After seeing these patriotic pasties by Etsy artisan Alana Ryan (maxineintrousers), I’m convinced that if you’re not celebrating Memorial Day with these red-and-blue tasseled accessories, you’re not doing it right.

Alana Ryan has every reason to be patriotic–according to her Etsy profile, she was born on November 4, Election Day. Check out some other burlesque features below.

Implications – Whether it’s a birthday, a holiday or a wedding, people are letting loose and celebrating events in a wilder and crazier fashion. Party planners can capitalize on these bizarre celebrating themes by coming up with ways to enhance and push boundaries even further, creating memorable events that will have customers coming back for more.

Grab your Memorial Pastease now.

By Ms. Scarlett, Kasidie

For newbies and many experienced people, the greatest fear of swinging is being found out by vanillas. That’s not surprising since it would subject one to at best judgment, possibly condemnation and potentially the loss of a job or even one’s children.

The second biggest fear is running into someone you know. I know people who have run across their siblings and yes even parents in profiles, blocked them and run fleeing the other way without letting the other party know that they know. I know a person who ran into her cousin at a hotel takeover. Awkward. “Uh, hi cuz?!?”

I also know people who are out and totally fine with family or colleagues knowing. I even know a few who have played with their bosses or higher ups at a company though I can’t imagine doing that. Ok, I can fantasize about it during really boring meetings, but I don’t think I’d do it even if the opportunity presented itself.

I have yet to run into a family member. But recently I ran into something almost as awkward.

Mr. Scarlet kept talking about this couple that he wanted to meet up with. I had no idea who they were but he kept telling me that we had met them before and would show me their profile and I was still convinced that I’d never met hem. Besides they lived in the same town he said so it would be convenient to meet up.

Ultimately we decided to get together for drinks.

The couple starts talking about our neighborhood. Not our town. Our little neighborhood section of it. Ok, that is a little interesting. We don’t really know anyone here. Plus Mr. Scarlet said they lived nearby. Then they bring up some personal things. WTF??!? Who are these stalkers?

But, by this point, I am completely creeped out and not turned on at all. It’s not clear to me if these people are newbies or fakes or what.

Anyway, the evening comes to a close and the second I get home I’m googling them. Oh my god. They live next door. Not down the street or across the road but literally fifteen feet from our house. They apparently knew that we were next door neighbors so I’m actually still wondering how my husband originally met them. After the initial freak out, I have since gotten people I know to vouch for them.

Some swingers think that living next door to swingers would be awesome and super convenient. I’m not sure if I agree. It seems too prone to drama. I have enough of that in my life without swinging with the neighbors.

By M. Gregg Bloche, M.D., J.D.

So slip into those tight leather jeans. That dog collar would look fetching. Add a piercing in a place your mother wouldn’t imagine. Or take your lover to a trendy erotic play-space and make lots of fast friends.

Your therapist says it’s OK. In fact, she or he might be there. (I know a few therapists who partake.)

The American Psychiatric Association has gotten kinky. Well, not quite — its annual meetings each May are pretty buttoned-up affairs. But its newest catalog of mental illnesses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (known as the DSM V) does some unzipping. You can now do whatever, with whomever (consent required, please), on your own or in groups, and be in the pink of mental health — so long as you don’t suffer “clinically significant distress or impairment.”

Credit cultural change, kinky lobbyists (the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom pressed the APA to stop diagnosing edgy pleasures), or — who knows. But the committees of psychiatrists who rethink disease categories when the APA revises its diagnostic manual dropped “fetishes“ sans “distress or impairment” from their list of disorders.

If your style of kinky fun is fetish-free (the APA defines “fetishism” as sexual use of “inanimate objects“), the new erotic liberation still has you covered. The DSM used to treat all “paraphilias“ (APA-speak for “atypical” sexual practices) as sicknesses; not any more, so long as the fun is distress-free.

So what Christian and Anastasia do in Fifty Shades of Grey is (mostly) healthy, as of the DSM V’s May 2013 release date. So are sex parties of the sort enjoyed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn — the next president of France, until his alleged doings with a hotel housekeeper undid him.

Psychiatry’s new sexual willingness came along just in time to save the field from embarrassment. If millions of Americans are getting kinky (or want to), diagnosing kink as disease would expand the ranks of the mentally ill implausibly.

Inanimate objects have become quite the rage. More than half of American women under 60 use vibrators, according to a 2009 Kinsey study, and sellers of more hard-core sexual hardware have had trouble keeping up inventory in the face of the Fifty Shades surge. Threesomes are becoming more fashionable, according to sex surveys (though the data are sketchy). Playing well in groups has come out of the sex tent at Burning Man and into the lives of power professionals.

