Pleasure can be complicated, hunger can feel like a betrayal, but our bodies were built for pleasure and it’s time for you to reconnect with what it means to feel good, to prioritize what brings you delight and joy, and to unpack the old stories that keep you stuck in shame and guilt. My new online course, Power in Pleasure: Reconnecting with Your Hunger, Desire, and Joy, will start enrolling soon, so join the notification list now and get first dibs on the course.

Ev’Yan Whitney on sensuality, the erotic, and body hair

I’ve followed Ev’Yan on Instagram for quite a while and been enchanted by the ways she shares and expresses herself there. As soon as she said yes to being on the show, I was excited.

We talk about sensuality and how Ev’Yan struggled with the ways sensuality and sexuality were bound together culturally. Her process of teasing out her sensual self and separating it from her sexuality has opened her up to so much more pleasure and the erotic.

What happens when you start sharing your sensual self with the world, like so many people recently did with the #SensualSelfieChallenge? And how does Ev’Yan tend to her self-care through the senses?

We also talk about body hair and how women’s bodies have been policed for capitalism purposes, plus navigating non-monogamy in her long-term partnership with her husband.

Plus, Patreon supporters – If you support the show at the $3 level and above, Ev’Yan and I talk about sensual rituals. How can we create rituals that honor our bodies, our cycles, the erotic, and our senses? Delight in it with us and support the show at patreon.com/sgrpodcast

Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook. It’s true. Oh! And Dawn is on Instagram.

In this episode, Ev’Yan and I talk about:

• The deeply rooted similarities between sensuality and sexuality, and how sensuality can be separated and accessed through being in connection with your senses.
• The connection that our body and senses long for and remembering that self-care is deeper than baths and candles.
• How sensuality allows us to be free to feel our senses and our body, and the liberation that comes in celebrating those.
• The #SensualSelfieChallenge and how taking up space challenges the kind of culture we live in where systems of oppression are still prevalent.
• How the cultural narratives that shaped us to fear our own bodies has also shaped us to fake and perform our sexual pleasure for someone else.
• What happens when we question stories about our bodies like shaving our armpits and legs and who it’s for.
• How having a partner (or partners) that are onboard with how you want to feel and look in your body, and the power that that affirmation gives you.
• Exploring non-monogamy and/or polyamory and how to continually nurture the present relationship that you have with a partner.

About Ev’Yan Whitney:

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Episode transcript

 Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Hey, you! Thanks for being here this week with me. I am beyond exhausted, but also lit up because I am doing Narrative Therapy Foundations Certification this week and it is five days. I’m on the fifth day. It is five days of intense theory and looking at anthropological theory and sociological theory and psychology and the history of modernism and post-structuralism and talking about moving away from individualism within the therapeutic practice. It’s awesome and intense and fantastic and their values are so aligned with mine around anti-oppressive work. There’s some really, really incredible people doing really incredible things out in the world using Narrative Therapy. So I am excited to share more about that on a future episode. But just know that I am pooped. So this is going to be a short intro. 

Dawn Serra: This week, I’ve got a beautiful, beautiful chat with Ev’Yan Whitney. I’ve been following her for quite a while on Instagram. She does the Sensual Selfie Challenge and she specializes in sensuality and the erotic. Her work is so tender and beautiful and welcoming. Our conversation is really all about sensuality as self-care and as self-expression, stepping away from the performance of sex and all of the shoulds that so many of us carry, especially women and non-binary folks and really focusing on the delights of the body and connecting with pleasure in a way that isn’t about performing sex. We also talked about body hair and non-monogamy. So I think you’re really going to like this episode. 

So let me tell you a little bit about Ev’Yan– And then we did record a bonus for Patreon. So if you support the show at $3 a month and above, you get access to weekly bonus content. This week, of course, there comes a bonus with Ev’Yan. I think you’re going to quite enjoy it. If you support it at $5 a month and above, you also get to help answer listener questions with me. Sometimes it’s two or three in a week, sometimes it’s one. Be sure to head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and to hear your bonus content. 

