Actress Shailene Woodley has made a habit of saying the unexpected. There was that time she declared that she was not a feminist, or when she tried to convince us all to eat clay. Now, she's talking about masturbation.
Specifically, the 24-year-old chatted with Net-A-Porter in a recent interview about her take on sex education, and how it's missing one crucial element.
"As a young woman you don’t learn how to pleasure yourself," she points out. "You don’t learn what an orgasm should be, you don’t learn that you should have feelings of satisfaction."
She goes on to reveal that she's been thinking about writing a book called There’s No Right Way to Masturbate, which sounds like something we'd totally sheepishly pick up at Barnes & Noble. But that, according to Woodley, is the problem. Masturbation is weirdly taboo for women, but if we talked about it openly, especially at a young age, things might be totally different.
"If masturbation were taught in school, I wonder how [many] fewer people would get herpes aged 16," she continues. "Or pregnant at 14?"
While there's not too much science to back this up (yet), it's definitely true that masturbation is left entirely out of the sex education conversation. That (unfortunately) might not change any time soon, but in the meantime, we'll be eagerly awaiting that book.
The gap between what we learned in sex ed and what we're learning through sexual experience is big — way too big. So we're helping to connect those dots by talking about the realities of sex, from how it's done to how to make sure it's consensual, safe, healthy, and pleasurable all at once. Check out more here.
The gap between what we learned in sex ed and what we're learning through sexual experience is big — way too big. So we're helping to connect those dots by talking about the realities of sex, from how it's done to how to make sure it's consensual, safe, healthy, and pleasurable all at once. Check out more here.