health

Why it’s Okay to be a Wanker

~ biggirlpants ~ 1 Comment

your+happiness+is+a+priority

As motivational posters in your Facebook feed will tell you, true peace in life grows from the root of self-love. They are definitely, 100% referring to masturbation.

I started young, with pillows and cuddly toys making my most intimate acquaintance. At that early stage in my wanking career, I wasn’t fixating on any sexualized images or thoughts, I was just physically doing something that made me feel good, like eating Frubes or picking knee scabs.

But somehow, I knew that this was different, and I would burn with shame and regret after every episode.

As I matured, so did my technique, beginning to add fantasies as visual accompaniment to the work of my now-dexterous fingers. Here’s an example of the kind of high-octane erotica we’re talking about aged 11 – 13:

I picture myself as young woman. I have grown miraculously large breasts, and thereby earned the honour of becoming Liverpool striker Michael Owen’s girlfriend.

Fearful of meddling paparazzi, Michael has built his bedroom at the epicentre of his mansion. It has no outward facing walls, and therefore no windows. It’s dark in there, and bare but for a comfortable double bed. Sort of like a panic room. But for intercourse. 

Because I don’t know what sex would actually be like, I just picture our bodies moving beneath the 13.5 tog duvet, as if I’d successfully got two Sims to ’Woohoo’.

If you need to go and have a cold shower after reading that, I promise not to judge 😉

My post-watershed fumbling took the concept of safe sex to its extreme, and yet I felt overwhelmingly guilty about it, certain that no other girl did the same.

Around this time, the male half of my peers began to boast of their handiwork, exchanging tales of furious marathons, triumphant posh wanks into jonnies, nail biting near misses with earnest mothers, astonishing distances travelled by spaff, and even, horrifyingly, battles with soggy biscuits.

Girls? We absolutely did not pleasure ourselves. I remember one classmate’s admission that she’d touched ‘it’ whilst showering being met with horror and outrage from us all, even though she was quick to stress that it was just that her hand glanced over the area in giving it a wash.

Boys’ knobs were picaresque heroes on a wanking odyssey; girls had to pretend that the only action they got was cliterol-collateral in maintaining basic hygiene.

This pretence continued until I turned 18 when, bizarrely, Ann Summers parties became a highlight in the social calendar. To those who have never been to an Ann Summers party, imagine your mum’s done a buffet for your Nan’s birthday, but in between rounds of cocktail sausages, sugary wine and small talk, someone you’ve not met before makes you hold an 18” vibrating dildo to your nose to see if you sneeze, before pressuring you to order one along with some chocolate scented lube from a mail order catalogue.

Perpetuating the binary notion that women are either sluts or angels, we went from refusing to even acknowledge a bit of light fingering, to competitively listing out the tech specs on our latest sex toys.

There is nothing wrong with having a tool kit that enhances personal pleasure, but it is depressing that female masturbation had to be so fetishized, even commercialized for it to be deemed an acceptable admission. Not to mention that a vast amount of these products are unnecessarily phallic.

As I grew up, these myths were eradicated within the comfort of my friendship group, but fear of female sexual pleasure insistently finds its way across time and space. We live in a world where at one extreme, FGM is still seen by some to be a legitimate practice, and at the other, we are encouraged to take pleasure into our own hands only via hyper-sexualised tools.

We have the male voice telling us female masturbation is shameful, and the male voice telling us it’s giving him a boner. Where’s the voice that says it can be natural, sensual, fun, invigorating, spontaneous, or whatever it is that you personally need or want to take from it? That is if it’s something you practice – I have one friend who doesn’t bother: she says it’s like trying to tickle yourself.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this charismatic stud for a bit of me time inspiration

Times Simple Transactions Have Become Unnecessarily Painful

~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

condomsPicture the scene: it’s 9am the morning after a night that consisted of 7 pints of Guinness, overambitious ‘sexy’ dancing, and a falafel. With bloodshot eyes, you shuffle to the toilet, careful not to step too enthusiastically lest your head fall from its shoulders. Shame and bile creep up your throat, and your brain takes you through a grotesque slide show of the behaviour that led you to this moment: here you are, standing next to the DJ booth being ignored as you shout “Sean-a-Paul and Blu Cantrell” in a way that at the time seemed at once friendly and coquettish. Awww… And that’s you there, telling your colleague that when you first met them, you thought they were a cunt! Isn’t that nice? Oh! And here you are, chuckling at a stream of your own piss as you squat between two cars and your friend dry heaves over a bin. Happy days.