So here is a little bit about Ev’Yan and then we will jump in. Ev’Yan Whitney is a writer, sexuality doula who helps facilitate, educate and hold space for women and femme identifying individuals who want to heal and liberate their sexuality. She’s also the host of the podcast, “The Sexually Liberated Woman,” which is an ongoing dialogue about sexual awakening and identity. You can find out more about Ev’Yan’s work at sexloveliberation.com and of course, I’ve got her links in the show notes for this episode. So here is my beautiful, sensual, engaging chat with Ev’Yan.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Ev’Yan. I am so excited to talk to you today about sensuality and bodies and pleasure. I think this is going to be a rich discussion. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Me too. I’m really excited. I can’t wait to dive in. You have some really juicy topics in there.

Dawn Serra: It was so much fun. I’ve been following you for a while your Instagram is just a dream come true of beauty, senses… 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Oh. Thank you.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Getting to just go a little bit deeper into interviews and blog posts, it was a beautiful experience. For everyone listening, if you have not yet checked those things out, please do. It is something for the senses that will delight, I think. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Oh. Thank you. I really appreciate that. 

Dawn Serra: I’d love to start with so much of the work that you do is really about honoring the senses and being connected to your sensuality and really coming at it from an inner truth and power perspective. So for those of us that are listening and maybe the only thing we know about sensuality is the porn version or the pop culture version, how do you define sensuality in your life? 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. That’s a great question. One thing that’s been really frustrating in my history with the word sensuality is that for me, for the longest time, it was only designated to sex and the sexual. I definitely think that there’s space for sensuality to be included within sexuality. But I think because so much of our experiences around sex feels really taboo and it feels really heavy and there’s a lot of fear in there, a lot of shame in there, trying to access sensuality can feel just as heavy. It can feel just as shameful. 

So, in my experience when I was first, I guess, coming to the understanding of what sensuality and sensual was, I was noticing that I wasn’t really wanting to explore sensuality because it was attached so deeply to sex. I was having my own sexual hangups at the time and it just felt like, “Oh. I can’t access sexuality. How on earth am I going to access sensuality if they’re basically one and the same?” 

Ev’Yan Whitney: So when it came to my own sexual liberation journey and honestly, my sexual liberation journey, I made the choice to separate the two. Just in my brain, I need those two words to be compartmentalised. The way that I have since understood and now, teaching about sensuality is that sensuality is about the senses. It’s about making your body feel good. It’s about pleasure. And pleasure not in the sexual realm because I think a lot of us can hear that word and think sexual pleasure, orgasm. But I’m talking– I mean, that’s all great too. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m talking about pleasure as in what makes us feel good like what what makes us go, “Ah. Okay. I can relax and I can luxuriate in the feel of what’s happening to me right now.” 

I like to use sensuality as a philosophy of getting really connected to your senses – your five senses, your six senses. I believe that your intuition is a sixth sense. So I think that that is really inherent a part of sensuality. And yeah, for me, that’s been a really, really good differenti– It’s been a really good thing to differentiate because, again, when I’m accessing sensuality, oftentimes, it’s not coming from a place of sexuality. It’s just coming from what does my body need in this moment to feel good or what senses of mine haven’t been getting enough love for me? Then I can go through that and find certain practices or do certain things that bring that connection and that sense of awareness, mindfulness to those parts of myself.

Dawn Serra: That mindfulness and that deliberate cultivation of inquiry and nurturing is such a powerful thing. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Especially with sensuality, too. I think that since one of the things I teach about sensuality is that sensuality is mindfulness. I feel my most sensual when I am actually connected and tuned in and very aware of each of my senses. So what I’m smelling, what I’m tasting, what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing, what I’m feeling. 

I think maybe it’s possible for you to be sensual without that mindfulness, but in my experience, having that mindfulness and creating a practice of being mindful about my sensuality has been just– It’s been really self-caring. It’s been really self-loving and it’s allowed me to experience a deeper relationship with my body that I don’t know if I would have had if I hadn’t done this work around sensuality.

Dawn Serra: My therapist has been inviting me for the past, I don’t know a year or so. One of the things she says is the way that we live our lives is art. She very much is interested in exactly what you’re saying this cultivating spaces that delight all of our senses like, “What are the smells we’re inviting into our office, into our bedroom, into our kitchen? What are the sights? What are the sounds?

