Being an OMGyes cast member
[Estimated reading time: 20 minutes]
*If you’re interested in becoming an OMGyes cast member, you can learn more here!
People...I’m naked on the internet. I have been for a long time now. Somewhere in the ether there are photos of me in states of semi to complete nudity. There’s also footage of me, fully clothed, masturbating my way to orgasm, y’know for posterity. This doesn’t bother me. I mean, if it did, I wouldn’t have done it. But when I was invited to be a cast member with the incredible sex education and research institute known as OMGyes, I had second thoughts. I had third and fourth thoughts as well. But ultimately, I decided to once again get naked on the internet. So here’s how that went down.
After filling in, what I suspect was meant to be a short survey, but which I managed to turn into War & Peace with dildos, I was invited to have a conversation with the incredible humans at OMGyes. We agreed on a mutually godawful time (my AM their PM), and had a lengthy conversation about what I liked to put up my ass and why. Mysteriously they seemed keen to see more of me and invited me to fly to San Francisco to be a cast member of their third season.
Before travelling to the other side of the world, I was kindly given access to the OMGyes website so that I could get an idea of what I’d be signing up for. I’d heard so much about it, and had even recommended it to so many people, and yet I’d never gotten around to getting myself an account. So I logged in and started clicking around. It felt like someone had gone into my brain and taken out everything I knew about vaginas and then organised it with military precision, added delightful diagrams, charts, and explainer videos. It was everything I’d dreamed of and more!
Hearing women talk about their own pleasure and their own skills and techniques was validating, heartwarming and empowering all at once. But when the video cut to footage of one of the cast members demonstrating her technique...I freaked out. I mean, lesbi-honest, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen a lingering close up of a vulva on my screen. But for some reason, my heart started racing and I started sweating.
This was when I realised that it wasn’t some abstract thing that I was considering doing. The women on my screen - I would be one of them. I was about to join the ranks of these incredible human beings, individuals who were so badass they weren’t just talking the talk, they were fapping the fap - truly embodying sex positivity.
I was not them. I could not be them.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not a small woman. I’m what my mother frequently referred to in my childhood as a “big girl”. Sure, I’m tall and I’m busty and I’m curvy, but to be honest I’m also fat. And thanks to decades of self development, I’m mostly okay with that. Fat and beautiful don’t need to be mutually exclusive terms.
But the idea of appearing on camera, in all my fatness. Showing my actual face to an internet that isn’t exactly known for embracing the idea of ‘body positivity’ was starting to seem like an unwise move. And then following it up with what I’d seen these other women start to do...my pussy was not like theirs. Mine was fat. I didn’t even know what it would look like on camera, and thinking about finding out made me want to fear vomit until my shoes were full.
Fat girls and sexual pleasure are not things that go hand in hand. I’ve learned from years of media representation that when it comes to sex and fat girls, it’s usually exclusively the realm of comic relief. Think Melissa McCarthy’s sexually aggressive character in Bridesmaids. Or Rebel Wilson’s overtly aggressive body confidence in, well, anything. It’s funny when fat or ugly women are sexually aggressive and confident, because they’re fat and ugly so, y’know, they’ve got no good reason to be. We never see conventionally attractive, well-adjusted femme characters behaving in the same way - because there would be no punchline. Try and imagine that Bridesmaids scene with Margot Robbie, and suddenly it looks a whole lot different.
The idea of me, a fat girl, talking about my batcave and the rogues gallery of sex toys I put into it was bringing up a lifetime of unsolicited comments about my body, comments that I’d tried my best to never think of while I was naked.
Spoiler alert: obviously I ended up doing it. I realised that I actually had to. Not because anyone else was making me, but because I needed to put my feminism where my pussy is.
I’ve bored more than one dinner party guest with my diatribe about how we need more women of size in the media, more diverse representations of them than simply fat comedic relief. I’ve ended up in heated debates about how the lack of sexually empowered fat women on screen leaves women like me feeling that if we’re lucky we can be funny, but we will never be fuckable.
I realised that if representation is that important to me, then what could be better than seeing someone exactly like me on screen talking about sexual pleasure? This was a political act.
I basically debated myself into a corner and then regretted being so good at making compelling arguments. So I signed the fuck up and made my way to California.