Oh fuck.

There’s no toilet roll.

Knowing that this morning’s bowel movements will be akin to a thousand blackbirds escaping a shoebox, you steel yourself for a regrettably essential trip to Tesco. Your only items on the motion-sickness inducing conveyor belt are a 12 pack of Andrex, and single can of Fanta Fruit Twist. And then some twat that you forgot about because you’ve hidden the fuck out of them on Facebook, bounds up to you with a trolley full of quinoa, kale and opinions, and after telling you about the promotion they got at their yoga iron man vintage post grad festival, gives you a pitying smile, gestures to your purchases and says “big night last night then?”

Here are some other occasions that buying stuff has resulted in being waterboarded by embarrassment.

Condoms

Hey, I’m a grown woman who has sexy sex. And do you know what’s sexy? Safety! Safety is sexy.

I am in one of those smaller supermarkets, and after wandering the limited aisles for the 5th time, I resign myself to the fact that the prophylactics are behind the kiosk with all the bad things (hard liquor, cigarettes, and inexplicably: tampons).

No matter: I’m confident! I’m empowered! If you like it then you shudda put a bag on it… am I right?!

The only option on display is an enormous box of 24. Knowing that making such a purchase would almost certainly doom me to a year of accidental celibacy and permanently mummified fingers, I ask the young man behind the desk “Is that multipack of condoms all you have?”

“I think we’ve got some ribbed ones out back, hang on. Dave! DAVE! Mate, would you mind checking the store room to see if we’ve got any ribbed jonnies left?” By which point a considerable queue of giggling customers has formed behind me. I wait, the queue expanding, trying to avoid eye contact with the grinning checkout boy. Dave returns from his epic journey to shout, “None left, only the 24 packs and some tropical lube” across the store.

I mumble that I’ll take the multipack, and leave.

Cystitis Medicine

I have, of course, already run through the myriad reasons why cystitis is so fantastic, but here’s another one. A friend of mine went on holiday to Morocco with her mother, and was hit with a visit from the vaginal devil.

Together, they found a local pharmacy. Unfortunately, my friend cannot speak Arabic, and the pharmacist could not speak English, so what ensued was a nightmare game of charades in which her heroic mum kept pointing to her crotch, and then acting out ‘Fire’. All the while, repeating “HOT VAGINA. BURNING VAGINA”, to the amusement of tourists stocking up on sun cream.

Pregnancy Test

Buying a pregnancy test when you really don’t want to be pregnant is at best a nervy affair. An insecure 19-year-old, I scanned the selection, made my choice, and went up to the counter. The woman behind the till had kind eyes and a helpful smile. She scanned the test, looked up, and said in a tone that should really be reserved for telling someone they’ve won the lottery, ‘Ohhh! They’re buy one get one free today!”. Conscious of the people waiting behind me, and terrified that someone I know might be in their number, I garbled “that’s fine, I only need the one”. Her helpful smile grew even more helpful, as she started to step out from behind the till saying “Nonsense! You can’t turn down a bargain like that! These things are expensive!”

She nipped over to the relevant shelf, and then yelled across to me “Looks like that was the last one!”

“No worries”, I say as she makes her way back, but instead of resuming her place at the counter, she raises a finger “Now, I’ll just check out the storeroom for you”. Oh god. Her helpful, helpful smile was lighting up the room and demanding the attention of my fellow customers. Returning approximately 3 minutes later with a different make of pregnancy test, winking at me as she popped it into the bag, she asked:

“Do you have an advantage card?”

“No”

“Isn’t that one, there?” she points to my open purse from which I am removing a ten pound note.

“Oh right, yes. It is”

And with every bite of the ‘meal deal’ I purchased using said points some months later, I thought of my shame, and of that woman’s helpful smile.

Cystitis: The Vaginal Dance with the Devil

~ biggirlpants ~ 1 Comment

Say to any woman you know “I’ve got fucking cystitis”, and watch as she exhales sharply, takes a moment to stare into the middle distance, and then turns to face you with the haunted eyes of PTSD before proclaiming solidarity with your current plight.