So I’ve been trying to slowly fill my space with art like that I really, truly find beautiful and flowers and smells that you know– If I just take a moment to smell them, kind of really bring me into the here and now. It’s not like overhaul all the things all at once, but just bringing in these little things here throughout my home, have made such a big difference in me feeling so much more present and connected. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: I love hearing that. I love hearing that people are talking more about pleasure in that sense. Doing things that make you and the experience that you have feel good to you. Whenever I talk about sensuality, I think people are expecting these big grand gestures of sensual opulence where they’re surrounded by flowers and a million candles and there’s music. That can absolutely be a thing. 

But I think sometimes the most powerful and potent experiences that I’ve had have been in just the simple moments. Even if sometimes I go all day without really connecting to my body because I’m a business owner. I’m doing calls all day. I’m writing. I’m at my computer all the time. Even if I just take five minutes to put a body butter, a sweet smelling body butter on my hands and actually taking those five minutes to just luxuriate in the feel of my hands emulsifying that body butter all over my hands, my wrist, my arms, suddenly I am in sensuality. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: It doesn’t have to be a practice that lasts for seven hours. I mean, I wish it could. I would love that, but I have things to do. For me, it’s really important to be able to find those small moments of sensuality throughout the day. I think that’s where the real practice is. I think that it would be nice to have a four hour ritual of sensuality. But taking those moments, just those brief moments and being very mindful about those moments that you’re taking… I mean, that’s when the real work happens. 

Dawn Serra: I also really appreciate how you’re distinguishing that pleasure isn’t inherently tied to sex–

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: That it’s one of so many ways for us to experience our bodies and connection and feeling good. I think that that’s a place where, especially right now culturally, it can feel like pleasure and sex are kind of synonyms. But the scope is so much larger. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. I mean, I think sex can be very pleasurable. Sex is very pleasurable for me. But it’s limiting for us to think that sex is the only place that we can access and give ourselves permission to really feel into pleasure, when we can be in a pleasurable experience outside of the context of sex. 

So I’m really interested in giving people permission to prioritize their pleasure both within the context of sex but especially outside of the context of sex because as women, we’ve been taught to disregard our pleasure both in sex and outside of it. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: I think that one way that we can reclaim our sexual power is by prioritizing pleasure. Not just within sex that we’re having, but also just on a day to day like buying a– I’m obsessed with pastries. That’s my love language to myself. When I want to give myself love, I give myself a piece of cake or a pastry. For me, it’s like I love pastries because they make me feel good. I love biting into a huge chunk of chocolate cake because it makes me feel good. 

So being able to prioritize what makes me feel good on a day to day basis feels really radical. It also allows me to get into this rhythm and this motion of prioritizing my pleasure so that when I go into sex, it’s like, “Oh. I know what it feels like to feel good and I want to feel good like that when I’m in sex.” So it gives me more inspiration, more of an importance to speak up and request that my pleasure is acknowledged, activated within the sexual context.

Dawn Serra: So one of the things you mentioned was sensuality and liberation. I’d love to hear how… You just mentioned power and I think that’s such an important, important word, especially for women and femme folks and queer folks and people of color – anyone who’s kind of navigating the world right now and experiencing oppression. How is sensuality for you linked to liberation? 

Ev’Yan Whitney: I think it was Audre Lorde that said self-care is a radical act. It’s self-preservation. It’s not– What’s the word? It’s not frivolous. Self-care and self-love is a radical act. 

When I think about sensuality, for me sensuality and self-care very deeply connected – self-care and self-love. Because when I am stimulating my senses, when I’m mindful about my senses, when I am celebrating my senses and my body, I mean, I’m in the realm of self-care. I’m in the realm of self-love. So there’s something very powerful and liberating to me about sensuality, because I recognize that when I appreciate my senses, when I prioritize my pleasure, when I’m doing things just for the sake of it to feel good, not because it’s productive or not because that would be the right thing to do, when I’m just doing things that center my pleasure, that is a radical act and that’s liberating. It’s really liberating.

Dawn Serra: So you just completed the Sensual Selfie Challenge, which was massive. For folks who are on Instagram, please check out the hashtag Sensual Selfie Challenge (#sensualselfiechallenge). I’ll have a link in the show notes for this. You wrote something really powerful on day three of the challenge and if it’s okay with you, I’d love to read it. It’s a couple of sentences.

Ev’Yan Whitney: Oh, please. Yeah. Please.

