I am not the biggest fan of my vag.

I like other people’s. I like most vaginas – I think they’re great! They’re magical! They’re like flowers, or oysters! There’s a Georgia O’Keeffe print in the bathroom! But I have gender feelings about mine, big bad weird ugly gender feelings, and there’s no amount of ‘but look how pretty’ (validation via only ‘prettiness’ is not the way I want to go about anything in my life, but thanks) and ‘the human body is incredible’ (blech) that can make those go away.

But if anything’s going to make me happy that I have one, it’s the Pure Wand.

The njoy Pure Wand is a sleek curve of stainless steel that’s a pain in the butt to photograph and weighs in at a hefty 1.5lbs, or 680g – think a jar of golden syrup. It’s been carefully weighted and each end has a different circumference, the bigger bulb being 4.5 inches around and the smaller measuring 3.25 around. Completely smooth with a mirror shine – except for the njoy logo, which I think is in a brushed steel finish? – it’s a beautiful piece of work, and could probably do some serious damage if you were to drop it on your foot. Don’t do that.

STORYTIME – before I really begin, I feel like I kind of to have to mention squirting in some capacity* here as this has been touted time and time again as some kind of divining rod for prostates and g-spots alike. I don’t squirt. I’ve done it twice, hated it, and I have no interest in doing it again. This is a non-negotiable thing. I’m sure the Pure Wand is more than capable of making me squirt again, it definitely feels like it could – but I can’t help anyone with that. Sorry fronds.

The day my Pure Wand arrived (I was very emotional) I wasn’t as productive with it as I’d like to have been – usually I like to use things the second I get them, but it was cold outside. And the steel was freezing. And there was no hot water. Rainy days in England have this incredible effect on the body where you feel instantly miserable as soon as you’re under that grey sky, and the furthest thing on my mind was wanking. But eventually the weather got warmer – unbearably warm – and as it turns out, a sunny day with a clear blue sky and a sharp chill is the best kind of weather for stuffing yourself full of steel.

The bigger bulb seems to be what most people use but I’ve not really been able to get along with it; it feels too big, unwieldy, too heavy, uncomfortable, bulky. It’s the same feeling I get when I haven’t warmed up properly and I’m trying to use something internally – except it feels like that aaaaaaaall the time. It’s very possible that this is just a learning curve I have yet to master, but for now the big end is relegated to other people’s vaginas and for the odd shoulder/leg massage.

The little end though, oh god, I don’t know how it does it but it does it so well. It’s like a heat-seeking missile for g-spot stimulation; all I have to do is apply a little bit of lube, nudge it upwards and rock it back and forth. My g-spot’s shallow but placed higher up, and the Pure Wand finds it and basically hammers it into submission in the best kind of way – like, I paired it with the We-Vibe Touch and was completely unable to walk afterwards. It’s that good. The only downside is that after relentlessly banging away at my vagina with a pound and a half of steel my arm starts to hurt and I sometimes have to admit defeat; but luckily for me I have a girlfriend whose arms are considerably stronger than mine and who really likes watching me bite the pillow.

Getting a Pure Wand has also managed to increase my all-consuming lust for a Pure plug tenfold; if this feels good in my butt, then what’s a Pure plug going to feel like? How well crafted is that going to be? It’s so smooth that I don’t need that much warmup, and it does something that only my large Rosebud plug has done before (and that’s only if I lie on my back & pull my knees up) – it stimulates my g-spot. It feels even more intense, if that’s possible, although I still prefer it in my vag.

I love the Pure Wand. I am a convert. There isn’t a position it doesn’t feel good in, although I think it feels the best on my hands and knees, or on my back with my legs pulled up. It can be used with any lubricant, it’s easy to clean, it comes with a storage box, it’s gonna last me forever and it can be brought to my favourite temperature by soaking it in a sink of warm water. I’m a bit scared it’s going to replace all my other insertable toys, if I’m honest, but I love it so much I almost don’t care. Engrave ‘apricot 4 njoy’ in a heart on a tree, because I am in looooooooove.

I bought my Pure Wand from Lovehoney, but you can also buy it at Shevibe and Sh!

* hahahahahhahaah capacity

The Pelt paddle is made from a silky smooth matte black silicone that attracts little bits of fluff like nothing else, but I find it easier to clean than my shinier, grippier silicone toys – a lot of the time I just spray this with Lelo cleaner and wipe it down – and you can bleach it, boil it, and stick it in the dishwasher. It’s basically indestructible – I’ve even bitten it a few times (don’t look at me like that) and didn’t leave any dents behind. It measures just under twelve inches long, six inches of that being the handle, with a little hole at the very end which you can use to loop a ribbon or a nylon string through and keep it hung up with, or I guess you could loop something through it to use as one of those secure wrist loops. Does anyone actually use those things? 

