It was eleven years ago that 50 Cent cordially invited us all to the Candy Shop.
If, like me, you were under the age of 14 when the song sizzled onto the Billboard charts, you probably wanted to know more about this promised confectionary retailer.
A shop dedicated purely to candy, where you can lick all the lollipops?! Your boy Fiddy wasn’t gonna pull a Mum on you and only let you get a few treats… “Go ahead, girl, don’t you stop, keep going ’til you hit the spot, woah,” He said, reassuringly. The promise of candy that “melt in your mouth, not in your hand,” sounded a lot better than your average tube o’ Mini M&M’s.
The exact whereabouts of the mystical sweets store has never been confirmed.
Although a lot of us are still interested in actual candy, you might also have a burgeoning fire within you for a sex toy.
sorry
The places in which they’re sold have long been stereotyped as dingy dens of sacrilegious sin, when in reality they’re usually fluorescent-lit megamarts or online stores, manned by genuine experts keen to help – where sexuality is celebrated and lube is tasted with reckless abandon.
PEDESTRIAN.TV thought we’d do any/all of you shrinking violets out there a solid and chat to Vanessa Muradian, a sexologist, yoga teacher and owner of online sex toy shop, Mia Muse, about how to purchase your first sexay time toy… amongst other things.
Vanessa at one of her Mia Muse workshops
Vanessa started Mia Muse seven years ago, though her experience with personal pleasure objects goes way back to when she was just 18. She starts our interview with a saucy anecdote that wouldn’t sound out of place in American Pie or Not Another Teen Movie.
“I was studying at university in Southern Virginia in the states, and my friends were like ‘let’s go to Pamela’s Secrets and get you a vibrator!’ We go, and I buy a vibrator for $7, and we get back to the dorm rooms and they said ‘go in [to your room] and use it!’ and I go ‘ok, ok.’, ” says Vanessa, before making a humming noise and simulating a maz.
As the story goes, she finished, came out of the room, and her friends asked her how it went.
“‘Pretty good?!’” she replied, unsure. Perplexed, her friends told her to “‘Get back in there, and when you get to that point where you wanna stop and take it off, just keep going.’”
“So I went back in,” she says, starting to make the humming noise again. “And I held it there, and then…”
“WOOOOOOOOSH!”
“All of this fluid just gushed out,” explains Vanessa. “It was 18 years of pent up sexual fluid, and I thought, ‘What the fuck is that?!’, I sniff it, ‘Hmm smells fine’, I open the window, rip off the sheets, throw them in the corner, I walk out and yell, ‘I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR!’”
“And yeah, so that was that, and I’ve never cum like that since, and I’m not sure if it was a build up… but the vibrator did that.”
As Vanessa goes on to explain, it’s moments like these that demonstrate the power of using toys. They can help you discover the capabilities of your body and find what gets you going.
We visited Vanessa’s Carlton abode to get the low down on what the best toys are these days, how they work and what she’d recommend for beginners.
There are currently no sex toy regulations in Australia – which means certain chemicals that are super harmful to the body can be in your toys. All of the toys Vanessa recommends are all FDA-approved and free of phthalates.
IROHA YUKI by TENGA
“So soft, so squishy that I just want to eat it!” is how Vanessa describes the Yuki. It’s a Japanese tickler that is a lot more powerful that is looks due to its large surface area, and it’s so popular it’s currently sold out on her website. It’s one of her favourites.
“If you get really wet while using it, there might not be enough friction, so you’d wanna wipe yourself midway. It’s made of silicone so it can get very slippery.”
PRICE: $130.
LUNA BEADS by LELO
“Luna beads, also known as pelvic floor beads, can be really pleasurable for some people. You insert them up your vagina. There’s a weighted ball inside, so you can insert it and wear it for half an hour a day. It moves around and shakes, meaning you get your kegal exercises in without having to actively do them.”
Can you feel them up there, though? “Yep, you can definitely feel it,” says Vanessa. But she doesn’t find it unpleasant. “What I like about them is that it kind of awakens my vagina. So I pop them in early in the day, and by the time I take them out I’m kind of alive down there, and a few hours later my vagina’s like, ‘YEAH, LETS HAVE SEX!’”
Keeping your pelvic floor tight is mega important for a few reasons. They’re the muscles that support your bladder and bowels, so when they’re weak, you may have trouble controlling your urine, poop and fluffs.
In a hotter sense, contracting the pelvic muscles during sexy times can contribute to more intense sensations down there. All good reasons to work it.
PRICE: $75.
ALIA by LELO
So you want to get your partner involved in the sex-toy-fray? This one’s a winner, Vanessa reckons. The design means it doesn’t necessarily get in the way of your partner mid-coitus. It’s nearly silent, but still incredibly powerful (can confirm – she placed this one up against my neck and I felt it in my toes).
PRICE: $149.
INA by LELO
“When you’re a beginner looking for a dual stimulation vibrator, you want to look out for something that is mid size and has a rabbit,” says Vanessa.
What’s a rabbit, you ask? They were made famous by that Sex and the City ep where Charlotte becomes addicted to her vibrator that has a clitoral stimulator attached.
“With the INA, you can turn both of the parts on to vibrate, even at different speeds,” says Vanessa.
“Other things you wanna look for when searching for this kind of toy is the gap [between both bits] and how malleable it is, since the space betwee the vagina and the clit is different on every woman.”
PRICE: $240.
And if you’ve exhausted the limits of sex toy purchasing and you’ve got a spare $3K laying around, you could buy the Earl, a 24K gold plated gentleman’s plug which immediately reminds me of that gold rattle Princess Charlotte was gifted earlier this year. It even comes with matching cufflinks.
The Golden Dong
Phew. So that’s that. If you need a tonic of sorts to cleanse after reading this, we suggest a cold shower. Otherwise, find below an hour long soundtrack of Enya:
Photo: Diary Of A Call Girl.