I live in Washington, D.C., that most frumpy of towns, but plenty goes on here besides public policy. I was invited more than once, while single, to play triples (or more), and I’d guesstimate that about a quarter of the women I dated told me they’ve either done this or want to.

I don’t travel with a particularly racy crowd: I’m talking about law professors, lobbyists, regulators, trade negotiators, and Senate staff. You’re likely to find such folks, also, at a club called Entre Nous, which parties weekly at an upscale lounge, next door to the League of Woman Voters, the American Enterprise Institute, and “Edible Arrangements.”

These parties are “off-premises,” swinger-speak for staying on second base. But join Entre Nous, and you’ll get invites to their “underground” events — “on-premises” parties where you can do whatever with whomever is willing. Or go underground literally: Fly to Paris and find the subterranean passage from rue du Cherche-Midi to L’Overside, where you’ll run less risk of encountering officemates. Across America’s heartland, local options abound. “There are no hook-ups,” the Idaho White Rose warns about its campsite, but this refers to RVs, not their occupants.

Psychiatry’s retreat from these play-spaces is strategic — necessary to preserve its credibility as the bounds of culturally-permitted pleasure loosen. But this retreat from the cultural politics of sex is partial. What you do in a play-space or at home, with or without “inanimate objects,” is sick if it’s “atypical“ and causes “distress or impairment.”

So dressing in latex and tying down your lover isn’t illness — if your lover likes it and you don’t feel guilty or anxious. And putting your vibrator to happy use is a healthy pleasure — because vibrators, however “inanimate,” have gone mainstream.

The APA, in other words, is still in the business of telling us what kinds of sex are healthy and what kinds are sick, based on their social acceptance. That’s the business it purported to quit in 1973, when it famously announced that homosexuality was no longer an illness.

The APA keeps a hand in this unscientific business by cataloging “paraphilias” and “fetishes” even when it doesn’t label them “disorders.” Leather and latex are fetishistic, the DSM V says, if they’re used to arouse. But what about, say, wet denim (not mentioned in the DSM V) — is it “normal” because Taylor Swift writhes in the sea in skinny jeans for Rolling Stone? Should psychiatry answer such questions?

And what of “distress” as a criterion for calling a kink a disease? The APA makes a point of not counting distress that’s due to conflict with cultural mores; to qualify, angst must ensue from unhappiness within. But this distinction often dissolves for a reason psychiatrists well-understand: Our beliefs about what’s right and wrong are shaped by social cues. Angst within, over sexual feelings, commonly reflects condemnation from without.

So treating kinky desire as disease because it comes with some distress smuggles in social rejection as reason for diagnosis. Psychologist Suzanne A. Black, whose clinical practice, in New York and Paris, includes patients with kinky inclinations, says their sexual angst is inseparable from their upbringing. “It’s an underworld of desire because it goes against the morals they’ve learned,” she told me last month.

Does this mean psychotherapy has nothing to offer those whose unconventional cravings bring them distress? To the contrary: A caring, insightful therapist can help such a person to better understand inner conflicts — and perhaps to let go of a puritanical belief or a kink that goes too far.

But psychiatry ought to retreat more fully from clinical classification of our erotic lives. Categorizing kinks as “paraphilias” wounds, to no purpose. Diagnosing them as disease when a person experiences “distress” humiliates — and isn’t necessary for therapy to help.

Some breaches of sexual convention that psychiatry calls “paraphilias” must be kept beyond-the-pale: voyeurs, pedophiles, and the like harm people who don’t or can’t consent. But criminal law, not the APA, should draw these boundaries.

We should welcome all that psychiatry can do to help those whose desires push them to act in ways that wound others. But the APA had the right idea back in 1973, when it began its withdrawal from the policing of our erotic lives by de-medicalizing same-sex desire. If you play well in groups, with or without “inanimate objects,” psychiatry should let you alone.

The x-rated website’s statisticians looked into the traffic on the site while GoT aired in the United States

PornHub’s website traffic dropped by 4.5 per cent in the United States during the Game of Thrones season seven premier.

The site’s statisticians looked at the traffic across the US and found it was down by 4.5 per cent during the airing compared to an average Sunday evening.

The x-rated site said: ‘That’s a considerable change in visitors as Sunday night is one of the most popular times for people to visit PornHub.’

However, it is not the largest drop the website has seen from a US audience during a GoT episode airing, as when episode 10 of season six aired, traffic was down by 5.2 per cent.

Find out why orgasms are so good for you!

