Student Influencer Showcase: Kelsie

Hype: Could you briefly introduce yourself?

Kelsie: I’m Kelsie, I’m 20 and I study creative writing at The Arts University of Bournemouth. I started off writing as a hobby, then I started taking at more seriously and took it up for uni!

Hype: How did you get involved in the Lovehoney campaign?

Kelsie: Hype slid into my DMs on insta and I followed on TikTok and Insta, and I’ve just been keeping up with everything they’re doing.

The Lovehoney campaign looked like a great opportunity. I’ve always been very open with sex, especially with my friend group. Me and my girlfriends always end up talking about sex-related subjects, it’s just what you do. I feel it’s really important to normalise these conversations online and wanted to be a part of that change.

Hype: Were you sceptical to talk about such a taboo subject on your social media? Were you scared what the people who follow you would think.

Kelsie: Definitely, I reckon I’m definitely in some of the mean girls group chats. I don’t really mind, because it’s such a normal thing to talk about. Everybody masturbates!

Hype: How has your collaboration been received by your followers?

Kelsie: I’ve had a lot of people message me about it! I had a boy from school message me being like, ‘why are you doing it?’. So I’ve had to explain it to a lot of people. But so many people who I’ve spoken to think it’s really cool that I’m doing it.

Hype: What’s been the most enjoyable part of being a #lovehoneystudent?

Kelsie: One of the weeks where we created content, we did sex rankings of various UK universities, and I did a couple polls on my story and it was interesting to find out what students actually think about uni sex lives. I was asking questions like ‘what percentage of students do you think use sex toys?’ and not a lot of people actually got it right. A lot of people actually thought more students use sex toys than actually do. Apparently we don’t know ourselves as students well enough.

Hype: Why do you think it’s important for women to talk about female pleasure on their platforms?

Kelsie: I think it’s really helpful for girls to see other girls talking about sex so openly. For boys, they’d come in and say ‘oh I did this with that girl last night’. If a girl was to even think or talk about being aroused, she’d often be judged for that.

Hype: Do you think more should be taught in terms of inclusive sexual happiness?

Kelsie: Yeah definitely. From what I knew from school, it was literally, penis goes in vagina to make baby. There was nothing else about, ‘well a woman may need to be stimulated on this part of her body to receive pleasure’, we never learnt any of that.

I remember in school, we were shown a picture of a man and a woman having a pillow fight, where the man tickled the woman with a feather, and that was considered as sex. So, that was definitely something.

Hype: Sex is still a taboo subject online, even in young audiences. What do you think are the most important points that should be covered more on social media?

Kelsie: I think consent is one of the top things we should be talking about. A lot of people don’t actually know what consent means and don’t think it’s essential to make sure that there is consent before having sex. In general, I think it’s important to let people know that people do actually have sex, so we best be educated as much as we can before we go out and do that.

For myself, when I was first talking about sex, I was thinking ‘Oh god, what are my parents gonna think?’ When at the end of the day, I’m 20 and I have a boyfriend, so what do they think I’m doing?

Hype: What would your advice be to people who are scared to explore their sexuality, with sites like lovehoney?

Kelsie: I’d say, try not to think about it too much, just let yourself do what feels comfortable. I also think it’s so crucial to talk to your friends about it also. My friends and I talk about everything each other, first sex toys and all sorts, so it’s really important to have that group where you can talk it out.

Hype: To finish, are there any sex positive influencers that you want to shout out?

Kelsie: Caoimhe (@sourglass.figure) and Mazzy (@mazzy_dee) are both amazing, you should defo follow them both, I love the way they’re so honest and open just the way they talk about sex in general!