I get it. When you’re a wrinkly and crusty old lady, you want to be able to set the grandbabies down for tea and regale them with tales of your golden era as a sexually adventurous, totally bangable piece. Dropping sugar cubes and knowledge as an old lady like you once dropped that ass. I know. Dream. But let’s be real, some sex trends, like any trend, are just embarrassing and you should probably never admit you tried them—just like how you should burn all your pictures from the time you shaved half your head and thought exposing the strip of torso above your belly button was cute. So hold on to your lube-coated ankles, because I’m here to de-mystify some of culture’s most overrated sex positions—the ones that everyone pretends to love when in reality they’re boring/uncomfortable/outright weird. You’re welcome.
1. The Sixty-Nine (69)
Fine, laugh at the number. I’ll wait.
Now that that’s done, let’s break down the practicalities that make this oft-referenced position an actual nightmare. First, there’s the matter of angles. If you’re doing it right, your partner isn’t going to be flaccid, meaning he’ll be jamming it down (or up—I leave that up to you) your throat in a way that’s going to force your jaw into a dangerously uncomfortable position. The only way to avoid hyperextending your lower mandible is to be twisting yourself around some dude who’s significantly shorter than you, and… I mean… ew. So, assuming your hookup is a respectable height, there’s the chance you’ll end up at the doctor with lockjaw. And then there’s the fact that it’s kind of impossible to enjoy oral when you’re focused on also giving good oral at the same time. You can’t even give directions because you literally have a mouth full of dick.
Secondly, there’s the matter of buttholes—namely, the butthole of each participant. Butts in your face. Butts near your mouth. I don’t care how often you frequent the anal bleaching center—it’s not going to be a pretty sight. Just say no to this position. Nobody wins and everybody loses.
2. The Pile-Driver
All right, ladies, I know you’ve been dedicated to that New Year’s Resolution to find your zen and master your gym’s intermediate yoga classes (if only you kept that resolution not to hook up with randos in music festival port-a-johns anymore as successfully), but the bedroom isn’t necessarily the time to show off.
Who am I kidding? Of course it is. But the pile-driver isn’t going to bring out the peace in you, I promise.
Sure, you might feel sexy sinking into plow in your Lululemon yoga pants, but naked is a whole other thing altogether. Literally no one can curl up like that without having a flabby pack of rolls present themselves like a pan of fresh-baked King’s Hawaiians at Easter dinner. And you, with your craned neck and unavoidable double-chin, get a front row seat to the roll-a-rama. Then enter some dude stage center, to literally sit on your butt, as if gravity and your own body weight weren’t enough on an inconvenience to your attempted sexiness. Then you have to just remain there, immobilized, with the weight of a grown-ass adult pressing down on your neck, while he tries to find a way to get his erect dick to aim the exact opposite direction from its natural inclination in order to penetrate you.
No one’s in total control of their body in this situation. So you’re both forcing your bodies to do things they don’t want to do, pretending like anything’s going to come from it other than eventual debilitating scoliosis. Oh, and you know he’s going to “accidentally” go for the wrong hole.
3. Doggie Style
“Oooooh, my guy’s so kinky, he likes to hit it from behind, blah blah blah.” WHATEVER. Yeah, I was in tenth grade once too. But it’s time to grow up. Can we all agree that doggie style is the new missionary? There’s nothing exciting about it anymore. Maybe it’s hot if you’re facing a mirror, but more often than not you’re just face-down in a dirty comforter, trying to not suffocate for four and a half minutes with your eyes pounding around in your skull.
And I hate to break it to you ladies, but if he can only come when he’s hitting it doggie style—HE DOESN’T LOVE YOU. Worse, he prob doesn’t even find you attractive. Are you his girlfriend? Ariana Grande? Nicolas Cage? From your dude’s point of view, he literally cannot tell. Plus, why am I going to spend an hour contouring and highlighting my face for a dick appointment if he’s just gonna flip me over and rub it all off on the pillow anyway? That’s gonna be a no from me, dog.
4. Titty Fucking
You know where my clit is not? It’s not on my damn sternum, I’ll tell you that much. NEXT.
5. The Stand And Carry
I know it’s tempting, but unless you are both professional athletes, abort the fucking mission. This position requires a lot more core strength and endurance than you’d imagine. Plus, your guy’s biceps needs to be ripped, because despite you doing your sexiest naked koala impression, the onus to keep you from falling to your (very sweaty) death falls on his muscular arms. Have you ever started slipping from a piggy-back ride? Now imagine the same misstep, only from a piggy-front ride and with a hard-on clobbering away at your innards. And you’re naked. There’s just too much space for disaster.
6. Shower Sex
You know when you’re slicker than a baby oil-covered slip and slide? One of the worst things you can do is to wash it all away. If your dude is making you as horny as he damned well better, then your body is going to produce all the moisture you need to do the damn thing. (Sorry, I said moist in a sex article.) (Sorry, I did it again.) If you’re wet and ready to go, climbing in the shower is just going to rinse away all your body’s hard work. Plus, you’re going to have to take a real shower after sex, so this is pointless on many levels.
Even moving past the issue of lubrication, shower sex is overrated because people assume it’s steamy, but they forget that hot water only lasts so long. Do you really want to have hot shower sex for sixteen minutes—twelve if the neighbors flush the toilet—and then suddenly be boning under a glacial waterfall? And you’ll probably be concentrating so hard on not slipping and falling and cracking your skull on the tile and dying of a brain injury that you won’t even enjoy the sex.
7. Reverse Cowgirl
Only rodeo clowns ride horses backward. Are you a rodeo clown? No? Moving on.
8. Missionary
If you and your new husband Jeremiah have just arrived to some isolated Mozambique village in the 1920s with a charge from God to build a church and teach the children, and you’ve just dismounted from your eighteen hour carriage journey to sweep the rug of your new hut, and you look over to your straw mattress to see Jeremiah giving you that come-hither stare from beneath the brim of his Panama hat, then sure, have missionary sex with that beautiful, boring, god-fearing man right this instant. But if you’re showing up at Chad from Bumble’s loft at 11:45pm with a half-empty bottle of silver tequila and push-up bra with whipped cream stains on the cup, then trust me when I say that missionary is not the position for you.
Not only is it boring as all hell, but you run the risk of Chad wanting to maintain eye contact with you while he mutters about how much he loves you or the ways you resemble his ex or his favorite scone recipes or literally ANYTHING. All the while you just have to watch him watch you. The risk factors are immense.
Obviously, do your thing—if you’re super into doggystyle or something, I give not a single fuck. Just know that there’s a whole world of (actually good) sex positions out there you’re leaving unexplored.