Dawn Serra: So you wrote: “On Day Three, we’re being reminded through gross comments, creepy DMs, concerned messages from family, our censored photos being removed, that this work we’re doing of sensual space taking and sexual celebration has real consequences. We’re being reminded that in making ourselves radically visible in this way, we’re making ourselves targets of slut shame, of unsolicited sexualization, of respectability politics. This work is dangerous. It’s threatening the foundations of very old and tired systems of oppression. It’s triggering and people responses to fear us, to be concerned for us, to insert themselves into our sexual narrative, to feel entitled to the fruits of our emotional and sensual labor. And It’s making people very, very uncomfortable.”

I love that so much. There’s such nuance in that around, not only are we doing this for ourselves and putting it out into the world, but all of the ways that other people are inserting themselves and their narratives into that. So I’d love to hear a little bit about the challenge itself and then this expression that you shared around the consequences. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. So I created the Sensual Selfie Challenge back in March. I did the first round back in March and it was something that I created on the fly. I was just like, “I think it’d be really rad to see a whole bunch of women and femmes take up space in a similar way that I do.” Because I’ve been taking sensual, sexual nudish photos and posting them on the internet for, I think it’s almost three years now. 

That’s been my way of radically taking up space. That’s been my way of taking my erotic power back from the male gaze. It’s been my way of unhiding and unshaming my sexuality in a culture that tells me that I’m more worthy when those parts of me are kept hidden. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: So I wanted to give people the opportunity, if they felt comfortable to do so, to play within those lines. My vision for the Sensual Selfie Challenge was for folks to, in a way that feels comfortable for them. Not disregarding their own comfort levels, but just going with what feels good for them to begin to express that, to begin to take up space in a sexual way and a body positive kind of way, in a sexual way – if that’s something that they felt good to them. 

When I did it the first time, I got, I think, a little over a thousand people who participated. Then I did it again in September and this round we had more than 4000. So it was massive. It’s very, very clear to me that, at least, every time that I’ve done this challenge so far, that this work is necessary. It’s not just necessary for the people who are doing it, but it’s necessary for the culture who’s witnessing it happening. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: One thing that tends to happen in doing this work and I’ve experienced this personally and I’m also watching it happen professionally– As you know, I was facilitating the challenge is that you have these first two days of sensual space taking and you’re showing off your body and you’re writing these beautiful comments and you’re connecting with the community and for some reason, on the third day, that’s when shit starts to hit the fan. That’s when things start coming back down to earth and you realize, “Oh. This isn’t…” “I need to be…” I’m reminded of where I am. I am in a culture that has told me these falsehoods and has given me these limiting beliefs about my capacity to be safe as I express myself in this way. I am living in a culture that is really concerned about my well-being if they see that I am openly expressing and extolling the beauty of my body. 

It was really important for me on that third day to make a statement and let people know that “I feel you.” I can even feel the energy on that day. I could feel– The first two days were so high. Everyone was so pumped and getting so much press and everyone was talking about it. The community was buzzing. But the third day I woke up and it just felt different. I mean, it was still lots of high energy, but it was a different kind of energy. Yeah. It was really important for me to talk about what people were experiencing. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: And also, to encourage people and let them know that what you’re feeling is understandable. It’s normal. Please keep taking up space anyway because that’s exactly what our culture wants. They want us to be small. They want us to internalize these messages. And yeah… It’s so important for us to, of course, honor ourselves, acknowledge what’s coming up for us. If you want to take a step back from the challenge today, that’s totally fine. Tend to your emotions and all of those things. But please remember that you taking up space and you smashing the patriarchy with your bomb-ass selfies is a radical act. We need more people showing up in this way. It was really beautiful. 

It seemed after I made that statement that some of the fog lifted for some people and they were able to be like, “Okay. I’m grounded now. I’m centered. I remember why I’m doing this. Let’s keep posting.” I mean, it just continues to be an incredibly productive and transformational rest of the challenge. So yeah. It was amazing.

Dawn Serra: The images that came out of that are just radiant and moving– 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Stunning. 

Dawn Serra: So important to choose the ways that we, not only to choose the ways that we share ourselves, for ourselves, but also the ways that we choose to view ourselves because we’re not often asked how do we want to view ourselves?

Ev’Yan Whitney: Right. 

