Humbugs abound as I do my annual Christmas shop. Not because I don’t revel in the idea of finding exciting and unique gifts to shower upon my loved ones, but because everywhere I turn I’m confronted with ridiculous lists of ‘gift ideas for him’ or, indeed, ‘her.’ In honour of this horror, here are my 12 sexist (and not so sexist) Christmas gift lists.

On the first day of Christmas my true love/friend/mum/colleague who drew my name in the office secret Santa gave to me…

1. A Ryan Gosling tea-towel

That’s right, number one on the Prezzybox list of ‘stocking fillers for women‘ is a Ryan Gosling tea towel. Because if there’s one thing women love more than spending quality time in the kitchen, it’s drying pots and pans with a celebrity’s face. Bonus points for trying to persuade us to spend almost an entire tenner on a ‘stocking filler’.

Note that those who might not have been tempted by the Ryan Gosling tea towel might instead like chocolate pills. So what’s the equivalent for men?

2. Tabasco-flavoured chocolate

Luckily the man in your life can have chocolate in his stocking too, but none of this ‘chocolate pills’ nonsense.  This sweet treat for your man is Tabasco-flavoured. According to prezzybox, to women chocolate is some sort of emergency medication, but to men it is a delivery mechanism for SPICY HEAT.

3. A gendered gift experience

For those with more money to spend, why not treat your loved one to a special day? They can go paintballing, if they are blue, or for afternoon tea, if they are pink. Boots actually gets bonus points in the ‘trying not to be too sexist’ stakes, because when you click on either of these panels they take you to the same page. If they get rid of the pink ‘for her’ and blue ‘for him’ landing pages next year, Father Christmas might take them off his ‘naughty’ list.

4. A mug that kills women who touch it

There’s nothing more traditional than a mug with a crap slogan, and iwoot (the website formerly known as I Want One Of Those Dot Com) has come through with a few. Their gifts for him offers the ‘man mug‘. It comes complete with spirit level, to check how horizontal your masculinity is. It also has a sign on the bottom which makes it absolutely clear the mug is Not For Girl -, I can only assume that if a lady drinks from it, she is instantly poisoned:

Still, ladies mustn’t worry, because if they’re lucky then they’ll get a mug in their stocking too. For women iwoot suggests this ‘Little Miss Giggles’ mug (spirit level definitely not included):

5. Virgin experiences

If you’re after a special day out, Virgin’s one-upped Boots and does indeed have special, separate pages for women and men. Phew. No more wading through spa days when you want to buy a dude a day out: it’s cars and paintball almost all the way.  I say ‘almost’ because… what’s this?

That’s right – a special afternoon tea. Not one of those boring ladies’ ones with sandwiches, no. This one has been (as the copy explains) ‘designed to satisfy a man’s taste and appetite’. Which it turns out means switching sandwiches for mini toad-in-the-hole. Oh, and illustrating the ‘tea’ with a picture that contains ‘beer’. Although, according to the copy, there will only be a choice of tea or coffee, there is beer in the picture because that is what men like. See below.

7. Beer, glorious beer

How much do men like beer? A lot, according to totallyfunky.co.uk.

Of course these beer-related items only appear first because the list is alphabetical, and if you scroll down further you’ll see that men also like Darth Vader and eating out of dog bowls.

So that’s Christmas sorted for your dad/brother/husband etc. But what should you get your daughter? Totallyfunky suggests bath products, gloves, and a shoe that you put a spoon in. Or you could go for…

7. Anything to do with One Direction

If the lady you’re buying for is a bit too young for the Ryan Gosling tea towel, The Works has you covered. With One Direction. EVERYWHERE.

Of course, boys don’t like One Direction, so instead they get dinosaurs and helicopters.

8. Not-so-sexy underwear

One of my personal bugbears is that when it comes to Christmas underwear, straight guys are encouraged to buy something sexy, slinky, and sensuous for their partners, whereas straight women are offered a selection of comedy Christmas socks or hilarious cock-cosies with which to wow him. This red-hot image brought to you by TopMan…

9. A world I don’t want to live in

Onwards, now, to presentfinder, where boyfriends are ‘difficult’ and girlfriends are ‘gorgeous’. It’s tricky to compare these gifts because they’re all so twee and quirky, but essentially we’re being asked to believe in a world where men like booze, money and edible tits which come in a tiny metal box:

While girls like pink VW camper vans, and being given plasters for Christmas.