Carrying a 30kg suitcase containing every sex toy I could get through customs, I staggered up and down a street, somewhere on the outskirts of San Francisco, struggling to find a street number through the rain. It was 5am and I was intensely regretting every thought I’d ever had that told me this was a good idea. But 30 minutes later I was in a chair getting my makeup done by one of the most lovely humans on earth, and my only regret was not becoming a famous porn star a decade earlier.
I was prepared to look in the mirror, once my makeup was done, and not recognise the person staring back at me. But it turns out that a talented makeup artist will spend two hours turning you into someone that is actually 100% more you than you ever realised you could be. Every time I went to the bathroom, walked past a mirror, or took a selfie, I didn’t see some wannabe Instagram influencer with flawless skin and eyebrows for days - I saw myself as I had always been in my own head.
This moment became a kind of metaphor for the rest of my time on set. Everything that I’d thought would require me to put on a bit of an act to get through, actually ended up being the complete opposite. Working with OMGyes was the ultimate exercise in self actualisation. A day where I got to be so completely and honestly myself that I almost didn’t recognise it, because I so rarely have that opportunity.
Looking in the mirror became a completely unexpected moment of body confirmation, and it helped to buoy my confidence every time I felt it flagging. There was a moment much later in the day where I was about to shove something up my butt, in front of a room full of strangers and I took a break to fortify myself in the bathroom. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was nervous as hell. But looking at my face, and seeing this self staring back at me, I felt like I’d been looking for her my whole life. It was definitely A Moment (™). Unfortunately my butt didn’t agree and refused to cooperate with the butt plug, which only goes to show you that a great face can only get you so far in this world.
By the time makeup was done the crew were starting to arrive. A parade of new faces who were definitely less interested in me than they were in the room I was in, and what the lighting was doing. It was a deliciously brief respite before I would spend the next five hours talking non-stop about myself, my opinions, my body, and my masturbation habits. And I can say without a shadow of a doubt, those five hours will remain some of the best I will ever experience. I mean, everyone loves talking about themselves, but having a small crowd of people who are so absurdly engaged that they make you feel like some kind of Dildo Deity every time you open your mouth - it’s intoxicating!
I have a tendency to make jokes when I’m nervous. I suspect this often makes me a somewhat obnoxious party guest, and insufferable at funerals. But the OMGYES team just went with it, they let me tell my stupid jokes, swear like I was getting paid for each profanity, and just generally be my normal, overly expressive self. As a woman, and as a fat woman, I have spent a lifetime being told to ‘tone it down’, being told that sometimes I’m just ‘too much’ and being made aware of how much space, both physically and verbally, I take up. To have a room of people not only allowing me to expand, but actively celebrating it was cathartic in a way I don’t think I can ever adequately describe.
Talking about sex, wanking, etc is pretty easy for me. I mean, for a start I don’t really experience socialised shame or embarrassment about topics of conversation, so that helps a lot. But I’ve also been writing about exactly how I wank for the better part of a decade, so a lot of what I talked about became a kind of live-action rendition of some of the toy reviews on this very site, I just substituted gifs for finger guns.
But there were still a lot of scenarios that I hadn’t actually written about or discussed before, and finding a way to describe what a string of anal beads feels like in your own ass is a uniquely challenging party game. Somewhere there is footage of me trying to convincingly make the argument that having a rectum full of anal beads is exactly the same as shoving your mouth full of Skittles, purely because I refused to resort to saying that it gave a feeling of ‘fulness’.
Despite being in a room with up to 8 people at a time, there was a designated interviewer that I was to direct all my answers to. The fact that she was an absolutely delightful and wonderfully expressive human who silently laughed at all of my jokes was an added bonus. But what became a weird social challenge was remembering that regardless of who asked the question, I had to address my answers to her. At any point a member of the crew might ask me to clarify something, or ask a question. But then I had to act like the rudest bitch on the planet and act as though my interviewer had asked me. I kind of felt like a U.S Press Secretary, “Question in the back? Why yes Mr Trump I would love to tell you why President Trump is the best. CNN, I see your hand but I shall continue to ignore you until you die in front of me from old age.”
The other hard part was remembering that I was only allowed to speak in ‘I’ statements. Try it for a day, seriously. It’s amazing how much we hide behind second person statements in some kind of attempt to distance ourselves from the subject matter. In other news, if I had a dollar for every time I start a story with “You know when you…” I’d be able to custom build my own sex toys from now until death.