Dawn Serra: I’m just thinking about this conversation that I had with a ALOK earlier this year, who is a gender queer artist. They were saying that they dress in these really loud and clashy and rather shocking ways for themselves. They’re not dressing this way for anyone else. It’s ALOK waking up and asking how do I want to be in the world? How do I want to look down and see myself today? What do I want to transmit? And it’s very much for self. 

I think that what you’re naming here around that energy around Day Three, of people starting to notice that I’m putting myself out in this way is so much of the way that so many of us exist on the internet and social media, specifically, is feeling like when someone puts something out, it is in some way for us. This consumption or this entitlement. Because you’ve shared this thing now, I have a right to comment on it or to feel like it’s for me. 

Dawn Serra: I think it’s so important you use the word witness. And that I think is where we can do better. When someone’s sharing themselves in this way, how can we witness them and allow them to do this knowing it’s for them? It’s not for us. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Right.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I really appreciate that word and naming we can witness people doing this, but we have to remember it’s for them.

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. One of the reasons why I do this work and I created the Sensual Selfie Challenge was because I noticed that our culture has given us a lot of complexes about what our sexual self-image should be like – what it means to be sexy, what it means to be desirable. 

I mean, yes. Some of those things can fit our own sexual narratives like who we want to be. We can see some aspects of what pop culture and main media is telling us sexy looks like. We can be like, “Oh. Yeah. That’s my sexy, too.” But for a lot of us, those actualizations of sexy don’t fit. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: So what I wanted to do with the Sensual Selfie Challenge and what I’m continuing to do with my own, with the way that I take up space, with the way that I post photos on the internet, with the way that I teach workshops about sensual self-portraiture and sexting yourself and all these things is we are helping to shift that sexual self-image. And we are also giving ourselves space to create our sexual self-image outside of the male gaze, outside of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. That, to me, is really, really powerful. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: I was actually just talking a couple days ago to my students who are taking my digital course, “Sexting Myself Right Now,” which is basically a continuation… A deeper, more refined, more in-depth continuation of the Sensual Selfie Challenge. It’s always so surprising… My students, they come to this class and they come to this workshop and this course and they think, “Oh. We’re just taking photos. That’s easy. I take many selfies anyway. That’s all it is.” Then they start doing this practice and they realize, “Holy shit. This isn’t just about taking selfies. This is about dismantling stories that have been keeping me from feeling sexually free. This is about deconstructing narratives about my body, about my sexuality, about my femininity that haven’t been serving me for 20 plus years.” 

I love that something as seemingly simple as taking a selfie has instigated this revolution of sexual liberation, of sensual space taking and of body positivity. I mean, it’s really, really rad to witness it. And you’re right, the selfies are stunning. I mean, that entire entire week, I was just like, “How are people so beautiful? I don’t understand.” It’s beautiful. So beautiful. 

Dawn Serra: It is. One of the things that I’ve really been unpacking over the past year is the pop culture and kind of cultural expectation of performing our sexuality, of performing for others to earn our worthiness to be seen externally as someone who is desirable and deserving versus this experiencing of inner truth and inner experience and inner wisdom. How do we start finding that voice and taking up that space because it is one, scary and countercultural to do that?

And you’re so right. The beauty that is unleashed when people even just start wondering, “Well, maybe if I took this picture” or “Maybe if I invited in this sense, that might feel good to me.” I mean, even that question itself can yield so much incredible – I don’t know – radiance. Because we’re starting to turn to self instead of turn to outside. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Right. Yeah. One question that really started this work of self-portraiture for me was who would I be as a sexual being within my sexual expression, within my sexual identity if I wasn’t performing? I realized that a lot of my sexuality was performative. I was performing for the male gaze. I was performing for my partner. I was performing aspects of what sexuality and sexiness and desirability looked like because I’d seen it play out, you know, for the last 30 plus years of my life. It was really important for me to take my power back from those images and from those assumptions and those narratives, those stories that didn’t serve me. 

So I think you’re right. I think sex for so many of us has been performative. I mean, I just think about the people who fake their orgasms. I was one of those women. I had a relationship where I faked my orgasms for the three years that we were with each other. He never gave me an orgasm. I never had an orgasm with him. So when I think about just how prevalent it is for us to perform, when I think about how common and almost normalized it is for us to fake sexual empowerment or sexual competence for someone else’s pleasure, it really got underneath my skin and I was like, “How can I call myself sexually liberated or sexually free if I’m performing in this way?” I’m putting on a persona I’m putting on a mask that doesn’t even fit me. It’s not who I am.

