None of the Above

A review by stickygirl

None of the Above, by IW Gregorio: Kristin has a secret, but one that Nature has hidden from her. It is only when, as Homecoming Queen, her attention turns more seriously to her boyfriend, that the truth reveals itself.

The Truth about Hymens and Sex

Thank you to Foo Foo Labelle for drawing my attention to this video. As a long-standing campaigner against the way 'virginity' is touted as if it were the ultimate bridal accessory, I thought I understood the hymen pretty well. Well, now that I've seen this video I do. There's a lot I didn't understand about the hymen which is explained very well and very funnily here by Adam Ruins Everything.

Selection Box - a Burlesque Christmas Party

Come on now, Christmas just isn't Christmas without those selection boxes of chocolates and biscuits. So of course the burlesque presented a delicious selection box of acts for us to party to in the runup to Christmas Day.

I always love taking along a friend who hasn't been to burlesque before. The 'O' of their mouth as they realise how much fun it is. The shaking with laughter, the gasping with amazement, the sparkle of sexiness. Even though they know, because I told them, they always comment on how seeing women of all different shapes and sizes makes us feel good about ourselves.

Burlesque is about watching performers who are freely being themselves, and that makes you feel free to enjoy being yourself. Frankly, it is just a sign of how sexist and sick our society is, that there isn't a burlesque show being put on in a top venue every weekend for women (and men) to go to and enjoy seeing how sexy and smart and super every woman is. (Yes, you too. If you don't believe me, go to a burlesque show and find out.)

An Angel's Wish

Angel Waiting, 
by Todd Krasovetz

That this hard-hitting non-erotic story could win Literotica's Winter Holiday competition is testament to the quality of readers of Literotica stories. This is the antithesis of what you would expect a story on an erotica site to be: a mix of romance and tough realism which squeezes the heart and could make even a hardened critic cry. (I said could. It's just some dust in my eye *sniffle*.) 

Both this and a story I plan to review for tomorrow as a runup to Christmas, have a background theme of homelessness. At this time of year, many of us are 'driving home for Christmas'. I have personally been homeless on more than one occasion. I know that people who are 'homeless' are often not people you would expect to have trouble getting housed. This month, as I gratefully plan for a merry Christmas with my young daughter and our cats in a safe warm happy home, I am donating to a local homeless charity. I hope the small donation helps someone be warm and safe even if only for a couple of days. 

Serena Williams

Serena Williams in Vogue.

Serena Williams in 
the Pirelli calendar.

In the comments on my blogpost on calendars, someone said they think Serena Williams has 'too many overtly masculine features'. This has been a common comment on her muscular physique and was one of the reasons Annie Liebowitz asked her to pose for this year's Pirelli Calendar, which looks to question the very kind of photos of women for which Pirelli used to be famous. 

curl4ever is a keen admirer of muscular women (see my review of his writing), and he wrote these thoughts about that comment.

Calendar Girls ... and Boys

This is actually quite a rare Pirelli calendar pic (it's by Helmut Newton) - as it features a tyre. As a rule, the famous classic girl-y calendars showed beautiful women in pictures that had absolutely nothing to do with cars. 

Well, as Christmas approaches and you are desperate to get something for Auntie Rhoda, you may be turning to the calendar shops for an inoffensive gift. Cats? Landscape photos? Cartoons of cats? Landscape shots with cats in them? 

Probably not a nude girl-y calendar, although the old-fashioned staple of every garage has undergone something of a revolution. 

1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival

Beautiful hats and fascinators
by Looby Creations

BIG thumbs up to the Sherman theatre for staging such a key event in a central venue. 

People worry that burlesque is just an excuse for sleazy strip-tease. In fact it is a witty caricature, simultaneously sending up our fears about sex and celebrating real women's bodies and our sexuality. With its gender bending politics and intellectual rather than physical strip-tease, cabaret and burlesque is an ideal filler for a theatre like the Sherman to put in between earnest new plays and the kids' Christmas shows, providing something that's adult and emotionally mature. 