 

Is there a better way to write Christmas gift lists?

If we say to shops “hey, this Christmas gift list is a bit sexist, isn’t it?” their response will most likely be “but it has to be – this is the stuff you’re searching for, and the stuff you end up eventually buying. If we were to stop being twats about it we’d never sell anything.” Which is partly true. We do search for ‘Christmas gifts for her’ and ‘Christmas gifts for him’ (although it looks like we’re doing it less each year).

But that’s not to say they can’t grab our attention in other ways. It’s more than possible to market effectively without descending into lazy stereotypes. Even at Christmas.

To round off the twelve, here are a few examples of shops that, I think, are doing it better.

Not-so-sexist Christmas gift lists

10. Lovehoney’s underwear hot-off

As mentioned above, I dread the ‘Christmas underwear’ thing. Mainly because it seems the idea is for a woman to receive something sexy and lacy and beautiful, and a man to get a comedy santa-hat for his bellend.

So credit, then, to Lovehoney. As a sex toy retailer, it’d be pretty hard for them to not split their toys by sex, given that so many of them depend on the sex organs that you have. So their ‘gifts for her‘ and ‘gifts for him‘ pages make sense. But on top of that, they also have the same feel: these gifts are genuine gifts for people. It’s not split by comedy vs sex: there are genuinely sexy pants for the guys, and toys that individuals will actually play with (rather than giggle at) on both sides of the sex divide.

UPDATE September 2017: Well this is very embarrassing. It’s actually not necessary to split sex toys by gender – it’s far more helpful to split by category in this instance too. Not only because there’s no need to list out e.g. ‘butt plugs for men’ (spoiler: butt plugs can be used by anyone who has a butt) but it also excludes trans and non-binary people.

11. Argos

To show it’s possible to sell children’s toys without painting half your website pink and shouting “YOU WANT TO BE A PRINCESS, DON’T YOU, PRINCESS?!” here’s a picture of the Argos ‘toys’ menu:

Do you see? Toys divided by category, brand, age and popularity. If you can find any hint of gender segregation there I’ll give you a mince pie.

12. Marks and Spencer

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve had a peruse of the M&S ‘Christmas’ page, and I can’t find anything that is unnecessarily gendered.

It appears that the nation’s favourite place to buy socks and knickers has resisted compiling lists of ‘gifts for him’ and ‘gifts for her’. They stick to ‘men’ and ‘women’ for clothes, which is understandable given that’s how they split it in the shops, but there don’t seem to be any lists of gifts ‘for him’ or ‘for her’. The only page I can find where they categorise gifts is by personality. “Gifts for foodies”, “Gifts for gardeners” and suchlike.

For that they get a gold star to stick on top of their Christmas tree.

The examples above are, of course, the product of my own frequently-flawed opinions and half-arsed research via Google. But I’d welcome any more examples (especially ones of shops who do it well) in the comments or via Twitter. Please tag them with #RyanGoslingTeaTowel, because Christmas should be FUN. 

How to not be sexist at Christmas

Every good Christmas story has a moral, and this one’s no different. Just as it’s possible to sell toys without labeling them ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’, it’s more than possible to flog your Christmas deals without assuming that men want beer and women want bubble bath. Not only will you get my admiration if you split your Christmas deals by personality, you’re also (prepare for a shock) making it genuinely easier for me to find the perfect present. After all, we’re not painfully simple creatures: we usually know more about the person we’re buying for than simply what gender they identify as.

I know that Sarah likes cooking, Bob likes cosy sleepwear, and yes, Ashley is a big fan of both Ryan Gosling and drying dishes. It’s a damn sight easier to find these presents if you narrow it down by something useful.

The other day I walked in on the boy asleep on the sofa, wearing just pants and a t-shirt, right hand cupped gently around his junk and wide out in the open. Mmm.

There’s definitely something comforting about touching yourself – not necessarily in a filthy way that means you’ll get hairy palms, go blind and/or go to hell. Just holding yourself to get some warmth, and feel the solidity of your genitals beneath your palm.

I love to do this. On rare occasions when my hands aren’t occupied with a cigarette, a laptop or a cup of coffee, I’ll stick my hand down my knickers and cup myself. Silk or lace up against the back of my hand, coarse hair and warmth on my palm. It’s not hot like a bent-over fuck but it’s nice like a warm bath or coming inside from the rain.