After the interview was over, it was time for the demonstration. Since I hadn’t watched the demonstration portions from the website, I’d based my expectations about this section on the information emailed through to me. But we all have a tendency to fill knowledge gaps with our closest relevant reference point. So when I read that I’d be masturbating on camera, I referred back to various experiences with porn, and other naked-on-camera scenarios.
I figured I’d be set up in a room, a camera would be turned on, and maybe one of the crew members would stay to keep everything in focus, but otherwise I’d be alone. I figured that I would furiously fap away until I demonstrated my patented orgasm technique, with my preferred masturbation utensils, and they’d call “cut”. Then later my dialogue would be added over the top of the footage so I could explain what was happening at each moment. Funny thing about assumptions…
Imagine going into a stranger’s bedroom, one that’s been flooded with more light than any human being ought to be comfortable with.
In the middle of the room is a bed. Surrounding the bed are half a dozen cameras and monitors. Wedged between those and the walls are 8 fully clothed, impressively professional individuals, each with a litany of insanely awesome accomplishments to their name.
It’s here you learn that what you’ll be doing is, ever so gracefully, hoiking up your dress, attempting to make wriggling out of your knickers look sexy, before spreading your legs as wide as humanly possible while 8 people stare up into your holiest of holeys.
You will then proceed to slow jerk yourself with a series of increasingly absurd sex toys, all while maintaining direct eye contact with your heavily pregnant interviewer, answering questions and offering a running commentary about how your wank efforts feel, and describing exactly what you’re doing to your genitals right now.
There’s vulnerability, and then there’s what I did the day of that shoot.
Because of the situation, I realised that I really didn’t want to orgasm. Doing the demonstration in a way that was professional and informative worked for me. Or alternatively, lying back and having a wonderful semi-private wank and a few explosive orgasms worked for me. But sitting upright, telling my new friends about my techniques and then randomly screaming out my own name as I potentially squirted all over the bed linen, kind of felt like more vulnerability than I was capable of.
Sort of like how you’re fine with peeing in front of your partner, but not pooping and suddenly you’re on the loo and they’re looking you in the eyes and your body spasms and you make the poop face and you both realise what’s happening but there’s no way for either of you to stop it and the relationship will never be the same afterwards.
One of the other things I didn’t realise was how many toys I’d be demonstrating with. I was told to bring over whatever toys I was comfortable with, but I assumed this just meant whatever toys I masturbate with regularly. But it turned out that literally everything I mentioned during my interview process, they wanted demo footage of. This meant that each time they passed me a new toy for me to start wanking with, I’d just sit there and silently think “mother always said my big mouth would get me in trouble one day”.
In hindsight I do regret that I wasn’t able to overcome my nerves and awkwardness better. By the day after the shoot I felt like I was ready to go back and give a repeat performance, one where I could be more engaged, and look less like the world’s most awkward porn star. There’s no real reference point for what body language to use when you’re staring down the barrel of a camera, with one end of a strapless strap-on inside you, and the other end waving around like you’ve spontaneously grown a giant purple dick, and you can’t figure out how to address the elephant (dick) in the room. It feels kind of weird to just leave a giant purple erection between your legs as though it’s an ornamental vase on a dresser. Like, should I stroke it? But also...doing that while making direct eye contact with my heavily pregnant interviewer…
There were a number of points where I found myself thinking “I’m having a great conversation right now, and I really want to elaborate on this point, but I am acutely aware of the fact that there’s 9 inches of untethered dildo sticking out of me” and the whole thing became the greatest exercise of “I don’t know what to do with my hands” I’ve ever had.
I stopped fapping at one point, with the Njoy wand inside me, to gesture to something and make a point, but when I realised I’d said everything I needed to, I didn’t know how to casually proceed. My brain had a panicked run down “Do I just keep casually fapping? Do I kind of leave it here and take my hand off it? What if it just plops out on its own...that would be embarrassing. Do I leave one hand on it? It kind of feels like I’ve got my hand on the tiller of my own ship - chart a course for orgasm skipper! But if I take my hand off, it’s going to flop over to one side and possibly take out one of my ovaries as it goes. Finishing school never prepared me for this!
There were points where I felt like I was hosting my own cooking show,
“Today we’re going to show you how to cook an orgasm. All you’ll need for this recipe is a stainless steel dildo, a small bullet vibrator, and some natural lubrication. If you don’t make your own lubrication, store-bought is fine, we’re not here to judge. Now if we could get a close up on my vulva, I can show you the best way to get a nice, fluffy g-spot.”
