Holloway Smith Noir, a London-based luxury burlesque and lingerie company, has launched a campaign to educate university freshers in the complexities of the female anatomy, starting with the female orgasm.
The campaign, aptly named ‘Ladies Come First’, intends to print and distribute its Guide To The Female Orgasm to Cambridge, Birmingham and Royal Holloway University students within the coming months.
The guide, expected to print sometime in October, is targeted towards young university students who are new to sex or “at the beginning of their sexual journeys” as described by the ‘Ladies Come First’ website.
Alice and Sophie Holloway, the sisters behind Holloway Smith Noir and ‘Ladies Come First’ were inspired to start this campaign after meeting hundreds of women who have had difficulties in achieving an orgasm.
“All the hard work done by feminists and scientists to prove that women can, do, and should enjoy sex, does not seem to be benefitting younger generations” the campaign’s co-founder and feminist Sophie Holloway said to The Daily Telegraph.
“Sexual assaults in universities, addictions to hard core pornography and cyber ‘slut-shaming’ bulling [are] all making regular appearances in the national press.”
The mission statement for ‘Ladies Come First’ states that it aims to fill in gaps in sex education and counteract the negative effects of widespread access to hardcore pornography by opening up a conversation with young adults about sex both on campus and through social media.
“It is really important to us that we are discussing these issues together with lots of voices being added so that we can effectively find the gaps in sex education and also learn from each other,” Ms. Holloway explained to The Student. “Students in Edinburgh can get involved in the campaign by adding their voice to our social media accounts and blog posts.”
Due to logistical and funding constraints, the campaign has been limited to Cambridge, Birmingham and Royal Holloway universities this year.
Explaining how these three universities were chosen, Ms. Holloway said: “We felt like with all the amazing work the students at CUSU Campaign and getting compulsory consent classes on campus, Cambridge was an obvious choice.”
“Birmingham, we are lucky to have a connection with the LGBTQ and Women’s Association so again they were a good way in whilst we are still refining our plans. Finally, we grew up in Egham and so with the close connection Royal Holloway became our third and final university.”
The sisters are crowd funding their guide in order to have more guides distributed at more universities across the country next year. So far they have raised over £4,000 of their £10,000 target on Kickstarter. A downloadable online version of the guide is also due to be released next month.
