Written by Anne on 1.17.2012 | No Comments
It’s been awhile since I posted a celebrity mom on the blog, and rather than turning to the pages of People magazine to see which Hollywood youngster is giving birth, let’s pay a little tribute to an older mom who’s always been known for her provocative contribution to pop culture: Madonna.
What a powerful female icon she is, and in recent interviews about directing W.E. (a biopic of Wallis Simpson) we’re reminded of just how many glass ceilings she broke through in the entertainment industry, all with her signature blend of sex and strength. Madonna’s moment of sexy mom-ness came for me when she had her first child (at the same time as I had my first daughter), and dedicated the song Ray of Light to daughter Lourdes. While other moms were playing Raffi for their kids, I cranked up Ray of Light, because the lyric “And I feel like I just got home” perfectly described that deeply intimate love I felt about my new daughter. To this day when that song come on, my girls and dance to it with joy and abandon!
She’s a powerful role model for girls who want to be strong, brave, and true to themselves, despite societal pressure to be otherwise, which was so poignantly rendered in this song “What if Feels Like for a Girl:”
Strong inside but you don’t know it
Good little girls they never show it
When you open up your mouth to speak
Could you be a little weak
Want to see who else is on the celebrity moms list? My sexy celebrity moms offer something for all of us. Even it was just for a moment, each one of these ladies put a real face on motherhood, and gave us a glimpse of her sexy mom-ness in all its sensual glory. These moms are sexy to me because they are galvanized by their mom power, radiating strength, intelligence, beauty, and brazenness. Stay tuned for more!
Written by Anne on 12.26.2011 | No Comments
How do you get a bunch of rowdy fourth graders to sit still for a lesson about sex? I asked Canadian sex educator Meg Hickling—she’s been visiting schools for the past twenty-five years dishing out her brand of “body science” with astonishing success. Meg stands before preschoolers, middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, as well as parents, doctors and teachers, but her message and manner are always the same: straightforward sex information delivered honestly, candidly, and with respect for individual curiosity and opinion. Parents and kids alike love her, their word-of-mouth referrals have landed her in classrooms all over Canada, and in the US and Japan as well. She shares the secrets of her success:
It’s all in the approach
“The first thing I say to fourth graders is This is not about how to have sex. This is about your body and how it works. I know you all think having sex is gross and you’re never going to do it. Well, you never have to have sex in your life, but you’re always going to have sexual health to think about. You’re always going to have those parts. We’re here to talk about body science.’”
A little humor works magic
“I tell kids to think like scientists and that scientists never say “ewwww”, they say “in-ter-esting.” It works like a charm, the kids enjoy repeating it, and the teachers use that for the rest of the school year.” Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 12.21.2011 | No Comments
Written by Anne on 12.6.2011 | No Comments
My older daughter loves musicals. She has aspirations to sing on Broadway. So we watch a lot of musicals, which I must admit (not having been a big musical fan), I have enjoyed very much. Musicals really do put a spring in your step and a song in your heart (which you can use when you’re pushing Fifty). But lately what I’ve enjoyed about them most are the ways they are teaching my kids about life, diversity, sex, history, and morality.
Sure we love the classics like Singing in the Rain, but there ain’t much of a social message there. Give us Hairspray with the drag queen mom, the fat-positive teenage lead, and the civil rights struggle. And they adored The Rocky Horror Picture Show with its fabulous soundtrack and lore–but boy did I answer a lot of questions about transvestites, bisexuality, and geez, even cannibalism. In South Pacific the characters struggle with racism, interracial relationships, and children born out of wedlock. In Funny Girl they see a driven and talented career showgirl who earns more money than her husband (and does exactly what she wants while telling everyone else not to rain on her parade). Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 10.25.2011 | No Comments
I wanted to share with you a letter a friend of mine wrote, a father, for his 18-year-old daughter as she headed off to college.
My Sweet Daughter,
I have taught you so much over the years, and now I need to talk to you a bit about love and sex. I want to share with you the little bit I’ve learned in my life, and offer you a man’s perspective, to help set you on a path toward happy and satisfying relationships. As you move through them, you get to write your own detailed and profound beginnings, middles and perhaps ends on this subject.
First, let me also acknowledge that what a man, a partner, a father says about sex is limited to what they know, what they have experienced, what they can imagine. And, this also assumes you are interested in men. If it is women, or both for you, than much of this still applies, please change the pronouns. Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 10.13.2011 | 4 Comments
If your activist side needs a break from the Occupy Wall Street protests, you might want to wander over to a site called One Million Moms where someone is trying to start a write-in campaign to have vibrators removed from drugstore websites because kids might stumble upon them.
