Sex Positive Parenting For Prudes

Hey, my eyes are up here.

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,

birthing is hard

and dying is mean––

so get yourself a little loving

in between.

—Langston Hughes

I’m trying to stop being such a goddam prude. 

I have an OMGYES subscription. I’ve had “Come As You Are” waiting unread on my Kindle for like, the last two years. Sometimes I watch twerking tutorials on TikTok. Yesterday, I wore a swimsuit that showed serious cleavage––in public.

I don’t talk to my kids about the importance of modesty when it comes to their clothes. I do ask them, How do you feel in this? Will this outfit serve your purposes today? Will it impede or distract you from what you want to do? I do tell them, I love that you know what you like. 

I check the conditioned fear that bubbles up when the sun glances off my eight-year-old’s summer skin and reminds me in a flash that soon, other people are also going to notice she is beautiful. I check the impulse to warn her that her beauty is a threat––the calm that comes before a sin. I check myself and say instead, “You run so fast, kiddo. You look so happy.”

If you grew up evangelical in the thick of purity culture, you know: There is a mole on your chest that God put there to alert you that that neckline is too low. There are near-righteous men all around you, installed in power over you, who would never sin if you didn’t exist where they could see you. There is a right way to be beautiful, and it falls well below the knee. It’s tasteful; it’s controlled. It doesn’t revel.

So I probably won’t ever be the mom who can talk about sex and desire and pleasure without feeling like I’m doing something very, very wrong. I can’t just be cool about it.

But what I can do is teach my children to revel.

I can draw their attention to soft sheets at bedtime: doesn’t that feel so nice on your skin?

I can celebrate the explosion of a strawberry in their mouths: isn’t that so sweet on your tongue?

I can delight in the beauty of human bodies: isn’t the slope of a neck so tender?

I can shout what I was taught to suppress: doesn’t it feel so good to be loved and to be lovely? 

Because pleasure is immodest: it pursues itself, delights in itself, swallows everything whole. And in the name of pleasure, I will wring delight out of existence while my children watch and learn. I will open my mouth and laugh. I will kiss their father because he is mine, and lay on the trampoline to admire the stars, and wear dresses well above the knee. I won’t be suspicious of things that feel wonderful, anymore. 

Instead, I will say to these small people: taste this, smell that, feel everything, do you see? Listen to me: the world is good, and so are you. Isn’t that delicious?

And then when they grow up and discover sex, maybe they won’t be so embarrassed by the brazen immodesty of it all. Maybe they won’t shrink from pleasure with quiet shame. Maybe guilt won’t even occur to them.

Maybe, they will revel.