Why I Insist On Being A Sexy Mom

Sexy Mom

I’m pretty committed to being a sex vixen of the Beyonce brand. You know, super mama by day (sans international team and billions of dollars) fiercely sexy wife by night. Sometimes managing the two can get messy.

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how difficult it is to be both an attentive, loving and caring mother and a fully expressive sexual being. And I don’t mean difficult in the way that we normally talk about this. Being exhausted 24/7 and having zero free time is par for the course right? I’m talking more about the nitty grittiness of the thing. Like where do I put the lube and the toys so that my son can’t get to them? And when he does, because he always does, how do I address it without freaking out and scaring him?

For example, sometimes after a particularly steamy night, my man and I will pass out, leaving vibrators and bottles of lube akimbo. In the morning, little guy will come in, find something and pick it up. ”Mama, what’s this?”  My knee-jerk reaction is to scream in horror and snatch the offending object away, which only ends up upsetting him. Although I’m sure I’ll give my kid one complex or another at some point, I’m committed to NOT giving him a complex around sex and sexuality.

The thing is, he’s two, so there’s only so much he can actually understand. It’s not like I can sit him down and say: ”well baby, mom and dad got busy last night and forgot to put away our toys after we played.”

Now before you go ringing the bad mama alarm, please know that I absolutely believe that it’s my responsibility to protect my kid from information that he’s not yet mature enough to process. That being said, I’m also committed to raising my kid in a sex-positive household. What this means to me is that at some point he’ll feel safe discussing sex and sexuality with his parents. It also means, he will have to accept the fact that his parents are doing it.

I don’t know about you guys but the idea that my parents have had sex and may still be having sex is still a nauseating concept. Parental sex exists in this very odd and awkward space; best to pretend it’s not happening.

That’s just not gonna fly around my house. We all know how hard it can be to keep things spicy after being married and having kids. For me, intimacy is a key component to maintaining my sanity and staying connected to my partner. Getting busy at night helps me be a better mom during the day and generally more effective at everything I do. So, I refuse to let mamahood interfere with my goddess ambitions. In fact, motherhood has made me more connected to my body and sexuality than I’ve ever been.

While the naughty things my husband and I do in our bedroom (or kitchen”¦) is none of our son’s business, I think it’s healthy for him to see that his parents are into each other. So I encourage friskiness around the house. Casual touching, tickling, grabbing, and smooching keeps a fun and sexy buzz in the air. I love it when my man walks past me and smacks my butt. The only thing is, my son is now in the copycat stage. So whenever he sees it happening, he comes over and smacks me too! How do I say no to my son and tell him that hitting is bad while still saying yes to my husband?

This is about more than me wanting to get my groove on.  As a Black woman, it’s really important to me that my son grows up with a critical engagement with sexuality and how it intersects with race. That includes an understanding of the ways the sexuality of Black women is generally portrayed as asexual mammies or hyper-sexualized objects. Heavy stuff for sure, and it’ll be a while before he can truly engage with this. But as we know these kids are porous, and though we do our best to curate his world he will inevitably absorb the bullshit. I want to provide my kid with a model of Black womanhood that is multi-dimensional and nuanced. And one of those dimensions is that his mother has an active and healthy sex life. I don’t want motherhood and marriage to mean the death of sex and sexiness.

Marly Pierre-Louis is a writer and community cultivator currently biking through the rain in Amsterdam. She is writes about gender, race, and parenting. You can find her at www.MarlyatLarge.com & @MarlyOnella. 

(Image: Tumblr)