Heather Corinna : Sex Educator and Artist
Heather Corinna, 39, is the founder, editor and director of www.scarleteen.com, the inclusive online resource for young adult comprehensive sex education and information which began in 1998. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published broadly, and her photographic work has been shown in several gallery shows and publications. A Chicago native, she currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
“The right wing, when looking to put me down,” Heather says, “will call me a hedonist, and strangely expect me to interpret this as an insult, rather than simple fact.”
A red-hot mama who teaches, takes meltingly sensual photographs, and was one of the pioneering ladies of the alt-porn movement of the mid-90s? Heather, you are my hero!
*****
If you could wave a magic wand and give one piece of sexual information to everyone in the world, what would that be?
There is nothing you are absolutely alone in liking, enjoying or being curious about—but at the same time, if a given sexual activity, ethos, experience or identity does not fit you that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means something is wrong with boxes in which we are all supposed to neatly fit.
What advice do you have for people who aren’t sure how to talk to their partners about their sexual needs?
There are also many ways to communicate, so if someone feels like starting with the verbal is too daunting, letter or journal-writing is always a fine way to get started. I really love the idea, for instance, of couples having a joint sexuality journal they share and co-create.
Too? If you have a partnership of real quality and earnest love, I think it’s essential to realize you really probably cannot mess up anything by taking a risk and just spitting something out. More times than not, what I hear partners complain about or feel stressed over is silence, not what is said.
How do you combat shyness, embarrassment, and fear of judgment when you’re teaching?
Before I was a sex educator, I was a general educator, and those things have never really been issues for me when I’m in my element teaching. When I’m doing something like a lecture or public speaking? Then that becomes an issue.
It sometimes helps me to flip the usual script and rather than imagining all of them naked, knowing that plenty of them have probably already seen me naked, so I can only make so much of an arse of myself, that given.
Has being a known and respected sexpert affected your private life?
I’m an extroverted hermit. In other words, while I’m actually not very fond of being the center of anyone’s attention, and I actually like and need a lot of private alone time, I don’t know that I’d say I have ever felt exactly shy. I’m pretty comfortable being pretty out there and open. Overexposed? Sure, but I’m the only one to blame for that most of the time.
Though on the bigger-than-life thing, it is perhaps worth mentioning that one of the first things I usually hear when meeting people in person is that they were sure I was tall, not short. So, apparently I do often read as bigger-than-life, quite literally.
Tell me about “S.E.X.,” your latest book.
S.E.X, is a fully inclusive and seriously in-depth guide to sexuality, covering anatomy, gender, self-image and self-esteem, sexual health, relationships, sexual activities (partnered and solo), abuse, pregnancy and contraception, the whole works. It’s intended for teens and twenty-somethings, but so far, the audience for it has been broader than I expected. I have heard more than one report of a teen girl discovering her mother filched her book for herself.
Whose work inspires you as a feminist and a political activist?
Brief, random list of today: Artistically, I love, love, love Kara Walker, Sally Mann, Remedios Varo, I think Judy Chicago has been such a genius for such a long time it’s staggering. And while I know it’s a cliché, I love Georgia O’Keefe’s work. Angela Davis and Audre Lorde are inspiring as hell, I love Germaine Greer, Robin Morgan, Susan Brown, Carol Gilligan, Mary Daly, Shere Hite, Victoria Woodhull and I’m a total bell hooks fangirl.
But in all honesty, in some ways I find I draw more inspiration from women few people know: women I counsel when I’m working at the abortion clinic I also work at, young people I listen to at Scarleteen, the kids I meet in the shelter where I do outreach. Everyday revolutions and rebellions inspire me.
Do you get frustrated with people who relate to you primarily as a hot babe or a beautiful woman, via your art?
You know, the older I get, the further away I get from that—this is one of the ways in which obsessions with youth and beauty standards based around youth can really benefit older women—which is actually pretty liberating. Often the further AWAY I get from meeting the standard beauty ideal, the more beautiful I tend to feel. I tend to be feel much more complimented when someone notices the unusual things about me than when they notice the usual.
Who would you love to photograph?
I love outside-of-the-box beauty, big time. I wish I had more opportunities to photograph people in their 70s, 80s or 90s. I’d love more chances to photograph transpeople through their transition. Given the awful debacle with Prop 8, I’d photograph any queer family or couple for free right now and do it en masse if I could.
And while I love “ordinary” people most of all, I’d give my eyeteeth to photograph Patti Smith, even though I recognize that expecting to hit it out of the park after Mapplethorpe is expecting an awful lot.
Is there a photographer who you love to work with as a model? Why?
In all honesty, I never cared for modeling. I actually don’t like, and have never liked, having someone else take my photograph. That’s one reason why I prefer doing self-portraiture if I’m going to be the subject.
But if we could bring Richard Avedon back from the dead, I’d be in heaven to sit for him. His portraiture seems to find a level of truth that’s really aspirational for me, and I’d love to see the truth he could find on my face.
What’s your advice for women, aged 35 and up, who have lost confidence in their bodies and no longer feel like beautiful, sensual beings?
As a photographer, while I have had some younger subjects, I’m always a bit wary of agreeing to work with them because more times than not, it can be a bit like working with a blank slate: it takes a while for who you are, what your life is, to really show up on your body and your face.
In working with teen women, they will often voice worries that they are missing out on their sexual peak, or they might ask me if I miss being a teenager or twenty-something. Either usually results in a chuckle on my end: I had a pretty good sex life as a young person, but it doesn’t hold a candle to sex in my thirties. I was a pretty hot little number way back then, but my body and face just were not as cool and compelling. Character rocks.
It might also be sage to remind older women—in case they have forgotten—that unless their partnerships or selves have been stagnant, they probably are having far better sex lives now than they were at 18 (even if the sex was good then!), and are much more interesting than they were before they really knew themselves. The more we bring to the table with who we are, the more there is to see, explore, take risks with, expose, the whole enchilada.
And if that kind of substance doesn’t matter to partners, the problem isn’t the women or the age, it’s the partners. We can’t change how old we are or what we look like (not really), but ditching a partner who doesn’t really see us is pretty easy.
How can we continue to feel gorgeous as we age, despite the media’s insistence on marginalizing us as less worthy, less sexual, and less attractive?
Well, we can recognize that the media doesn’t have any credibility, save as marketing gurus. The media isn’t experts on beauty, but on locating or manufacturing insecurity to sell beauty.
Real beauty doesn’t fit well in a three-second sound byte: it’s far more complex than that. The media also doesn’t control our sex lives or sense of self, and we all bear responsibility when it comes to how much we let it do that.
In other words, never mind the bollocks.
What is “femme erotic”?
Actually, when I coined that, I was referencing the feminine as a whole—whatever the heck that means to any of us—and the fact that at the time, there just wasn’t much out there in terms of erotic work done that was really about women, by women, for women, and seemed to be coming from a place of love for women.
I don’t even know if I’m femme myself: I prefer to identify as a broad.
*****
Heather has a huge Internet presence, so if you’re curious about her work click on any of these sites:
http://www.scarleteen.com
http://www.allgirtlarmy.org
http://www.femmerotic.com
http://www.heathercorinna.com
Don’t forget to buy her book “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide To Get You Through High School and College” (Da Capo Press, 2007) for the under-18s in your life! Sure, they could learn about sex from their equally-clueless friends the way we did, but isn’t it more fun to freak them out with the real information?
I think sex is great and it really moves me on
Sarah andeson