Sure, orgasms feel good – but what do they look like? In celebration of I'll Have What She's Having, Refinery29's week dedicated to female pleasure, we commissioned seven women photographers to create an image capturing what sexual pleasure means to them.
The photographers took the brief and went for it. The results are pictures that depict what it's like to feel free and complete as a woman, they portray the complicated relationship we have with our bodies, they show friendship and openness, self-love and BDSM. It's a mixed bag of images; the complexities mirroring our own mixed relationships with sex.
Click through the album to see why each photographer picked the subject that they did and how it relates to their own experience of pleasure.
Daantje Bons
@ daantjebons
"For me, female pleasure stands for self-love and empowerment, it is something I can feel totally in charge of and it can make me feel quite powerful. Acting on my sexuality and enjoying pleasure still feels like an activistic act. Something I feel I have to fight for in order to express or to ask for it. This makes female pleasure something I want to experience as much as any other feeling. It makes me feel complete and free as a woman.
An orgasm is not always something I need from female pleasure, but when I do it makes me feel energetic and powerful. It also is very personal to me. I feel it is a present to myself, it makes me feel desirable and love-worthy."
Matilda Hill-Jenkins
@matildahilljenkins
"When I am alone, my orgasms are uncomplicated, mind-blowing and guaranteed. When other people are involved they can be rare and overlooked. During sex, I think about it constantly; if it will happen, if the other person will care if it happens. Thinking about it like that sadly only makes climaxing even less likely, because my thoughts aren’t focused on any stimulation, just the anxious inner gabble.
I sometimes feel that sex is so performative or linked to things I’ve seen in film that the sensations are difficult for me to get lost in. Which is why when I’m alone my orgasm is empowering and all for me. I care about me and I will make sure I come.
A guy I was sleeping with once said to me (as I moved into a position which felt amazing for me): "If people could see what we looked like right now, they’d think we’d never had sex before."
It’s frustrating that we are fed such an unrealistic, performative and glossy version of female masturbation and pleasure. When the reality is mundane and awkward and can look ridiculous. But it’s not about how it looks, it’s about how amazing it feels. Shuffling robotically against an old soft toy as a teenager, or humping a veiny purple piece of silicone is hardly good porno material.
I feel extremely lucky to have so many wonderful, sex positive women in my life, and because of that I feel less alone in experiencing frustration around orgasms and female pleasure.
So I took this of my best friend. She and I talk so openly and candidly about sex and it felt really appropriate to photograph her in an empowering, typically male posture, looking frankly and unapologetically at the camera."
Ashley Armitage
@ladyist
Female pleasure (as well as trans and non-binary pleasure) deserves just as much attention IRL and in the media as the cis male orgasm.
Here is a photo of my good friend, Lena O'Neal.
Francena Ottley
@lebleuart
"There has always been a lack of connection to and understanding of our female bodies from an early age. The idea of pleasure has been seen as something only a man can achieve. Many don’t realise the positive impact pleasure can have on one's menstrual cycle, pregnancy, mental and physical health. I was taught for so long to hate everything about my body and to fall at the feet of a man. Eventually I found strength in understanding my value and worth, which grew a closer connection to myself and sexuality. The taboos that were once around sex and female pleasure began to break and I finally found my freedom."
Mycoze
@mycoze_
"First time I had an orgasm, I was around 12 and I was very ashamed of it. I started to have sex at 16, and it took me until I was 19 years old to have my first orgasm with a partner. For me, an orgasm was always something I had to fake during sex, because I didn't want to upset my partner and because I felt pressure to have one. An orgasm was something quick that I had to get rid of alone. Often, after sex when my partner would go to the bathroom, I would try to make myself come quickly, without noise and in secret. If I couldn't succeed, I would swallow my pride and stay unsatisfied. My biggest fear was to get caught, because I was ashamed of myself.
For a long time, I've felt disconnected from my body sexually. In the past, I had sex without even letting myself imagine I could ever have an orgasm. It was automatic, I was having sex and faking an orgasm without even questioning it. Now, having sex is not only about reaching orgasm, it's about the complexity of the feelings, it's an art.
Sex is pleasure,
Sex is pain,
Sex is a game,
Sex is a form of expression,
Sex is everything I want it to be.
Sex is more than an orgasm. Sex is intricate and I love it that way."
–Gabrielle, the model.
Alexandra Kacha
@alexandrakacha
"I had tears in my eyes when I had my first orgasm, for no reason at all. I felt vulnerable, unsure of how to behave. The notions of an orgasm were unknown to me, it was engulfing. Like a sacrifice, like an offering, almost something of a drowning."
Rochelle Brock
@rochellefatleopard
I grew up thinking that being involved in anything sexual before marriage was taboo. That it wasn’t appropriate to even talk about sex . So even now at 23 I’ve had to unpack a lot of my feelings about sex and sexual pleasure. Having an orgasm to me means that I am allowing myself to explore my body and its responses to what I do and do not like on a personal level. It means that I am giving myself the gift of being vocal about my own needs and wants without feeling a sense of shame.
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