Self-pleasure is rarely talked about, and female masturbation especially still makes people oddly uncomfortable. About 92 percent of women say they masturbate, so why aren’t we talking about it?

Solo sex can not only boost your emotional well-being and your sex life, but it can also improve your health. So read on to learn some of the incredible health benefits of masturbation and why you should be doing a lot more if it.

1. It improves the quality of your sleep.

No more counting sheep. Masturbation is actually a natural snooze sedative. Better (and way more exciting) than the rainforest sleep sounds on your iPod, self-pleasure produces endorphins — the essential chemicals that help ease pain, stress, relax and help you catch up on those zzz’s.

2. It strengthens your muscles.

Ready for a workout? Masturbation tones pelvic and anal muscles. Not only does having a stronger pelvic floor lead to better sex, it can also reduce a woman’s chance of involuntary urine leakage, according to Planned Parenthood. Who knew?

3. It’s a great menstruation cramp reliever.

Midol and heating pads, step aside. Self-pleasure can actually relieve a lot of the pain you feel during your period. Premenstrual irritability, cramps and those painful backaches you get during your period can all be eased by masturbation. How? It increases blood flow to the pelvic region. Why didn’t we know about these health benefits of masturbation sooner?

4. It alleviated urinary tract infections.

Prone to UTIs? Masturbating not only helps relieve discomfort, it also can flush out old bacteria from the cervix. Another excuse to hop into bed.

5. It lowers your risk of Type 2 Diabetes

As if you even needed another reason orgasm, women who experience more big Os were shown to have a greater resistance to type 2 diabetes. One way to ensure more climaxes? Self-pleasuring!

Like most women on the planet, I can distinctly remember when my breasts started developing as a teen. It can be an incredibly awkward experience as we try to navigate the needs of the new additions on top of all the hormones and emotions raging. But over time, we eventually figure out the best way to deal with the extra baggage on our chests.

Or at least, we think we do. It turns out that most of us ladies are completely wrong or simply in the dark when it comes to what we put our boobs through. At best, so many of us are enduring far more discomfort than necessary that could be easily avoided — at worst, we’re putting our health in serious danger by not paying close enough attention to their needs.

I know I’m guilty of a few of the mistakes below, but I’m so glad I know the facts now.

Did we miss any little known bad habits that affect our breasts? Let us know in the comments and be sure to SHARE with your loved ones!

1. Wear The Wrong Size Bra

2. Pluck Stray Hairs

3. Pinch Too Tight

Women who have regular sex live longer, a study suggests. Scientists have uncovered the first biological evidence that frequent bedroom activity boosts lifespan by protecting our DNA. But the quality of a woman’s relationship has little impact on aging.

Researchers quizzed 129 women between 20 and 50 about their love lives. They then carried out blood tests to determine their long-term health prospects.

The study focused on telomeres — protective caps on the ends of DNA — that predict a person’s biological age. Thought of as tiny internal clocks, they shorten with time and eventually become so small that cells die. Experts found women who had regular sex had significantly longer telomeres — boosting their overall life expectancy.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, said: “This is an important finding.”

“It provides new evidence that sexual intimacy within long-term relationships has health-enhancing benefits.’’

Previous research has shown happy relationships improve well-being, with one theory being that couples benefit from mutual support.

In the new study, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, researchers looked for biological evidence of health effects for the first time. Women in long-term relationships kept daily diaries for a week, including information on whether they had sex with their partner the previous night. Researchers also collected data on their relationship satisfaction. They then carried out blood tests and measured the length of participants’ telomeres.

Like the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces that stop them fraying, the caps stop DNA being damaged. Shorter telomeres have been associated with aging, disease and a higher risk of death. The researchers found women who had sex during the course of the week-long study had telomeres that were up to 30 percent longer. But relationship quality had no effect on them.

Scientists did not study men, but believe an active love life would also add years to their lives.

Just how sex could have such an effect is unclear. One possibility is that it reduces stress, which has previously been linked to shorter telomeres. It may also boost the immune system, increasing the production of natural killer cells that fight disease.

Another theory is that it triggers the release of oxytocin — the so-called cuddle hormone — which has been linked to better health. Researcher Dr. Aric Prather of the University of California, San Francisco, said: “The comparison was between women who had sexual intimacy in the previous week and those who had not.”

“It is possible the greater the frequency of sexual intimacy, the stronger the effect, and we plan to investigate that at a later date.”

“Telomere length is linked to longevity, and if our results hold up in future studies, it may be that regular sexual intimacy can lead to a longer life.”

“We don’t know whether the same finding would be seen in men. It may apply to men — there is no obvious reason why it should not.”