Life

The Only Sex Tips You Really Need To Hear

by Emma Cueto

Women's magazines are fond of providing sex tips (and we are no exception), but when a publication has to come up with lists of coital pointers over and over again, things can get a little ridiculous. But as Desireé Dellagiacomo and Kaycee Filson point out in the their "Real Sex Tips" poem, those lists are often missing one aspect of sex entirely. "In over 50 sex tips," they say, after listing a few more humorous examples, "my vagina is never mentioned once."

And seriously, what is it with people getting all weirded out by vaginas? Apparently even tampon companies, which you'd think would be all about the vagina. And while women's magazines do run features involving vaginas, it's far more common to come across instructions for male genitalia in their pages. And as Dellagiacomo and Filson go on in their poem to point out, this is part of a larger trend of women not feeling ownership of their own sexuality.

"As a woman, everything says I am defined by what is put inside of me," they say. The poem shows their own evolution towards feeling confident with their own sexuality, in "giving [a] partner instructions," and learning how "to say clitoris and not flinch."

For women in our culture, feeling sexually empowered is hard. But like Dellagiacomo and Filson, we are hopefully all learning "how to take [our own bodies] back." Because these are the real sex tips we need.