I once said that my life was so messed up, I wish I had a little green elf sitting on my shoulder telling me what to do. Well I have one friend who is the closest thing I’ve got to that little green elf. The night before I left for England, I was chatting on the phone with him and asked him what he thought my goals for Oxford should be. He said:

1. Hook up with at least three people
2. Make at least ten friendly acquaintances and get to know one person very well
3. Do as many activities as possible

Seeing as how I am studying at Oxford, but not a registered Oxford student, don’t get to take any classes with Oxford students, and live in a house with Stanford students, it’s going to be very hard to reach out socially. But I’m determined that at the end of this term, even if I haven’t made any friends, you won’t be able to say that I didn’t try.

Happy May Day! Check back tomorrow for picture of Morris Dancing!

Happy April Fools! I’m not getting breast enhancements, although, I could use some larger breasts…

Just kidding! I want you to know that I am perfectly happy with the size and shape of my breasts. I’m not only perfectly happy, but rather fond of them too. But that can be saved for another discussion…

There is one other lie though, and that is the time stamp on all of these posts. I’m actually sitting here, freezing, at 5am April 1st in the dorm hallway because (can you believe it?) I can’t fall asleep even though I am super tired and have work at 8:30 in the morning. I’m leaving for China and my internet connection will be iffy; I don’t want to keep my eager readers hanging, so I scheduled a post for each day I will be gone. Please leave comments and I promise to respond to them when I get back and also write about my China adventures. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy the lineup that I have so stuporly crafted for you in my insomniac clarity.

I’ve made a rather eventful and shocking decision. I’ve decided to get breast enhancement surgery. I’ve sort of been hiding this from everyone because I didn’t want anyone to know until I was certain about it, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

My flat chest has always sunk my self-esteem. From the very moment in fourth grade when my first girl friend started to develop boobs, to sixth grade when all my friends were wearing bras, I still looked like an androgynous doll. I did start to notice something forming in my chest that hurt when I pressed against it, but I imagined that they were two mochi sized kidney beans (read all about this here).  In seventh grade, I abashedly asked my mom if I could start wearing a bra, because we had to change in the locker rooms for gym. She only bought me a training bra, and I had to wear the same one every day for three years. When I was in ninth grade, I finally sucked up the courage to buy a real adult bra. I asked my girl friend to take me shopping and teach me how to figure out the bra sizes; I made up some excuse about how I had bought all my bras in China and the sizing was different (it is different).

My first serious boyfriend always told me that he liked the size of my breasts exactly the way they were, everyone else’s was too gaudy and unmanageable. I took that as his way of saying, “it’s ok that you have small breasts, honey”. I think it must be due to the fact that I sleep on my stomach so much.

So I’ve decided to end my sex drought by taking my body into my own hands (or rather, into the surgeon’s hands). Over spring break, the reason I stayed on campus while everyone else was off in Mexico was because I had an appointment at Stanford Hospital Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery to discuss my surgery options. I even have a date scheduled! June 24, right when I come back from school and so I can really enjoy my birthday! For those of you who I won’t see until school starts, you’ll come back to Hot Mama Crystal.

Here is a before picture (I’ll post an after one too, obviously): I apologize that it is so exotic, but it is the only one I have of me from the side. For the curious minded, I’m wearing a Chinese Yunnan ethnic minority traditional dress.

Flat chest prior to surgery

BTW – things you should do today:

• check out youtube and watch your favorite video! It’s not what you remembered
• Try google’s new CADIE program

10/6/6 Feel like I’m about to turn my life around and start anew! Never felt better!

Re: Chelsea’s question

“Not to mention what are your views on homosexuality? What is your sexual orientation?”

In this discussion, I want to stay away from identifying and using labels such as “homosexual”, “heterosexual”, and “bisexual”, for two reasons:

1)  Each person may define those terms differently. For example, someone may identify him or herself as a homosexual, but may not be considered such by others.  To avert confusion, I will discuss behaviors and feelings rather than personal identifications.

2) I believe that these classifications are human constructions that only serve to divide, exclude, and subjugate. By fitting people into distinct categories which we then assign blanket moral and personal judgments to, we justify and open the floodgates to all sorts of discrimination and acts of intolerance.

In my world, everybody is a bisexual. The only things that exist are feelings and actions, and not artificial identifiers. I once said that I believe sexuality is a spectrum, with people falling somewhere in the middle. Yet now that I think about it, sexuality is not just something you can linearize, or even spatialize. Your sexuality just is, yet people feel the compulsive need to place individuals on an axis. Sexuality is only a function of two things: feelings and actions.

Feelings refer to what attracts you. I’m not just talking about if you are attracted to males or females, but also generally. For example, if you are attracted to large, burly men, or skinny dorky guys; hot women with big breasts, or small cute girls. I firmly believe that all individuals feel attracted to both sexes; everyone at some point has had sexual fantasies about someone of the same sex. For example, I find female breasts extremely attractive. They are so soft, pale, and beautiful: the paragon of femininity.