I do the same with my tits. Boys I’ve known have occasionally commented that if they were girls they’d play with their tits all the time. Rarely do they stop to consider whether those of us with tits do that anyway. Running our hands over the underside of our breasts, slipping a hand inside the bra just to grab a bit of extra warmth. It’s thumbsucking for grown-ups, and I love it.

Cup me

That rather long ramble was merely a shameful excuse to tell you that this happened the other night, and it kicked me so solidly in the gut with lust that I couldn’t help but write about it.

I was in bed, and awake early in the morning. Having slipped out to go to the loo, I’d stumbled back in and smooshed around a bit, trying to find the warm patch I’d had to leave behind. As I snuggled down, the boy with me stirred. He’ll do this at any time of night, no matter how asleep he is: movement from me equals him turning, reaching out, grasping for me in the dark. Usually he flings a limb over me, or runs his hand up my stomach before his forearm settles just underneath my tits, pushing them gently up so they rest on him.

I love this. I love this more than I can say. I love this so deeply that it makes it harder for me to go to sleep, because I’m busy enjoying the feel of his big arms around me, throbbing warmth into whichever bits his sleeping brain reaches for first. The occasional tired moan or snore into my ear. Amazing.

But the other night he didn’t reach for the same places. As I got back into bed, feeling cosy and soft and on the verge of tipping back into sleep, his hand explored downwards. I leant up with my back against his chest, and his right hand ran softly over my stomach, coming to rest in exactly the comforting crotch cup that I use myself. Inside my knickers, with the silk against the back of his hand and his palm up against my skin, he gave a very soft sigh and rested there.

I stayed awake for thirty minutes, trembling slightly, holding myself as still as I could so that he wouldn’t move. The feeling of his hand cupping me felt more intimate, more arousing, more significant than a pinch of my nipples or even a fuck. It was made hotter by the thought that it might have happened before, but neither of us knew it. Touching me in the dead zone between waking and sleep, running his hands over me without knowing where they were going, and warming each other while our minds were dreaming elsewhere.

When he woke up his hand was wet.

The vast, vast majority of the time, I am a loser. A lank-haired, jeans-wearing, slouching drunken loser. With a cider in my hand, a chip on my shoulder and a face like a bulldog chewing a whole hive of wasps.

I say this only to counter what’s coming next: right now I am hot.

I’m hot because I’ve had my hair cut – it swishes in that shiny way that some people achieve daily, but for me comes round only twice a year when I go for my biannual hack. I’m hot because I’ve spent the last week doing more exercise than I normally would and – although there’s no immediate visual difference – I feel stronger and livelier and readier to bounce around like a puppy on MDMA. I’m hot because I’m wearing knickers that cup my arse comfortably, and because I’ve been doing DIY in hot pants and getting dirty and sweaty and wet.

We need to deal with your high self-esteem issues

I’m British, of course, so writing the above paragraph was torture – it took me a good ten minutes to bash out just a few sentences without tagging something self-deprecating on to the end. I’ve been trained, through years of TV, magazines and friendly banter, that to talk about the things you actually like about yourself is a social crime. Like eating steak with the fish fork or passing a joint to the right.

Most of the time this makes sense. After all, we’d all be excruciating and insufferable if our conversations started not with “how are you?” but “how hot am I!?” We’d barely get beyond introductions before we were hurling into buckets at the appalling displays of self-love.

No, instead we must only ever speak of the bad stuff, while desperately hoping that other people notice the good. We’re trained to make the best of ourselves, so we spend hours primping and preening and picking out just the right kind of shoe only to shit on all that effort later on by replying “no, really, I look awful” when someone says something nice. It’s a reflex gesture, and one which makes sense most of the time. When the hard-earned compliments come, we bat them away with great force, because self-hate is a much more attractive quality than arrogance.

Start fancying yourself

I’ve got nothing wrong with light self-deprecation, and on an ordinary day I’m far more likely to make a tedious aside about my weight than to bounce into a room and shout “Look! Aren’t my tits brilliant?!”

But not today. Because, fuck it, I don’t always feel good. And on the rare occasions that I do, I want to start making the most of it. In fifty years time I’ll be yearning for the chance to wear this arse again, to sit in hot pants on a stepladder sugar-soaping walls and enjoying not just being me but looking like me too.