At one point I realised I was about to put some stainless steel anal beads inside me, while I had a vibrator on my clit, and there was an equal likelihood of me either shitting myself or squirting all over the front row of cameras and crew. Feeling more than a wee bit vulnerable, I asked if anyone could share some embarrassing stories. Every person in that room delivered fucking spectacularly, managing to not just make me laugh and help with my anxiety, but also sharing genuine emotional experiences that helped me feel connected to the people who were casually documenting my south holes.
With my self-imposed orgasm ban though, that particular combination became really fucking tricky. As the first few inches of the Fun Wand went inside me I felt a thrill of pleasure wash over me. It had been ages since I’d played with butt toys and my asshole went “Oooooh yeah” and my clitoris said “Oh hello” And my brain went “DON’T YOU FUCKERS DARE!”
I’d said in my interview that I normally inserted all 3 of the beads inside me, so I’m trying to count as they start slipping in, but I’m shit with numbers at the best of times, and trying to fight off an orgasm while my body violently resists me isn’t really conducive to things like counting.
Eventually the shoot ended, and everyone got to go home - except that the crew had to be back at 5am the next day to do it all again, whereas I would be enjoying the next leg of a vacation. Or so I thought.
What I hadn’t anticipated at all, was the absolute heartbreak and grief I would feel the next day. It’s something I should have realised, since I tend to have pretty epic comedowns. I’m the kind of girl that cries for 2 days after each Pixar movie. But I didn’t see this one coming. And of course, so much of this is simply a reflection of how my brain processes things. A lack of emotional regulation means I experience everything unfiltered. There’s no cap on my highs, but no bottom to my lows.
I’d spent nearly 20 hours with the most incredible people. Each of whom I’d revealed parts of myself to (not just those parts), emotional parts that I’d never really exposed before. I’d talked so much about myself, my opinions, my experiences, my feelings - but I felt like I hadn’t learned enough about any of them. I felt guilt, and heartache. It was the most vulnerable I had ever been, and probably would ever be, with 8 people that I would probably never get to see again. And now I had to just go back to an ordinary life, like it had never happened. The depression was fucking strong with this one.
And maybe this is because, as someone who spent their life struggling with self esteem, struggling to be seen, struggling to feel like they were valid, I spent a day with people who did nothing but tell me how incredible I was.
Between every take, in the background of every shot, there was a collection of people whose opinions I already cared deeply about. People who were telling me that I was not just good, but great! People who were delighted with every part of me that I’d always thought I needed to keep hidden. My daggy (apparently not a word outside of Australia) jokes, my stupid one liners and goofy facial expressions, my absolute nerdiness about sex toys. Every opinion I had, every experience I recounted, every seemingly unrelated anecdote that I somehow turned into an orgasm euphemism. Everything that makes up who I am, and that I had often assumed was something that was tolerated, was all of a sudden celebrated.
That’s an incredibly difficult high to walk away from.
So when I woke up the day after the shoot I felt suffocatingly isolated. I realised that no one I ever met would ever understand, no matter how well I described it. I was suddenly part of this incredible, exclusive club, one whose other members I’m unlikely to ever meet. And that meant getting to carry all of this joy and overwhelming excitement, so much that it felt like there wasn’t room for it all to fit.
But with one sleep my life felt like it was a million miles from where it had ever been before - I was a normal person, but felt forever changed by this experience. For me this meant an indescribable grief. An overwhelming sense of loss for something I could never have back. It took me weeks to recover from the crash.
This isn’t surprising, since after the last incredible life experience I had, I ended up in a psych ward. All things considered I probably did a lot better this time around. It’s been several months now, and I can look back on the whole thing with a distance that keeps the strongest emotions at bay, but the fondest memories on the surface.
I’ve always struggled with the idea of having pride in personal growth. A lifetime of therapy and working every day on developing healthy coping mechanisms kind of strips the idea of victory out of these things. So it’s with a fair amount of surprise that I look at what I did with OMGYES and feel pride.
I was offered an opportunity - one that on one level was everything I’d ever wanted, and on another level was the most deeply terrifying thing I had ever considered. I not only did the thing, I fucking owned the thing. I let myself become the person I’d always dreamed of being. And I couldn’t have done it without the people in the room that day. I truly did leave my heart in San Francisco - but I know the people I left it with will take good care of it.
That is all.
You may go now.
*If you’re interested in becoming an OMGyes cast member, you can learn more here!