I’m not very well versed in ~kinky terminology~ and I’m not in any kind of scene, all I know is I really love impact play, being bruised, and being hit. I started out with wooden hairbrushes and eventually graduated up through various leather and suede paddles, I’ve had some brief experiences with crops and floggers – crops are pretty fun, I haven’t found a flogger I’ve liked yet, never tried a bullwhip but I want to – but wooden oval paddles (and hands) have always been my favourite. The Pelt pretty much blows everything I just listed out of the water.

I don’t actually hold it like this, it’s just so nobody’s exposed to more of my chipping manicure than they need to be. Oops.

The silicone it’s made from is thick, but with lots of flexibility to it – it’s not floppy or flimsy by means but I can bend it over on itself, and this bendiness means that to deliver a really good hard slap you don’t have to put your back into it (figuratively) like you would do with a wooden or leather paddle. Seriously, you don’t need to put a whole lot of force behind this unless you know what you’re doing, you/your partner has asked for that and you both know how intense this paddle can be – when I first got this, as soon as I got it out of the bag I gave my bare leg a good whack with my arm drawn back how I normally would, which turned out to be a Very Big Mistake. I had a bright red mark come up immediately, the kind I usually get from being spanked repeatedly with a leather paddle. From one whack!

What I love about the Pelt is that with practice, you can easily deliver slaps that won’t sear your skin off – one thing I like doing is using my hand, not my arm, to wibble-wobble it slightly and by doing that you get a much gentler but still pleasantly stingy sensation. Being bruised, though, that’s my thing and that’s what I want from a paddle, and it delivers. I’m left with a big grin on my face and speckly purple skin after a session with the Pelt, and it gives me these beautiful bruises that take days to start to fade. I’m not able to describe the sensations it’s capable of giving as either solely ‘thuddy’ or ‘stingy’ – it really is more of a slapping sensation than anything, with a stingy warmth afterwards. I’m hella curious about what kind of sensation the Snap Strap gives out if this is anything to go by.

My man-thing sometimes calls me a ‘pain slut’ and I guess that’s true because after hearing on twitter about how you can get an even more intense sting from Tantus’ silicone paddles by using them wet, I toddled off to run myself a nice bath, had a soak and then went to town on my thighs. My legs looked a bit like barber poles by the end of it. I aimed to do six hard slaps on each leg but gave up at three because I just couldn’t handle it. It was like being whacked with a giant nettle leaf and I’ve definitely hit my limit with that one, but if you want a sharp sting on a larger surface area than a crop can give you, that could potentially do it for you – although, y’know, applying a good lube to the area you want spanking instead of popping in the shower every damn time would probably be more practical.

I’m pretty besotted with this paddle and it’s not going to be leaving my collection any time soon. I wouldn’t recommend it to a total beginner, but if you’re after something with a real good slap to to it, you’ve found it. Just remember to stock up on aftercare goodies beforehand.

You can buy the Pelt, and the rest of the Tantus silicone paddles at Tantus. All of them – except for the Plunge paddle – are $44.99 – and couples toys at Tantus are 30% off through the rest of March with code ‘GETDOWN’!

The Mia is soooooo pretty. In fact, it’s soooooo pretty that I thought about setting up one of those ridiculous photos for it, where you have a beautiful buttery-soft leather handbag lying on its side, with a brand new lipstick spilling out next to a nail polish in a corresponding colour, then something totally irrational, like a fresh flower or a pearl necklace, and in the middle of it all, your luxxxury clit vibe, inexplicably without a storage bag and somehow completely intact and free from cat hair/lint/general dirt. Who keeps a £15 lipstick knocking around in the bottom of their bag anyway? I don’t care how well groomed or neat you are, if you keep doing that one day you’ll stick your hand in there to feel around for your wallet or something and come out with the tips of your fingers covered in Creme d’Nude or Ruby Woo or whatever it is that floats your fancy lipstick boat. I like Morange, personally. Why don’t I live in a world where I can match my sex toys to my mouth?*

My Mia came to me in a very discreet brown box with no clue to what’s inside, which I’m thankful for – I normally buy from the same two companies and whenever I order from a new one I’m terrified it’ll arrive emblazoned with ‘FOREVER DONGS – YOUR PREMIUM RUBBERWANG WHOLESALERS’ or something, but no worries here. The Lelo packaging was as classy as ever, and it comes with a manual, storage bag, sachet of Lelo lube and a registration card.

