How to Be Shamelessly Sexy 🫦

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 ne