For the past several weeks, whenever anyone—friend, parent, therapist, in-law—has asked me which topic I'm working on these days at Glamour, I've taken a deep breath, looked them in the eye, and said: female pleasure.
There have been a lot of awkward silences.
We're more sex positive than ever as a culture. But we still haven't erased some fundamental wrongs: women's bodies are still policed, sex education is still lacking, and talking about sex still carries a stigma. "We have never, ever, in the entire history of the world, been enabled to bring the female lens to bear on sexuality, and the world is a poorer place for it," says Cindy Gallop, founder of Make Love Not Porn.
"Female pleasure really is considered less of a priority," says Jennifer Wider, M.D., women’s-health expert and spokesperson for sexual-wellness brand K-Y. (The first systematic mapping of pleasure in the female brain didn’t occur until 2011—decades behind the scientific study of men’s sexual pleasure.) Cue the countless headlines about the orgasm gap—a term which sums up the chasm several studies have found between the number of orgasms women and men in heterosexual relationships have. But the gap goes beyond the bedroom. Even in an era where porn stars make political headlines, female pleasure is conspicuously absent from the conversation—even in places where sexual wellness should be right on the top of the list of discussion topics. "When we go to the gynecologist, we're asked, 'Are you sexually active? Do you want birth control? And do you want to be tested for STDs?' says Cindy Eckert, CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals and the woman behind female-sexual-desire drug Addyi. Rarely does whether or not you actually enjoy your sex life come up.
The stigmas surrounding women and sex—especially good sex—run deep. So deep that the very idea of what it means to have good sex is murky, filtered by unrealistic portrayals of women on screen who often orgasm seductively after five seconds of penetration.
The real definition of good sex is simpler, and yet so much more complex at the same time. "Good sex is sex that makes you feel great," says Gallop. "I don't mean as in 'Oh, you just had a phenomenal orgasm and you feel great about that.' What I mean is literally how comfortable you feel in your sexual skin. I'm talking about feeling at one with yourself as a sexual being, feeling perfectly at ease with how you express yourself sexually, feeling accepted in every possible respect, and therefore feeling really great about sex and all its manifestations."
Good sex, in other words, is sex that makes you feel like Beyoncé. "There is no objective, outside measure of that at all," Gallop says. "There is no formula. There is no rule book."
This is not about ways to get your partner to better satisfy you in bed (though women's magazines, including Glamour, have certainly filled the internet with countless articles on that). This is about women owning their own pleasure—partner or no partner. It's about putting an end to the taboo that makes talking about something as intimate as your pubic-hair grooming practices fair game over drinks with your friends, but talking about your favorite masturbation techniques feel cringey.
The pleasure gap leaves women with a literal deficit. "I can't tell you how many women I've seen over the years—brilliant women, successful women, women who have achieved anything and everything—who are bankrupt in their relationship to themselves and their bodies," says Nan Wise, Ph.D., a certified sex therapist and cognitive neuroscientist who studies pleasure in the female brain, and author of the aptly named book Why Good Sex Matters. "Good sex is about enjoying the experience. Good sex is about a pleasurable connection with yourself."
The Power of Good Sex
The ripple effects of that are powerful—like self-care on steroids. "I think as we become educated consumers of our own bodies, we become better citizens: more connected, more powerful, more empowered," says Wise. "Who we are sexually is an absolute fundamental driver of everything to do with how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about other people, our relationships, our life, our happiness," echoes Gallop.
There's hard science behind the idea. "When I think about overall health for a woman, I always think about the physical, the mental, and the sexual. Because if you look at sex and you look at the health benefits from sex, they're huge," says Dr. Wider. "There's an enormous list of health benefits, from staving off depression and anxiety to stress relief, to lower chance of diseases like heart disease and diabetes."
Sexual pleasure lights up your brain, essentially flooding it with oxygen, according to her research. More oxygen to the brain boosts cognitive function—one 2017 study even suggests that higher levels of sexual activity can help protect your cognitive functioning as you age.
There is also the very real power pleasure has to transform our relationship to our bodies. "There is so much pressure on women in our society—so much pressure to look a certain way, to be a certain weight. Sometimes women feel like when they look a certain way, that's when they'll deserve to be having good sex," says Wider. Owning your pleasure—both by demanding it from partners and by prioritizing it for yourself—can flip that narrative. "You can talk body positivity all you like but nothing makes you feel great about your own body like watching people who are no one's idea of aspirational body type getting turned on by each other, desiring each other, and having a bloody amazing time in bed," says Gallop.
Getting Over the Sex Stigma
So, how do you own your own pleasure? The first step is getting behind the idea that your sexual pleasure should be prioritized. "Women have to get a damn sight more selfish," says Gallop. "From the minute we're born, we are brought up to believe that we have to be selfless to everybody around us in a way that men aren't. When you get selfish and you really enjoy yourself, that absolutely has a ripple effect on everyone else around you. You deserve to focus on yourself."
That starts with talking about pleasure until the uncomfortable silences disappear. Which is why, all week long, we’ll be talking about female pleasure and our relationship to it. "Everyone wins from that," says Eckert. "Relationships win, communication wins, and women win because there's permission to speak about things that have otherwise been stigmatized or taboo."
Our mantra is simple: Owning your sexual health—and your sexual pleasure—is power. "Being able to access our pleasure as owners of our sexuality, rather than as objects, is the core," says Wise. "It's beyond the bedroom. It's beyond the body. It's about women taking charge."
Macaela MacKenzie is the senior health editor at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram at @MacaelaMac and Twitter at @MacaelaMack.