Ev’Yan Whitney: So I’m always trying to encourage my clients to be really just cognizant and aware of where they’re performing their sexuality in their lives and finding ways to reclaim a sexuality, a sexual expression, a sexual identity that is authentic to them and that makes them feel happy and fulfilled.

Dawn Serra: One of the things that I’ve been trying to gently hold in my own life and invite people who listen to the show and when I work with one-on-one to do as well is this interrogation that we can start doing. Of what are the stories we’ve been given? Who told us this is how it’s supposed to be? What are all the messages around us that just keep reinforcing those stories? That interrogation can happen alongside this tenderness for who we are now and the confusion we might have and the uncertainty that we might have. “Well, I think this is what my self expression is.” “I think this is what my pleasure is.” 

Being able to hold that that might change as you continue to do the interrogation, I think, is so important because there’s this tendency to beat ourselves up and to be rather cruel to ourselves. But if we can do the both of like, “Do I really believe this? Is this really what I want?” and not being sure is okay. We don’t have to have all the answers right away. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Right. Absolutely. It’s so much about you being able to ask yourself those questions and be curious about the answers. I always tell my clients, “It’s okay. If the answer is I don’t know. You’ll eventually be able to figure it out. Just keep asking yourself those questions and keep opening yourself up to the potential for those answers to reveal themselves to you.” Because they will. Eventually they will. You just have to keep coming back to them and keep exploring them.

Dawn Serra: So around this kind of questioning the narratives that we’re given and the stories we have about our bodies, one of the things that I adore, is the way that you’ve talked about your body hair Your relationship with it. I started an experiment last December to stop shaving. At first I was kind of embarrassed by all of it. But now I feel much more comfortable with my armpit hair. There’s certain situations where I’m still a little like, “I feel a little self-conscious right now, but I’m mostly good.” My leg hair is a little bit harder for me. I’m still really struggling with that one. But I want to keep exploring that. This is the way that my body is just made to be. You told me it was not sexy to have body hair. So what has that been like for you to unpack and challenge that story? 

Ev’Yan Whitney: That was interesting. I mean, I first want to answer your question of who told me that having body hair is not natural or not healthy. It was – what are they called? – the shaving industry. The only reason why women started shaving… I mean, we weren’t shaving. I think it was up until what… the 1920s? That’s when these ads started coming out because shaving and razor companies want to sell more products. So they basically manufactured an insecurity and told women that it is unclean and it is unnatural for you to have hair here. So that’s when the phenomenon of shaving every part of ourselves came into place, which is really interesting. 

That was a really interesting piece of history for me to know. Because this whole time, I thought that it was natural to shave. It was unnatural to have hair there. And to really put it into a context of, “This was a marketing scheme. This was capitalism.” People, this had nothing to do… There was no medical basis for this, whatsoever. It was just so that people could sell products. That’s when I was like. “Oh. Okay. This is stupid.”

Ev’Yan Whitney: I mean, I want to be very clear and say that it is a personal choice for people to shave or not shave. I don’t look down on any person, any woman who chooses to get Brazilians, to wax their leg hair, to shave their armpits. I think everybody has a choice and we are allowed to choose how we want our bodies to look. But I also want to caution people against going with the flow of things without questioning where those things came from. Because if I hadn’t read this history, if I hadn’t sat down and really thought, “Why am I shaving?” 

Really? What is it about shaving? Other than the fact that everyone else does it, other than the fact that it’s drilled into my head that smooth skin is better, where does that come from? And does that line up with my own desires for my body? Does that line up with my own philosophies about the way that my body wants to look? If people can answer those questions and be like, “Yeah. Actually, I prefer my legs to be clean shaven. It’s something that I really enjoy doing.” That’s fine. But for me, I couldn’t really answer that question and be like, “Oh. Yeah. I actually really enjoy shaving.” I hated shaving. Shaving is terrible. It’s such a nuisance. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: I actually shaved my legs for the first time in, gosh, three years, last year, on my birthday. Because I wanted something to be… I was feeling really luxurious and like a queen and I was like, “I kind of missed the feel of having hairless legs and feeling fabric on them and stuff like that.” It was awful. I hated the razor burn. The shaving took forever. I was like, “Why am I doing this to myself?” 