You should do it too – go on, do it. Fancy yourself a bit. There are bound to be bits of yourself that you’re not a fan of. But isn’t it bizarre that it’s these disliked bits that get all the attention? Hours in the gym toning a stomach that you hate. Days in front of the mirror shaping eyebrows or facial hair in some sort of damage limitation exercise. Weeks spent traipsing around shops that make clothes for people who always seem to be a different shape to you. All that time spent rectifying or changing or enhancing – how much time do you actually spend appreciating?

You don’t have to take pictures of yourself in sexy poses and pin them on the fridge, or give yourself cringeingly awkward motivational pep-talks about how beautiful you are. Just give yourself a bit of time to appreciate the things you fancy. The things that your partners will go primal for. Stand in front of a mirror if you like, touch yourself if you want to, put on or take off the clothes that make you feel best, and just revel in a bit of self-lust.

Because no one else can love you like you can.

Well done, humanity, you have done me proud. When The Guardian printed this problem page question from a lady who fantasises about being passed around a group of old, obese men who struggle to get erections, I expected the comments section to be a sulphur-stinking pit of hellish mockery.

Because that’s generally what happens when someone admits to a fantasy that doesn’t fit with one of our traditional stories. I was going to say ‘an uncommon fantasy’ but to be honest, given the horror this woman feels about admitting to her fantasy I’d have to go out on a limb and say this dream may be far more common than we think.

To my surprise, though, the comments were mostly sensible.

“Why on earth would you feel guilty? And why do you think of yourself as ‘sick’? Those are strong statements. Your sex life is fine and If you don’t want to share your fantasy with your fiancė then don’t.”

“Of all the fantasies I’ve ever heard, this has got to be one the of the most easily realizable.”

Hot fantasy about old obese men

One of my favourite wank fantasies involves a pair of older guys. Ideally (because I love my backstory) in a position of power or authority over me. Traditional scenes begin in an office, where I play up to patriarchal stereotypes by wearing an incredibly short skirt and bringing coffee into the business meeting being held by these two men.

One of them is usually relatively young – thirty or forty – and he’s staring at my arse like he wants to bite it. The other guy is older, perhaps fifty or sixty, calls me ‘sweetheart’ and leers inappropriately through the stretched fabric of my tight shirt as I bend down to put the coffee tray on the table. One of them, inevitably, slaps my arse.

The older guy (my boss) remarks on how obedient I am, and asks me to show his friend just how willing I am to please. He leans back in his chair, unzips his flies, and pulls out a thick, twitching, semi-flaccid cock. I drop to my knees in front of him, and as he croons ‘that’s it’, I slip his dick into my mouth.

He’s big and looks bigger – looming over me with his paunch and his jowls and his filthy, smug grin. He knows I feel obliged to do this to him, and that’s part of the turn on. The other part being, of course, the ability to show off his toy to his friend.

As I suck him harder, he pulls my head down so that my lips are around the base of his cock, his thick head pushing hard up against the back of my throat. Occasionally he makes small grunts to show just how much he’s enjoying it, or mutters ‘good girl, just like that’ through gritted teeth. But in between these interjections he keeps talking to his friend.

“Good, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely. I should get one for my office.”

“You can… ungh… you can have a turn when I’m done if you like. She’d be only too happy to oblige.”

The friend sits there watching, stroking at the erection that’s pressing against the crotch of his suit trousers. But I don’t fuck the friend – I never get a chance. Because as I picture the thick, desperate hardness of the older guy’s dick pushing solidly against the back of my throat, and imagine the strangled grunting sounds he makes as he comes, and conjure up the feeling of his thick, hot spunk gushing down the back of my throat… that’s usually the moment when I come.

The younger guy rarely needs to fuck me in order to complete the fantasy.

Being ashamed of fantasies

So, to all the Guardian readers who refrained from making comments along the lines of ‘ewww’, when someone confessed to fantasies of obese older men, I salute and thank you. I guarantee you that this particular fantasy isn’t limited to one individual, and that there are many more people who like that sort of thing.

To the woman who wrote the letter in the first place: don’t be upset. Most people have at least one thing that gets them horny in secret but that they wouldn’t want to shout from the rooftops. There’s no need to be ashamed of if you get off on something unusual. You’re not hurting anyone by doing it, you’re just pushing the specific set of buttons that happen to have been wired in your brain that way.

As one of the Guardian commenters so excellently put it:

“There is nothing wrong in a fantasy, like emotions, they are not good or bad. they just are. We can’t control them but they do no harm to others (it is our actions that may hurt others, not the thoughts in our heads), so whatever they are they are nothing to be ashamed of.”