I’m not encouraging you to join, I’m asking you to counter-protest this silly notion. First of all, drugstores have been selling vibrators for decades, as I know first hand because I bought one in 1978 at the age of 17 in a drugstore (it looked like this), so the idea that the mainstream stores are getting more X-rated is bunk. Secondly, what the heck are we afraid of if a kid stumbles upon a vibrator on a website? That it will lead to some expected curiosity (“mom, what’s that?”) and we might actually have to explain a little sexual anatomy to them? That sounds like a good thing to me. I ran across a survey recently that revealed that women who masturbate have higher self-esteem than those who don’t. So the worst thing that might happen if little Susie sees a Trojan Triphoria on Duane Reade is that she’ll a) want to learn about her body b) will want one and find a way to get one and c) will discover the joys of masturbation and ultimately end up with good self-esteem. Oprah had a respected psychologist on her show a year or so ago who courageously suggested that parents get their daughters vibrators so that they could learn about their bodies and feel more empowered to make good choices when it comes to partner sex. Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 10.3.2011 | 2 Comments
How do you talk to your kids about sex? What to say at what age? How much to divulge and when? What words to use? Join the discussion and get advice on Moms In Babeland in celebration of National Family Sex Education Month! During October you can:
• Glean helpful “talking to your kids about sex” tips from SIECUS
• Read our Mom Bloggers’ sex education anecdotes—from poignant to hilarious
• Post a comment, anecdote, or question during October and enter a chance to win Babeland’s popular sex manual Moregasm*
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) is a non-profit dedicated to providing education and information about sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. Babeland customers helped raise $22,000 this summer to go toward SIECUS’ sex education work.
Moms in Babeland is edited by Anne Semans, a Babeland mom and co-author of Sexy Mamas: Keeping Your Sex Life Alive While Raising Kids.
* Moregasm winner drawn on November 15, 2011 from all October, 2011 entries.
Written by Anne on 9.23.2011 | No Comments
In case any of you missed it, the band R.E.M. announced that it was breaking up after a run together of over 30 years. This news made me wistful, not only because they provided this mom great music along her own life journey, they touched me closer to home. A few years ago they filmed part of their Supernatural Superserious video in the Babeland store in the Lower East Side (click on Babeland on the grid), and our staff found the band charming and fun.
I am also reminiscing about a fantastic song about sex education called “Trout”, a duet Michael Stipe (he actually raps) did in the early ’90s with Neneh Cherry. If you haven’t ever listened to it do it now, it’s a song about being young, wanting to have sex, and needing some sex education! If Salt n’ Pepa’s anthem “Let’s Talk about Sex” was a call to action for youth, this song was a call to action for parents and educators.
Neneh sings:
Feelings of love I’ve got
feelings of affection
Come on and give it to me
give it with protection
There’s no time we’re out of luck
The law says we can’t talk about it! Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 9.8.2011 | 1 Comment
I’ve been a single mom now for ten years and I can tell you one thing: sometimes the self-love sessions just aren’t enough. You know what I’m talking about: even though the job, the kid and the house sap all my energy, there are nights when my head hits that pillow with one all-consuming thought: “I’ve got to get laid.” A warm body, a comforting touch, a rollicking round of sweaty sex—these are the things that rouse me out of my maternal slumbers and rejuvenate my body and my self-esteem.
But as any single person can tell you, wanting it and getting it are two very different things. And when you’ve got kids at home, the logistical challenges multiply. Learning how to date again, trying to meet people, and navigating issues of time and privacy are just a few of the obstacles single moms face when it comes to sex. I look forward to sharing ideas with you on this subject, not just from my own experience, but from years of talking with other single moms. Read the full post »
Written by Anne on 7.18.2011 | 4 Comments
Once upon a time I had a fantasy that Sesame Street aired a segment where Cookie Monster taught kids that C was for clitoris. How radical! (12 years after I shared this fantasy on the site Hip Mama, Sesame Street decided to update Cookie’s image, but not to one that is sex-positive, but one that is vegetable-positive!)
But seriously, we teach kids the alphabet to learn all manner of things, why not come up with a sexual anatomy alphabet game? What a great way to normalize kids’ relationship to their sexuality when they’re young and the most impressionable. If you’re not sure why this is necessary, consider a recent study of pre-school-aged kids, in the journal Gender and Psychoanalysis, which revealed that girls are more likely to learn the word “penis” than any specific word for their own genitals.
Girls get short-changed right off the bat when it comes to understanding their bodies, and their confusion won’t get cleared up if parents awkwardly substitute euphemisms like “down there” or “hoohaa” when referring to them. It’s time to face up to our own discomfort and just set the record straight. By teaching them the correct names for their genitals, you not only send a positive message about their bodies, you provide the tools they’ll need if they ever have any questions or troubles. Imagine asking a child who’s been injured to tell you where it hurts without ever having taught them the names for their stomach, shins, and shoulders, and you’ll see my point. Read the full post »