It’s important for people to know that it wasn’t as easy as one day I woke up and I was like, “I’m never shaving again” and then I loved my hairy body. No! I mean, there are still days when– I mean, I have a little happy trail that goes down from my belly button to my pubic area. That’s because when I was, I think 13, I thought it would be really cool to shave that part of my body and sometimes when you shave things, they grow back even thicker. So I have a really nice thick, happy trail that goes down from my belly button to my pubic hair. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: That’s been the hardest part for me to love about myself – to be able to see that part as beautiful, to see that part of me as clean and natural and feminine and sexy. So it takes a lot of time and it’s still taking a lot of time for me to unlearn the falsehood that body hair equals– Unsexy body hair equals you’re not desirable. But the more that I continue to live with this new belief system that my body hair is beautiful, it’s natural, it’s perfect as it is, the more it’s easier for me to believe those things. It also helps that my partner is like very… He’s very all about it, too. I mean, he prefers me with armpit hair than he does without it. So that helps, too.

Dawn Serra: I think that’s an important thing to name. I also have the privilege of a partner who… He’s like, “This is your body. So you do whatever makes you feel good. I’m all on board about you feeling good.” And so full bush or shaved armpits or everything in between, he’s like “Cool. I’m glad you’re doing something with your body that feels good.” And not everybody has someone in their life that is like that. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Totally.

Dawn Serra: I think that’s a reality that we have to grapple with of, are we wanting to manipulate our body for someone else because that feels generous or because we feel shame? If our partners or the people in our lives comment on our body and it doesn’t feel good and generous, do we want to do the labor of setting that boundary and maybe having to set it repeatedly. For me, at this stage in my life, if I had someone come in and comment on my body in a derogatory way, it would be, “You’re not allowed to do that and we’re not going to have this exchange anymore.” But not everyone is there. So I think we– Also, being gentle with ourselves and where we are and what our capacity is is important. But I’m very grateful to also have a partner who’s like, “Cool! Armpit hair!” 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. I mean, it helps to be affirmed. It helps to have someone else in your corner saying to you what your culture is not saying to you. Because when you try something new… I mean, it’s similar to when you do something new with your hair and you’re in that weird space of – and I’m talking about the hair on your head – “I like it, but it’s new. I’m not sure.” It’s so nice to be able to have a partner to affirm you and be like, “Wow. This is beautiful. I love the way that you look.” I think that we can apply those same kind of importance when it comes to affirmation with other things too, like body hair. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So you mentioned your partner. I know some of the things that you’ve written about and that you mentioned you’d like to talk about is your queer identity and your relationship with your queerness. As someone who identifies as queer as well, who’s married to– I’m married to a cis, queer man. Sometimes my queerness isn’t visible to others and I have a lot of straight passing privilege. So I’d love to hear a little bit about your relationship with your queerness and coming into it and how you move around inside of it now.

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. I also have a lot of straight passing privilege. I’m also in a relationship with the cis dude who is queer. We both have the ability to be passed over as straight or just as like both a hetero couple and also a monogamous couple, which is really, really frustrating. But it’s real. What’s been really cool for me in this experience is that I’ve been able to have the best of both worlds. I’ve been able to have a really loving and constant support system within my relationship with my husband. Then also, have the freedom and the agency to explore my own sexual desires and my own sexual needs. For us, it’s inevitable for us to have an open relationship because our queer identity is so important to us. That it’s something that wants to be expressed and it’s something that we both want to honor. 

So I really appreciate that he and I have created a really strong relationship with a very strong foundation where we are able to both come together as lovers and as partners and as friends and also honor who we are individually outside of this relationship that we’ve created together. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. My queer identity, it’s a lot more important to me these days than it was like – I don’t know – ten years ago. I think when I was having these inklings of being not straight, as I like to call it, I didn’t know what to do with that because I was with my with my husband, and we just got married and I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll have to do this in another lifetime.” So something that I was consciously trying not to give space to, but it’s still kept popping up for me. 

That’s why I’m really grateful to relationship models like non-monogamy, open relationships, polyamory because it gives folks like me permission to explore the full spectrum of who they are sexually, who they are romantically, who they are individually outside of the relationship that they have currently. So, yeah. I love being queer. I love my queer husband, I love my queer relationship and I’m so grateful to be in a relationship that honors that part of me and doesn’t see me acknowledging that part of me as a subtraction of what he and I have together.

