Feature image via Estelle X. All of the photographs in this NSFW Sunday are by and feature Estelle X and have been used with permission. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If you’re a photographer or model and think your work would be a good fit for NSFW Sunday, please email carolyn at autostraddle dot com.
Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
+ “I still don’t understand all of this. I’m still learning. But I know the more I stand up for myself and refuse to settle for less, the stronger I’m becoming and the less my traumas seem to have a hold on me,” writes Nomi Ruiz in Jezebel, on finding love as a young trans woman:
“It’s difficult to admit that you will never be a part of the society you’ve grown to know. But what if that freed us? What if looking good on paper became poisonous? What if being that thing the world rejects made you feel sexy and you found power in that feeling? How powerful it could be to find confidence and love yourself in the face of such opposition. I hope being rejected makes others feel beautiful, powerful and unique — because rejection is only a violent form of jealousy. I especially wish this for young trans women who are navigating their way through womanhood. What a fragile device, to be frail in the eyes of the preying.”
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
+ The newest lingerie trend is a nostalgic look with smutty prints.
+ Are platonic sleepovers cheating? Regardless, if you serve eggs in the morning this looks like a good way to do it.
+ There are (at least) 100 sex education books you could go read.
+ It’s okay if you cry after sex: “According to Dr. Tudor, crying after sex is a totally natural reaction and not necessarily cause for concern. ‘I just look at it in basic terms. It’s understandable that one release could trip over into another,’ she says.”
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
+ Having a satisfying sex life makes people more likely to be engaged and satisfied in work life, according in a new study:
“’[S]exual intercourse is significantly correlated with morning positive affect, job satisfaction, previous-day work–family conflict, previous-day marital satisfaction, and previous-day challenge stressors,’ the study’s authors write. In fact, their analyses revealed employees experience a 5-percent increase in mood the next day when they reported having sex the night before.”
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
+ Americans, regardless of other sociological factors, are having less sex, according to a recent report:
“The report highlighted several cultural changes in recent years that could have contributed to the decline. Americans have far more options these days for different kinds of pleasure — like browsing Facebook and social media, playing video games or watching Netflix.
The adults who were born and grew up during the rise of portable technology and entertainment, millennials and Generation Z, are having sex less often than any previous generation, the study found. So much for the stereotype of twenty-somethings as sexual deviants in a hookup culture.
Still, there is no clear reason for the decline, but the report did rule out two possibilities: longer hours at work and pornography. Americans work longer days, but a busy work life was actually connected with higher sexual frequency. The consumption of pornography, which is now more accessible than ever before, was also tied with a busier sex life.”
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
+ The photos in this week’s NSFW Sunday feature Estelle X, who started her personal queer smut project — for which she’s the stylist, photographer and model — using a phone and a light ring, posting the first in the series January 1 last year. “I deeply admired the few queer Asian-American performers and models that I knew of, but [queer smut] always seemed like something for people who were more attractive, more self-assured, and more independent than I was. The tipping point was around the time I was ambiguous dykey sexual tension close friends with/eventually dating someone who had shot a few films with CrashPad. It didn’t seem as inaccessible after that,” she told Autostraddle. The project so far has featured Estelle X as the main model, but going into the second year collaborations with other artists — particularly queer women and nonbinary folks and people of color — are on the horizon. On what drives her in her work, she says:
“A lot of my focus is on combatting pervasive and damaging narratives of Asian womanhood and sexuality that are generally told from the perspective and for the profit of white men. Growing up, the only Asian women I saw centered in popular media were Lucy Liu and Disney’s Mulan. Mulan is amazing, but when the closest representation of yourself you can find is an animated character set 2000 years in the past, that’s a problem. Not just a problem for how you see yourself, but for everyone else who grows up thinking that the Asian women they meet at school or at work or on the street are just quiet background characters in the movie of someone else’s life and/or submissive schoolgirls desperate for some white man to save them. I’m not waiting for anyone to save me; with the incredible support of my communities, I’m saving myself.”
And as for what she hopes for the future of queer representation?:
“When I first came out, the only way I knew how to find queer spaces was by partying and drinking. It was very hard for me to conceive of what my queer future might look like. It wasn’t until I met an Asian lesbian elder for the first time that I was really able to imagine it. I want to see more representations of people who have been ignored because they aren’t what Hollywood gatekeepers think a protagonist looks like, and it’s absolutely crucial that those representations be created by the folks they’re about. We do not need to be centering another cishet white man’s ideas of how trans folks (especially trans women), queer people of color, queer disabled folks, queer women, or queer elders look, live, fuck, and die. We need to be amplifying marginalized folks telling their own stories so those stories don’t get stolen, misconstrued, or erased.”
Find Estelle X on Instagram or Twitter.
Styling, modelling and photography by Estelle X
I absolutely love these photographs!
SAME
Thank you, Carolyn. This was a truly exceptional NSFW Sunday. The links, the images, just fantastic.
Thank YOU!
Estelle X is one of my faves! I’m so happy to see them and their work featured on AS!
So having actually platonic (instead of non-communicative dishonest with self and others involved that the link seemed to be about) sleepovers is an important part of my queerness to me.
I second this comment. The article is super heteronormative too and makes bold blanket assumptions about who women are attracted to and how men and women are unable to have platonic relationships.
Not trying to leave trans women out here, just sharing something I should have known about my own body since I hit puberty and found out at 28 in case someone else doesn’t know it.
Ppl w ovaries can get stomach aches from the wrong amount of arousal. Not enough to come but enough to get turned on is when it hits for me. It doesn’t mean you’re broken and isn’t necessarily psychological.
Don’t use this as an excuse to shame your partner (doubt anyone would on here anyway). Things you can do by yourself that help are: warm baths, heat pads, water and masturbation.
I’d have shared it in the Friday open thread but never sure how much nsfw info ppl want on there. I hope this helps someone in the same situation I was in – too sexual psychologically to give it up but having stomach ache from sessions/solo.
So happy to see something other than crash pad photos in this week’s NSFW!