Why we all could do with some self love

In a more innocent age, we had a White Rabbit with a waistcoat and a pocket watch who went down a rabbit hole, compelling a young Alice to tumble him and enter a parallel universe of wonder and strange things like Mad Hatters, Grinning Cheshire Cats and the first kick-ass woman antagonist I ever met, the Red Queen.

But, in today’s Wonderland, a rabbit is not just a fluffy creature who can run over your home with infinite offspring if you have the bad judgement to host them in a pair. In fact, it is more likely to be a device with the power to make the earth move in under two minutes. For women who swear by it, it does away with the awkwardness, inconvenience and all the dim lights and soft music run-up to sex.

Before battery powered gizmos invaded our underwear drawers, women (and men) have down the aeons, been taking matters into their own hands, literally speaking. Accessories in this pursuit have ranged from fertile imagination, to a stack of forbidden magazines, to what we coyly called ‘blue films’, to the current trend of online sites which give you permutations and combinations that could overtake even the most fertile of imaginations.

But then we are a furtive lot about self pleasuring, put it down to the guilt and shame associated with sexuality that most of us dealt with while growing up. It doesn’t get discussed in public except for the advice columns in magazines and newspapers, where kindly sexologists reassure anguished souls that they will not grow hair on their palms, break out into incriminating pustules on their face or decline into an early grave if they do.

At a dinner table conversation the other day, one of the ladies declared (and very sensibly I thought) that she had become ‘sexually self-sufficient’. Being sexually self sufficient is a huge benefit. “I even travel with my vibrator,” another declared, she has a hectic work-life schedule that entails more than 15 days a month of outstation travel. “Else between my schedule and the hubby’s, I would get no action at all.”

Research says using a vibrator can help both partners feel more comfortable about their sexuality and take better care of their sexual health. Research by the University of Indiana found that women who used vibrators reported greater arousal, better natural lubrication and ease of orgasm.

The vibrator is a wonderful invention as most women would aver, is definitely not a substitute for human touch, never mind the assorted baggage that comes with relationships. All we can do, is to think of it as an add-on, one that enhances our own experience of our sexuality. With adjustable settings.

Kiran Manral is the author of six published books across genres. She is also a recovering Nutella addict

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