Burlesque is the mirror opposite of strip-tease. In strip-tease, women are the objects of Desire; in burlesque we are the subjects of our own desire to enjoy showing our bodies and our selves. The 1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival showcased this particularly well with the inclusion of several male acts - who were not stripping for women in a reverse strip-tease. They were often engaging with more feminine sides of themselves, e.g. through balletic movements - again providing a subjective celebratory vision of feminine sides to identity. 

Burlesque is a liberatory subversive artform, of the kind the critic Bakhtin called carnivalesque. 

OK, enough of that, now for what I thought of the actual festival:

Consent

This post isn't exactly a review, rather it's to circulate a cool comic strip about 'consent'. The comic is aimed at guys, it explains that a woman's body is her own, and men have zero rights in it. It's helpful for women too. 

I run this blog partly to provide some fun that encourages safe sex, and shows young lads that it's possible to get a lot more in life if you ask for it politely than if you rudely try to blag women into giving you pictures of their boobs for your phone. (See my review of Peter Morgan's work.) I also run it to encourage young women to have confidence. If we as women confidently say No more often, men may realise that No does mean No and f*ck off when we don't want them bothering us. Yes, men must do more to respect women's consensual rights. As women we can take courage and be more assertive. 

From Everyday Feminism: link to rest of comic below.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Les Ballets Trockadero are in no need of a boost from me, as they have been playing to ecstatic sellout audiences for decades. However, I enjoyed the show they put on the other evening so-o-o much, I just had to write about them. Plus, I thought I'd use the opportunity to talk about parody. 

Safe Sex - it doesn't have to be like this

Honest, safe sex can be a lot of fun. 

People immediately think condoms when the words 'safe sex' pop up. Well, you can have a lot of fun with condoms. 

There are also A LOT of activities you can engage in for which you don't need a condom. They are safe and enormous (enormous! - wink) fun. Expand your sexual repertoire, have lots of fun and play safe, LOL. 

Here's a quickie about how to have fun with a condom.

Phew! *panting* that was really ... safe (wink) LOL.

National Poetry Day

A little bird (OK, a hunky big bloke - yum) has reminded me that it's National Poetry Day. Here is a celebratory recording by Kingswoman: Tennyson's Now sleeps the crimson petal. It's more romantic than erotic, in fact Romantic - high Romantic writing of the Victorian era. Like a lot of Tennyson's poetry though, there is heavily sexual symbolism for the delicate ladies to blush over.

The poem comes from a 'verse medley' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson called The Princess. This is an odd story, it starts with a group of young people who are inspired to tell each other a verse drama about a heroic Prince. Young Lilia, the daughter of the house, challenges the young men to it: 
I wish I were
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then, 
That love to keep us children! 

They compose a poem about a great Princess who separates herself from the world in order to pursue learning. But it only leads to 'tears idle tears', gurllllzzzzz (wink - that famous poem is also part of The Princess medley). A Prince falls in love with her, and when she rejects his suit, a terrible battle ensues, her brothers and various assorted hunky Princes are all dreadfully wounded, then finally she agrees to be a good wife and mother instead. 

LOL, it's all very Victorian. Nothing like that could happen today OF COURSE! (wink). 

I am always struck by the way Lilia and Ida (the Princess) are depicted as attractive and charming because of their wit and intelligence, how Tennyson shows their frustration at not being allowed to develop their thoughts ("you ... that love to keep us children"), but in the end this is not the Victorian way - love means never having to think any more, apparently. 

Summer Lovin': Hot Hilary

It's up (wink nudge), it's hot (<snerk>), it's the Literotica Summer Lovin' Contest! 

The summer has been blighted back in Blighty by near constant rain. I spoke to someone in Brighton the other day who said the animals were lining up two by two on the seafront. So lie back, relax and have a read about what it ought to be like.

Muse-ings

This is my 99th post! I have been running this blog since July 2012: three years. I first kicked off with a review of my own story As Pleases My General, followed by a boost for my pal Ozzie's fabulous Lusting While Dusting.

I'm going to celebrate with poetry! 

