. I’m not worthy of being his girlfriend.”
My new self says: “I want to be in a relationship with someone who wants to be in a relationship with me.”
It’s the same experience, but I now have a totally different perspective on it, one that is rooted in self-respect and dignity. So, remember that your feelings are valid. Your experiences are real. And be sure to define yourself in terms of your own needs and dignity, not from the broken actions of other people.
Define your body on your terms, also.
When I was 15, I went to get bras fitted with my mother. I had armpit hair at that point and didn’t bother using a razor (at least, I’ve been consistent with that to this day). When I noticed that she saw my armpit hair, I said something like,
“Will doesn’t mind.”
Will was my boyfriend at the time. As a young person, I felt the need to justify the existence of my armpit hair to my mother. If my mother wasn’t defining me, I had to justify my body in the context of another person, my boyfriend, and a male person, nonetheless. I had no idea that I was allowed to keep my body the way I wanted to, armpit hair and all.
If you find yourself stressing out about external standards, just remember that it’s not up to other people to define who you are. Only you can and should define that. And if other people aren’t comfortable with that, that’s their deal.
Take up space. Take up time.
Some of my female friends find it impossible to go to a café, buy themselves a treat, and sit down to read a book on their own. What if someone else wanted to use that table? They’ve asked me, perplexed. Existing on their terms in a public space is a struggle. Whether it’s having an orgasm with a partner or buying a cookie from a café, because of culture or history, many of us have internalized that whatever this is, it is not for people like us.
But have you ever sat in a vast canyon, totally alone? Have you ever climbed to the top of a small hill in the desert in New Mexico, with 360 panoramic views, and cried and felt held by the vastness of the desert all around you? Well, I have. And I can tell you that that’s plenty of room for you there, in the desert and in the world. It might take a quick adventure into nature. But just remember that the sky and the earth can hold all of you and so much more, just as they’ve held your ancestors since the beginning of time. As Maya Angelou says, “Take up the battle. Take it up. This is your life. This is your world.”
So, please sit down at the table for as long as you like and eat the cookie.
Ask for What You Want
It’s time to express yourself, your desires, and your needs to the people you’re having sex with. Otherwise, all this hard work you’ve done internally won’t actually go anywhere. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And it’s time to squeak!
Safety, first.
It’s very important that you trust the person you are going to ask these things for. Before I pegged my boyfriend, we had already been dating for a couple of months. The act of an ask itself can be a very vulnerable moment, so make sure you’re with a compassionate partner who respects your body and who will honor your needs and desires. If your partner sucks at listening or makes you feel judged or inadequate in any way, they might not be the right person to explore your sexuality with.
Muster up your courage.
“Courage is more important than confidence. Taking that first step in doing anything is the real key to begin to manifest the possibility of that thing happening” — Debbie Millman, The Tim Ferriss Show.
The art of asking takes courage. You’re also opening up to the possibility of being rejected by the other person. But you can’t say the wrong thing to the right person. It’s better to rip off the band-aid than spend your whole life wondering whether or not to say something, second-guessing, and tiptoeing. You deserve an answer.
Over-communicate with your partner.
Each time will be different because, as a human, you are evolving. Be sure to check in regularly to see whether your partner is still comfortable with this or if you want to try something new. Here’s how Pauline communicates with her partner:
“We look at each other in the eyes a lot. Like, okay, what do you think? We communicate a lot through the night. We send like text messages…But each time we were doing it, we kind of like sit before and we're like, “Okay, what's your mind in today? What do you want to do? What do you want to explore? How do you feel? Where's your head at today?”
Pick the right people. Curate the right spaces.
I’ll share more another time, but I went to some sex parties in New York where I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I wouldn’t go back there again, but I would consider going to a play party if I was with the right people. It really depends on the context, who the people are, and if this feels like the kind of place you want to be in.
“You should pick whatever you like and create your own community and yourself and like whoever bonds with you and agrees with you, and that's cool.” – Pauline
Leave if you need to.
If your partner does not want to explore the same things as you, you may need to find someone else who you are more compatible with and who celebrates you exploring your sexuality. Refuse to settle. As Pauline shared,
“I think like you have to find your own way, which is nice because I think, as a girl, I have never been taught that you can find your own way in your sexuality. It was more like you'll have what you got. And then, if you're not happy, that's what it is.”
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my guide to being shamelessly sexy. I hope you loved it, that you found something here that made you smile, or maybe it inspired you to explore something new. Please feel free to reach out to me with what you discovered, as I would love to hear from you, and share this article with a like-minded friend if you think it could help them.
There’s one final phrase that I want you to keep in mind:
“You can do it on your terms. It's your sexuality in the end. So, do yourself on your terms.” – Pauline.
Amen.
💌 ✍️