To celebrate this scourge of vaginas the world over, here is a round up of some of the reasons why cystitis is more vile than even this tattoo:

Screen shot 2015-07-19 at 16.19.48

  1. Violation of your right to privacy

The first time I got cystitis, I was a teenager with an A-symmetrical haircut and an age appropriate boyfriend. I told my mother of my mysterious eye watering symptoms, and quick-sharp came the reply:

“You’ve lost your virginity, haven’t you”?

I confessed (though elaborating no further), and we were momentarily plunged into that chasm of awkwardness that only a recovering catholic can create.

She then went through the physical articulations as outlined in my opening paragraph, called the GP for an over the phone prescription, and whisked me off for a nightmare game of supermarket sweep: antibiotics; cranberry juice, cranberry tablets, nettle tea, anti-inflammatories and, of course, those sachets (on which more later).

Machine-gunning down her illusion of my virginity, cystitis became the HYMANATOR: and yes motherfucker, it will be back.

  1. Smug man enabler

“Hey girl, I know you’re in so much pain that you chewed off your own thumbs, but, ha, I heard that boning someone with a MASSIVE DONG causes cystitis. So, well… I can’t pretend I’m not a little #CHUFFED But yeah, get well soon bbz, and if you’re lucky, I can give it to you again, yeah?”

First of all, 100% not true.

Second of all, whoever started this rumour is a cunt.

(My money’s on Dapper Laughs)

  1. Punishment for having a nice time

You know how in the mid 17th century, everyone in Britain was constantly a bit drunk and fucked up, but then Oliver Cromwell came along and pissed on the party? Well, cystitis is the Oliver Cromwell of the female body:

Thought you’d just say yes to that 6th larger shandy did you? Eating an entire pack of yum yums on a comedown are we? Playing a bit of naughty jigsaw on a school night is it?

Well… CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED, FUCKWIT! THE ONLY THING IN SANTA’S SACK IS CRANBERRIES!

  1. Cystitis medicine was sent to test the gag reflex

Ever play ‘ultimatum’ with your mates? Deeply philosophical questions like: would you rather eat a poo that tastes like chocolate, or a chocolate that tastes like poo?

Here’s a real tough one. Would you rather:

–       Drink only cystitis medicine for a whole week

–       Imbibe 25ml of David Cameron’s spaff

?

See, it’s hard.

A friend of mine was once so disturbed by the thought of having to neck yet another glassful (stirring furiously all the while so that it doesn’t settle into a highly concentrated slurry of trauma), that she mixed a sachet into a petit filous.

She then proceeded to tragically shit on her own childhood with each spoonful of befouled fromage frais.

  1. Middle aged male doctors

When things get really bad, so bad that the blood in your urine turns it the appetising colour of lucozade, only antibiotics can save you.

After crying at the receptionist in your local medical centre, you manage to grab a hot moment with Dr. IStayedUpLateReWatchingTheWestWing, only to be faced with this:

“Okay, so the thing is, you need to make sure you wipe front to back. Just a little tip, from me to you 😉 “

Oh really?! Coz you know, recently I ran out of sanitary products, so I fashioned a mooncup out of a jobby – what am I like?! Thanks doc!

I once endured a particularly painful consultation in which I was told that my bladder was probably bruised and swollen from all the sex with that enormous knob I’d been having, which culminated in Dr fisting an imaginary bladder, nodding, and repeating “Okay?” for a full 30 seconds.

  1. It’s quite fucking sore

It starts with a dull ache and an urge to urinate that can never be satisfied.

In full blown form, you limp to the toilet, convinced you are in imminent danger of not only having an accident, but also drowning in a torrent of your own piss the moment your relax your pelvic floor.

You make it, just, and with watering eyes, sit on the porcelain throne. Extreme, overwhelming pain shoots down through your tummy and into your urethra, and after what feels like the length of the Archers omnibus, the tiniest, malevolently orange drop burns its way out of you.

Finally, delirium sets in, and encourages you to do horrible things in a bid to offset the pain. The best example of this I know is a friend who, at 4am and after hours of sobbing in the bathroom, convinced herself that it might be less painful if she were to urinate on those temptingly fluffy towels, rather than into the toilet bowl.

It didn’t work.

Fuck you, Cystitis.