When I started this blog I was riddled with insecurity and lack of confidence. I used to come online, laughing and flirting and pretending to be totally The Thing. The truth was, if I had had a poem dedicated to me back then, I would have run in terror. I wouldn't have understood that I was good enough for such warm appreciation.

It was a long journey for me to gain confidence, to get a better idea of how strong a person I am. If you are someone who thinks you aren't clever or pretty or funny enough, or otherwise an attractive person, this blogpost is for you. I thought that too when I started writing, and now I have got poetry dedicated to me online. If you had told me that would happen when I started with blog review #1, I would have jumped for joy. 

How to be Beautiful in the Fashion Industry

I've heard it said that to be a good fashion model, you actually don't need a pretty face. The best face for fashion modelling is one that is neutral, so they can paint the face they want on top of it. 

This post follows on from the previous post reviewing electricblue66's art. His art celebrates the diverse beauties of bodies while photoshop is used here to airbrush them out. 

Thanks Mom!

Pic from Facebook

It's so cool of this mom to be this caring of her son. Although I hope Ashley wasn't with him when he found the note and read it.

 And ... I hope he had some Trojans of his own! cuz his mom put a pin right through this one. Maybe she really really wants grandchildren! 

Make sure you're safe. Use a condom that's within the Use By date, hasn't been kept in a hot back pocket or knocking about (wink) in the bottom of a handbag for a few months, is still in the sealed packet so no chance of the rubber being corroded ... and which has not had a pin put through it, LOL. 

Here are some fun selection packs of condoms, easily available on Amazon. You can just buy one of these for your kids and leave them discretely in the bedroom (wink).  

The Après Ski Mix, what every sporting 
man should be sporting this winter.

• Billy Boy Fun Selection 12 pack @ £9.49 (and free delivery!) 
• Durex Selection of flavoured condoms (36) @ £7.10 - apparently they taste great, although one disgruntled customer said he only got 12 "and if you like sex, that's not a lot." 
• And for those looking for winter wear, the Après Ski Mix: 21 condoms, 4 different brands @ £9.99.

Put a Sock On It

Sock and pussy.

Thank you, Stickygirl, for drawing my attention to this great video teaching you how to put a sock on (wink). 

"Mississippi's new sex education law prevents teachers from showing teens how to use condoms. However, they CAN show kids how to protect their feet through correct and consistent sock use," says Sanford Johnson. He says he doesn't mind whether you wear athletic shoes or dress shoes (wink) as long as your foot is protected. 

I used to hate exercise

Partner-friendly abs exercises here.

(Another review from Curl4ever. Dang, that boy just keeps coming back for more. Go, Curl, go!)

Second on my list of erotica that I just have to tell the world about is a POEM.  I am not ordinarily a poetry kind of person, but for ten years, this was the ONE AND ONLY poem on my favorites list.  

Catullus - Ode to Lesbia

I recently thought about reviewing some classic erotic literature. Unlikely as it seems, there is some pretty spicy writing in texts that get put on college reading lists.

A Classical Classic seems like an excellent starting place. Here is Kingswoman reading the Latin poet Catullus's poem to his mistress, Lesbia. As this is proper classic published smut, Kingswoman has been able to upload it onto Soundcloud, where she has a collection of poetry readings rather different to the material she performs on Literotica.

Audio Smut

From Vectorstock

It happens that a lot of the material I'm looking at right now is audio, so I thought I would just go with that and focus on audio smut for the next few blogposts. 

There's a proliferation of smutty short stories online. Maybe Roland Barthes was wrong when he proclaimed 'the death of the author'. However, the playful interaction between listener and writer on audio stories reveals what Barthes meant by this provocative statement.

Barthes intended to show us how the author does not have ultimate control of the text. Each reader brings their own understanding to a story, and Barthes argued that the reader was more the 'author' than the person writing a story. Audio stories seem to offer a step on for that interactive poststructuralist way of creating fiction. 

The Wasp of St. Judith's

Float like a butterfly, sting like a wasp - this story is a master class in making mood. Several acclaimed Literotica authors have left comments on Bramblethorn's story to say how highly they thought of it, and Lien_Geller has also written a review praising it in his thread on Literotica's Story Feedback board.