Alyssa Hubbell
For the latest installment of Degrassi, executive producer Stephen Stohn revealed that the current season will have a storyline about self-love. “This year, we can tell stories about female masturbation,” he told Hollywood Reporter. “Our motto really is: 'If they’re talking about it in the hallways in the schools around the nation, we need to be talking about it on the air.'”
But your favorite characters on TV aren't the only ones exploring the topic — celebrities are finding all kinds of ways to celebrate female sexuality.
“A masturbate a day keeps the haters away,” Miley Cyrus, founder of the Happy Hippie Foundation, captioned an Instagram photo of a woman with her hands in her pants. The singer’s 2014 music video, “Adore You,” featured her touching herself in bed while dressed in lingerie.
While the art of crotch grabbing on stage has been common practice among men, especially rappers, for decades, powerful female artists such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kesha, and Katy Perry are boldly claiming the move, making the silent statement that women are sexual creatures, too.
“Oh, what an ordinary day / take out the garbage, masturbate,” sings Annie Clark of St. Vincent in “Birth in Reverse.” The artist, who says the song is about squalor being mixed with beauty and the mundane, told Under the Radar magazine she played the song for her best friend and he laughed and joked that taking out the garbage was the only thing in the song she wouldn’t actually do.
“I think women should equally be allowed to pleasure themselves as much as men,” said Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless in a 2012 interview. “I think that if that has any more controversy than a man talking about pleasuring himself, then there's something wrong with the world.”
The rock star, who was called a slew of vulgar names after she joked that her vibrator was her best friend at age 16, says, “I'm not a whore for masturbating.”
Rihanna was spotted rocking a Do It Yourself (DIY) masturbation-themed T-shirt from Another Enemy in May 2013. The previous year, the singer quote-retweeted, “May is National Masturbation Month,” adding, “more like 2012.”
Rihanna isn’t the only celebrity who has made masturbation jokes on social media. Also in 2013, Actress Anna Kendrick tweeted, “Ugh — NEVER going to a Ryan Gosling movie in a theater again. Apparently masturbating in the back row is still considered 'inappropriate.'"
While “Feeling Myself” by Nicki Minaj ft. Beyoncé is more focused on metaphorical self-love, it is full of double entendre — from the song title itself to lines such as “I'm feelin' myself, jack rabbit,” which can be interpreted as a reference to the widely popular vibrator featured on Sex and the City.“Gonna love myself, no, I don't need anybody else,” sings Hailee Steinfeld in her “Love Myself” music video, rocking a onesie that reads “SELF SERVICE.”
YouTuber Hannah Witton, 24, of London, said she was thrilled when a season one episode of Girls depicted Marnie as being so turned on she ran to a public toilet to masturbate.
Hannah, who recently posted a video encouraging girls to get to know their vaginas, says even her mom’s encouragement to explore her own body through masturbation wasn’t enough to counteract the negative stigma placed on it by society.
“When I was in school people thought you were weird if you were a boy and didn't masturbate,” she says. “And they also thought you were weird if you were a girl and you did masturbate.”
More and more, we are seeing empowered women take back the narrative of female pleasure and sexuality, which is a win for women everywhere. The secret is officially out: everybody masturbates, and that's okay.
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