The Mia 2 likes to tout itself as being travel-friendly, thanks to the relatively subtle shape and size – I’m not entirely sold that other people wouldn’t twig what the pink and purple versions are, but the black one looks pretty innocuous – and the lock function, which you can enable by pressing down on the + and – buttons at the same time for three seconds, which means if I want to travel with it I don’t have to do that thing where you swaddle it in a pair of tights or three and then sit gripped with fear just in case it goes off for the whole length of your journey. It’s also surprisingly light, I was expecting it to be way weightier than it was but it’s one of the most lightweight vibrators I’ve ever held, only slightly heavier than the Tracey Cox bullet I’ve shown it next to – that’s with the battery removed – and much lighter than both my Tango and Iroha Sakura. Also, it’s made of shiny ABS plastic which is easy to clean and attracts NO LINT AT ALL. Except for the silicone buttons. They will still attract lint. Ugh, lint.

Mia is simple to use and recharge – just plug into your laptop or computer, an LED under the buttons’ll flash to show that it’s charging, and when it’s done charging it’ll stop flashing but remain on to remind you, hey, I’m still here, you can unplug me now. You adjust the intensity of the constant vibration and skip through the pattern settings by pressing the + and – buttons respectively, and when you’re done you just hold the – button, where it does a rather satisfying downward scale until it turns itself off. I haven’t had the battery run out on me once but this is probably because the USB compels me to plug it in to charge after nearly every use. It’s just too easy! For your stats books, though, the longest time I’ve used it for so far has been around 45 minutes and it didn’t lose any strength towards the end of that time.

I’m definitely not a power queen. I go numb easily, and I don’t really like bullet vibes either because of how small they feel – ideally I need something with an indent or a broad surface area, or a lot of the time I end up giving up and finishing off with my fingers. Honestly, when I first started getting into sex toys properly, I assumed that the business end of the Mia was the angled end and I was more than a little disappointed when I found out that, no, actually, the smaller pinpoint-y is the functional end, but it’s an easy mistake to make – right? The angled end is actually a hollowed out lid to cover the USB, and the vibrations do make their way down there, but by the time they actually get there they’re obviously a lot weaker and I’d have to REALLY persevere to get off with them. I will say though, it’s good for when I get that weird post-orgasm hypersensitivity and can’t bear to just leave my poor clit by itself but I can’t stand anything on full power either.

Sometimes it seems like vibrators only ever carry two kinds of vibration: depressingly thin and halted entirely by the faintest amount of pressure, or they go so deep it feels like you could cause a minor landslide with them. The vibrations from the Mia are a great middle ground – not rumbly enough to like, frighten your cat with, but they’re not remotely buzzy. I genuinely think that the lower intensities should be the base for every boring basic £9.99 ‘ideal for beginners’ vibrator out there – they’re strong, they haven’t numbed me and they’re actually ‘whisper quiet’, the buzzword that’s printed on every shitty ABS plastic C-battery insertable out there. The lower intensities are a near-silent purr, the highest are only slightly louder, and I promise you, there’s no chance of anyone hearing this through a door or a wall or whatever even on the pattern settings. If you’re living in a shared house or maybe you’re just sensitive to sound, like I am, this is the ideal. This Is It.

The Mia is close to perfect. I hesitate to say that, but it’s just so convenient. It’s quiet. It’s rechargeable. It has an excellent vibration range. It doesn’t attract dust, it’s easy to clean, and it’s waterproof. I can take it anywhere with me with no pre-planning, no, god, better drain the battery and wrap this up in half my lingerie drawer in case it goes off on the train type of hassle. It’s so pretty that the prettiness rubs off on me and is capable of making me feel like a sexy and sophisticated person by proxy, like someone who wears minimalistic jewellery and gets a matching mani-pedi in a matte finish every five days**. If I had to recommend just one toy to a novice, this would be it. I can call this an all-purpose vibe like I call certain lubes all-purpose lubes, it’s everything I love about Lelo and if I was revoltingly wealthy I’d buy one for everyone I know, even the ones who ‘don’t see the point in sex toys’. I’d still like it better if the angled end really was the business end because it does feel a little bit small for me, but I can’t fault it otherwise.

The Mia 2 was sent to me by BarbaraKelly.co.uk in exchange for a review of the toy and their store. I had a lovely experience with them, their communication was great, and my item arrived within two days. Barbara Kelly offer free delivery to the UK on orders over £10, and they’re one of the few UK retailers to stock the Leaf line, Picobong, and the new PalmPower wand! They also offer a price match guarantee and excellent customer service. I was really happy to work with them, and they’re going on my I’d-use-’em-again list.

*If you desperately want to match your sex toys to your mouth, Hue seems like a pretty good match for Lelo’s petal pink?
**For about twenty minutes. C’mon, this is a sex toy, not a devastatingly attractive sugar daddy.