Dawn Serra: I get lots and lots of questions from people who are interested in exploring non-monogamy or polyamory or trying a threesome for the first time. One of the things that seems to be a frequent question that comes in from people is, how do I continue to nurture and grow my existing partnership? How do we keep coming back together and making it a really strong, wonderful nurturing place while we’re doing something that’s rather unconventional and maybe having new relationships with other people or sexual exchanges? For you, how do you nurture that relationship and keep it feeling something that’s really important and vibrant? 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Yeah. It’s a little harder to do when you’re in a relationship where you guys have been together for a long time. Jonathan and I have been going on, are going on 12 years this year. It’s a little difficult to– Especially when you have new relationship energy with someone else that it feels fun and mysterious and novel. It’s easy to see why the flame in your primary or main relationship would start to dim a little bit. Because it isn’t new. Maybe it isn’t as fun because you guys have been together for a long time. 

But the one thing that has helped me and Jonathan is trying to see our relationship every day with new eyes. So not getting to a place of, “Oh. Been there, done that. I already know you.” But really trying to keep up this mystery with each other. And it’s really true. I mean, while the institution of our relationship is pretty stable and we have our rhythms and our routines, we’re two individuals who are constantly growing. We’re constantly evolving. We’re constantly changing and exploring new parts of ourselves. So it’s been really helpful for us both to maintain that awareness of, “Yes, I’ve been with this person for 12 years, but who he was 12 years ago is not the same person that he is today. Who he was a year ago is not the same person that he is today.” 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Just being really mindful of the fact that he is a human being that is in a constant state of evolution and it’s important for me to hold space for the new things that he’s uncovering about himself and to encourage him to continue to be curious about those parts of himself, has been really, really helpful for us. 

The other thing that is a little bit more practical is with the same kind of energy and excitement that we feel with the people that we’re dating, we try to do those same sorts of things in our relationships. Like if we’re going on dates with with a new potential partner, we also make sure that we go on dates with each other with the same kind of excitement, the same kind of energy. Obviously, it’s not going to be the same because it’s a very different thing to go on a date with someone who you’ve been with for a long time versus someone you just met on Tinder a few days.

Dawn Serra: Right.

Ev’Yan Whitney: I mean, I think it’s important to nurture your relationship through going on dates, through surprising each other, through taking time away from Netflix and actually sitting down to talk to each other. It’s definitely hard. It’s something that I think we both could be better about doing. But I think that that’s been one of the things that has kept us from not burning out on each other. Also not putting all of our eggs into the basket of someone else and maintaining like, “Yeah. You are my person. You will always be my person. There’s really new and exciting and fun things about you, too, that I’m excited to explore.” Yeah. That’s kind of how we do it. But, again, it’s not easy. It’s a lot easier to say it than it is to do it. For sure. 

Dawn Serra: Isn’t that true in so many things?

Ev’Yan Whitney: So many things. So many things. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. So you and I are about to go record a little bonus chat for our Patreon supporters of the show. But before we do that, I would love it if you would share with everyone how they can stay in touch with you and find you online and see all your beautiful, beautiful work. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Oh. Thank you. They can find me on my website sexloveliberation.com. There they can find how to work with me, some of the courses that I’m teaching and some of the essays that I’ve written over the last eight years. They can also find me on Instagram. That’s where I’m most active in terms of social media. They can find me at @evyan.whitney. Yeah. I’m happy to be a resource to anyone who has questions about self-portraiture or sexual relation or just prioritizing their pleasure. I’m so happy to be a resource to anyone who wants to talk to me about it. So yeah. That’s where they can find me.

Dawn Serra: I will have all of those links, of course, in the show notes and at dawnserra.com for this episode. Thank you so much for being here with me today and sharing your stories and your wisdom. This has felt incredibly nourishing. 

Ev’Yan Whitney: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a really fun conversation. 

Dawn Serra: To everybody who tuned in, thank you so much for listening. Be sure to click those links and follow along with all of the Selfie Challenge adventures that I’m sure are going to be coming down the road. Also, if you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast and tune in to this little bonus chat that we’re going to have which I think is going to be super yummy. So thank you so much for being here with us and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?