When I was younger, my mom would take me clothes shopping. We went to outlet stores and the clearance racks (it wasn’t cheap trying to clothe everyone in the family). I wore hand-me-down jeans and sweatshirts. (Even my first training bra was a hand-me-down!) The only thing that was ever new-to-me was underwear – but even that was from outlet stores or clearance racks. I didn’t have a problem with this. I don’t think that small children should wear frilly underthings. I had those “Days of the Week” undies that I never wore on the right days, and I got underpants that were plainly coloured, 100% cotton, with a white elastic waistband that dug into my skin. But it did take me a while to learn to appreciate the finer things in life. As with other things in my life, it took until I started buying my own things before I learned to have an appreciation for nice fabrics, different cuts and soft lace.

Thankfully, I learned some appreciation for nicer underthings before someone other than myself would see them on me!

The problem that I had, despite living with my mom and older sisters, is that none of them wear nice underwear that goes beyond discounted packages, or bras off the racks in the department store. I had to learn about it on my own if I wanted to actually figure out what was what.

And boy, did I ever learn!

I went into a mall store, it wasn’t too pricey, (although I did cringe at the idea of spending over $50 for a single bra) but was a step-up from the lingerie department at the department stores and their days-of-the-week panties. A very wonderful saleslady seemed to sense that I was a complete newb at the whole lingerie thing (I was 18 at the time) and asked if I needed help. I wasn’t sure about my bra size at all, so she helped me with getting measured, and I tried on a few to help determine what I liked (or didn’t like) about the different types of bras. (I had no clue that there were differences in cups, but I do now!) I gained an appreciation for colored bras that day (before that, everything had been white or nude) and even figured out what size I was.

For once in my life, I wasn’t wearing hand-me-down bras that didn’t fit, and I wasn’t relying on someone in my family to help me choose (because they just assumed I was the same size as them when I wasn’t). I didn’t realize that bras weren’t supposed to fit the way that the old ones did, until I was properly fitted for one. It was quite the eye-opening experience because suddenly the straps weren’t digging into my arms, the band around me didn’t pinch, and the cups, they didn’t look like they were going to pop apart at any moment!

I have since branched out from the bras and panties (and I always get the right size, now!) to include more intricate pieces, (even a corset!) and even some lingerie-related reading material. I frequent lingerie shops when shopping with friends, and even help them figure out what works well.

There’s still a lot for me to learn about lingerie, though, especially when it comes to pieces that fit more into bedroom play. But it’s a great little (albeit somewhat expensive) hobby to dive into. It does help to have someone who appreciates pretty lingerie, to help with justifying new purchases!

As a child, I liked dressing up. I liked frilly dresses and make-believe castles. I made crowns out of paper, and ruled my kingdom of stuffed animals with a heart of gold (or, perhaps, an iron first). So it shouldn’t have been too surprising to me when I realized that I liked falling into a role.

It started off as a joke, but quickly escalated the moment I revealed a little school girl’s outfit for my boyfriend’s waiting eyes one night. We fell into the roles of the school girl and the teacher. It was fun, but we quickly learned that we’d need to change it up once in a while to keep things fresh and interesting. It became easy to fit myself into a role, like pretending to be someone else made all the dirty things I said perfectly okay. But it also made what he said to me okay as well, things that I (if I was being myself) would never take seriously, or allow someone to say to me. But it was perfectly consensual and deliciously fun once we realized where the other person was going with what they said.

Our scenes became a little bit more elaborate as we learned more about what made each other tick. I found that role-playing made things a little bit more unpredictable. If I was a barmaid, how was I to know how a pirate ship’s captain may react to the length of my skirts? It’s a fun thing to do, and as long as everyone involved knows when to stop, there’s nothing wrong with a little role-playing. What’s even more fun is when you branch away from the typical role-playing scenes (school girl and teacher; maid and boss; any employee and any boss). We’re always looking for new things to do, new situations, occasionally new outfits or just flat-out role-playing without the need for buying new clothes (but it’s always nice to see that look of appreciation when I reveal something new).

Sexuality for my boyfriend and I has always been based on mutual respect and a mutual want for trying out new things (roles, positions, toys, etc). It makes for a not-so-dull relationship, full of little surprises all the time when one of us comes up with something new to pitch to the other person. It’s a turn on to think about the new thing, and then the anticipation builds until we get to act it out, or do a mash-up of pirates-school girl-maid (it’s confusing going from being a barmaid to a school girl when you’re not the one switching roles so quickly).

Like with all things sex, safety is key, but so is fun. And what’s more fun that make-believe, and that little moment of imagination that sparks something inside of you, that makes you into a little spitfire that you may not be when you’re not slipping into a role? With everything, moderation is important – you’re not who you’re pretending to be all the time, but it is certainly fun from time to time to play and pretend to be someone that you’re not.