Biodick-lookin dildos gross me out, I’m not gonna lie. They veer into uncanny valley territory for me personally, and while I’m all about the concept of having several disembodied dicks adorning your furniture like you’re living in some kind of seventies Hammer Horror maneating ladies-and-succubi-only cave, the reality just doesn’t appeal. The veins are either too delicate and thread-like and reminiscent of a recently skinned chicken, or too chunky and cartoonish. The heads are creepy and nearly always circumcised – my male partner is the only circumcised dude I’ve ever slept with and I still sometimes get confused! Balls frankly frighten me and the weird approximations of ‘flesh’ tones that you generally get make my skin crawl, usually either a sickly pale salmon or a generic orangey tan. But this. This is TIE-DYE. The colour scheme and the supersoft, super forgiving silicone puts a lovely blanket over all the things I hate about biodick-dildos and makes them more than tolerable. I now actively like all of these features. See? I could’ve said ‘flaws’ there, and I didn’t.

First off – specifics. The Mustang is 8 inches long, including the base, with a fairly prominent curve and it measures 4.5 inches in circumference. It has a faint veined texture on the shaft, and two ridges at the top. It’s 100% silicone, so always use this with water based lube – no hybrids, no silicone lube – and the base means it’s good for use in a harness AND it’s butt safe. The silicone is dual-density, which means it has this amaaaaazing plush outerlayer and a slightly firmer inner ‘core’…so a little bit like the dildo equivalent one of those ridiculous new Ben & Jerrys core ice creams, but in reverse and infinitely better. When I first got it I was initially intimidated by how defined the ridge on the head is in case it felt huge behind my pubic bone, but the material is really forgiving and gentle. It’s wonderful, girthy enough to give you a full feeling but not so much that you start to feel uncomfortably stretched out – the only thing with it is that it does tend to eat lube up so it’s a good idea to have a bottle of lube on hand in case you start, uh, running dry, as it were.

The dual-density silicone is one of the squishiest, most delightful textures I’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in my various orifices and occasionally snuggling up against and falling asleep with. It feels slightly tacky without (water based!!!) lube on it, it’s got a lot of bend, and a lot of what my girlfriend calls ‘flop factor’, as in, ‘this dick has an extremely high flop factor, I want to bounce it off your face and mouth/vulva’. Having said this, it’s still more than firm enough to fuck yourself or someone else with, the underside is definitely harder than the top of it, which is a plus because this means it still holds its curve well and looks perky and ready for action in a harness, and it doesn’t slip around or bend double onto itself when you’re trying to get it inside your vag. The Mustang lends itself really well to harness use – I know this might sound kind of dumb, like, duh, obviously – but there’s something about it that enables you to really fuck with it. It feels natural. I don’t know what it is, my girlfriend thinks it’s the curve and the flexibility, I think it’s more down to how it holds in heat, whatever it is, it’s great and we sometimes refer to it as ‘the dick’, which is Kind Of A Big Deal.

The Mustang, with a little work, is amazing for my gspot alone. My gspot is pretty shy, I only found it recently and while I can have orgasms just from stimulating it, it takes time, and work, and just banging away at it with a hard object doesn’t do it so much for me. It needs gentle coaxing, which the Mustang does – the ridges on the head almost brush it on the outstroke, and ten minutes of that and I’m drooling all over the pillow. I especially like using it with a clit vibe – the base isn’t so unwieldy that I’m unable to use a vibe and manoeuvre the Mustang the way I want to without getting hand cramp – and pressing the flat edge of my Tango up against the base makes for some pretty interesting sensations too. I’m saying interesting because I don’t really like internal vibrations, but the ones from the Tango end up deadened a little bit and become more of a gently stimulating purr. The head is also amazing for rubbing over my clit, which is my favourite sexy thing in the world, probably, so that’s a huge bonus.

However, this thing collects dust like nothing else. Please don’t ever put it in your mouth after it’s been lying in your bedsheets for a little while. I have a lot of hair, the cats have a lot of hair, this house in general has a lot of things in it that collect a lot of dust - it just seems to attract all of it, somehow, even after you’re done washing it. I think that binning the clear tube and putting it in a generic cloth bag would be a total disaster, which is partly why I haven’t got rid of it – the other reason being that it’s super pretty and I think it deserves to be shown off. The tube doesn’t take up that much room, anyway.

I’m so, so glad I bought this dildo. Thinking about it, I probably wouldn’t have bought the Mustang if it didn’t come in tie-bright (weirdly labelled as ‘blue’ on the Lovehoney website) but the silicone’s so great that I’m willing to try and overcome my irrational fear of flesh tones for a Maverick. Maybe one day. I mean, I’d much rather have the green or another tie-bright if they were miraculously made available again but I’m willing to try, guys, this is a Big Deal for me. If you want a high quality silicone dildo that’s ”’realistic”’ but not eerily so, with almost one-size-fits-all dimensions, I would highly, highly recommend the Mustang. Five stars, round of applause.

I bought my Mustang over at Lovehoney!