Many years ago, it was the pleasantly plump that were considered beautiful because it meant that they had money to afford food. Those who have the money, those that are in power, are beautiful. But I grew up in a time where being skinny was beautiful. Media shows off their ideals in skinny, tall models with legs that never seem to end.

And then there is me, in a family with sisters who have always been underweight.

At the age of 11, I struggled with bullying in school. I’ve always been small for my age and that made me an easy target, even for the girls that were in the grade below mine. I was barely touching 80 pounds at the time when I had taller, skinnier girls calling me a cow, and mooing at me when I walked down the hall. It was later that I realized that the bullying, coupled with my family members telling me that I was fat, led to my obsession with my weight.

I dropped down below 70 pounds before the end of the school year, and the girls still called me a cow. I was still mooed at while I walked down the hall and when I had to change for gym class. They even learned how to change it up by the time June rolled around by adding in ‘hippo’ along with ‘cow’. I continued to lose weight until I was thirteen years old. I left that school to begin my four year stint in high school.

The only meals I ever ate were meals with family. Everything else was an excuse.

“I’m eating breakfast at school.”

“I’m eating lunch later.”

I got so good at making excuses for why I wasn’t eating, no one noticed as I kept on getting skinnier and skinnier. No, that might be a lie. My family noticed. They also complimented me, briefly, for looking ‘better’.

It wasn’t until I started post-secondary school that I started to get help. It still hurts whenever my family calls me fat, or tells me that I need to lose weight. It still hurts every time they look at me and make a comment about how much food I’m eating, how I wear a size small instead of extra small like my older, taller sister. Because, after all, there’s nothing like family-approved eating disorders.

I got help. I started learning how to eat again. I sat with a psychiatrist every other week between classes while I was on campus. I learned a lot about myself during those hours. I learned how I had been starving myself to gain love and acceptance from the people who should have been loving and accepting me just the way I always had been. I realized that what my family considered to be socially and culturally acceptable just wasn’t, in the country that I grew up in. As a child of immigrants who hold on tight to their native country’s ideals and social norms (including telling their children that they are ‘fat’ when they are not), I learned a lot about them and myself when I realized what I was doing and why.

I still resent my family, a little, for putting so much emphasis on being skinny, when they should have been putting an emphasis on being healthy. And without sounding too much like an after-school special, getting help, realizing that I had a problem, and wanting to get better was the best thing that I had ever done for myself.

And now, I take any weight comments about myself with a very tiny grain of salt.

My boyfriend and I had been dating for about a year at the time I decided to retire my first vibrator. It wasn’t because it didn’t work anymore, it did. It wasn’t because I hated the fact that it was a huge battery eater (which it was). It was because the darned thing started having mold spots. Little spots of white mold both on the surface of, and inside, the material of the jelly vibrator. (I’ve learned my lesson since about jelly materials, and am pleased to say that nothing I own now is made of that material.)

It was sometime in August 2010 when I made my first purchase at Eden Fantasys, and it wouldn’t be until several months afterwards that I would write my first review of that same first purchase. I didn’t really want to tell my boyfriend, at first, that I was going to be writing reviews in my spare time. We’re fairly open, but I just like to avoid conflict when I can, and I wasn’t sure how he would react to it.

I brought it up casually during a late night conversation once. He’d just gotten off work, and I was about to go to sleep, and was drifting off already when we were talking on the phone. And then I asked him what he would think if I were to start reviewing the sex toys that I had gotten in the mail.

“I get to help you try them out, right?”

Of all the things that I was expecting him to say, that probably wouldn’t have been the first thing. I expected to hear him reminding me not to mention his name or post photos of us online. Instead, he was just eager to try things out.

As of right now, I only review things that I’ve bought myself (which can get a wee bit expensive). But I like the freedom that it affords me right now, in terms of getting to decide when I get reviews up. It’s fun too, getting to try things out. As for my boyfriend? He enjoys it when I buy new things. I unbox things in front of him, and he gets very excited over the idea of trying them out. So far I haven’t gotten anything that would make him squirm, or flat out refuse to try it out, so I figured things are still going well. As for my reviews, he doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with them, as long as I don’t write out the in depth details of how we used them and what we did. But he’s always asking me when I’ll be putting in another order and when packages will be arriving.

The media always makes sexting sound so awful and  like something that’s so downright wrong to even consider doing. Nearly all the articles I come across are always about teenage girls sending nude photos to their boyfriends, and how their boyfriends go on to forward it to all their friends. Even the word doesn’t seem to match up with the media-given description, since reporters focus on the photo aspect of it and not the actual text.