Actions refer to how you react to those feelings. This doesn’t just mean whether you have sex with males or females either. For example, I enjoy looking at female breasts, especially in artistic portraits and paintings. Some people choose to act on their feelings, while others choose to repress them. Does someone who only has feelings yet doesn’t act on them constitute a homosexual?

Finally, I don’t care who you are. Everyone has or will perform sexual acts with someone of the same gender: yourself. Everyone masturbates (at least once), and enjoys it.

Therefore it is pointless for us to talk about opinions on homosexuality because it just exists. Everyone experiences it, just like any other feeling. There are no heterosexuals, or homosexuals, only people with sexual feelings.

mood:8 finished chorus concert + friends watched in (including My Crush) + close friend visiting me again!

physical tiredness: 3 not much sleep all week, accumulated sleep debt

spiritual tiredness: 5 still no time to think of such things

We are and have always been sexual beings. We don’t just suddenly become one when we hit puberty, or when we transition from cootie-phobes to having crushes on others, or when we start sex-education in schools. From the very beginning, we are aware of our bodies and explore them. Who among us can honestly say that they never curiously played with their body parts as a kid? I remember in music class in 4th grade, I discovered that placing the hardcover book in a particular way on my lap tickled me in a strange way I had never felt before. From then on, I was always reading; maybe this explains my above-average intellect. Another summer a few years later, my mom signed me up for gymnastics camp. There was this one stretching exercise where you spread your legs to do the horizontal splits, then bring your body forward so that your chest touches the ground. I suddenly felt something and it reminded me of the feeling in music class. I still stretch a lot even now, taking pleasure from my juvenile memories. The point is, long before I ever took a sex-ed class or knew what a clitoris was, I was already experimenting and discovering how my body functioned.

As kids, we are also fascinated with the body of the opposite sex. I don’t know why Adam and Eve ever felt ashamed of their nakedness. As kids, we love to be naked. We run around and make people laugh, and no one judges us. We also didn’t feel embarrassed when we saw other boys and girls naked. I have three younger brothers and as kids we took baths together. Sometimes I would poke their penises and laugh when it swung. But the majority of the time I was just having a fun time playing boats in the bathtub.

Somehow, through our life, exposure to various cultural influences has ingrained it in us that we should be ashamed of our bodies. This is the craziest thing, but I used to be ashamed of my feet. They were large, flat, and ugly. I could definitely understand why traditional Chinese women would want to bind their feet. Coming from such a background that associates daintiness with femininity, I hid my feet from public exposure at all times. During tumbling class in gym, when we had to take off our socks, I sat on my feet (if you are unfamiliar with the asian man squat, please click here: ).

Asian Squat

Then puberty hit. At first I didn’t understand what was happening to my body, or that it was inappropriate to talk about it. Around sixth grade, I noticed that two lumps were forming in my chest, and when I pressed on them it hurt. I liked to imagine that they were two large beans full of powdered milk that would spill out if I split them open. In the cafeteria one day, I shared my discovery with my friends, and they ridiculed me. After that, I never discussed my body again.

Age and shame about our bodies are inversely correlated. Remember back to a time when you were younger and enjoyed seeing your body naked. Then find that feeling again and feel sexy.

Since I am waiting for my HIV counseling appointment to start, I think I will take the opportunity to come through on what I wrote in my about page, which is that I love to talk about sex, especially how to make your sex life rockin’ awesome. (And what great timing to prepare for Valentine’s Day!)

There are so many dimensions to sex, that I could devote an entire blog to it and never finish talking about it. Today, I want to just scratch the surface and map out the different topics in sexuality, and in future blogs will go into more depth about sub-topics. However, I need your input to know which topics you want to know more about. Also, there is not just one way of thinking and I don’t have all the answers. Sex is only fun to talk about when it is a discussion; so even though I know some of this can get very embarrassing and personal, I encourage you to post and share your thoughts, opinions, stories, whatever!

First, what adjectives would I ascribe to sex? Here’s a list off of the top of my head, and I would really love to hear what adjectives you can come up with!

Sex can be…
Delicious, fun, hot, stress-relieving, addicting, adventurous, awkward, painful, scary, romantic, tiring, intimate, new…

It’s how you design your sex life that determines whether you come up with the good adjectives or the bad ones. And I urge you to avoid the bad ones.

Sex is fundamentally about how individuals feel about their bodies. Trust me, unless you feel comfortable in your body, you will not feel great in bed. How can you make anyone else appreciate your body if you can’t appreciate it yourself?

Which segues me into the next topic: masturbation. This is a great way to explore your body and know what pleases you. Once you find that out, then you can tell your partner and not waste countless nights trying to get him/her to guess at it. Trust me, your partner will be greatly relieved and you will feel great! Win-win situation.

Sexuality is not heteronormative. People are attracted to all sorts of people. I mean, people are sexy. Next time you talk to someone about sex, try not to assume that sex is only between men and women. I personally have a theory about a continuum of bisexuality: all people are neither hetero nor homosexual, but rather fall on a spectrum of bisexuality. It just depends whether you fall at 90% straight or 90% homosexual. I have yet to meet anyone who is 100% only attracted to a certain gender. More on this theory later.

Sex is fun, but not without its risks. The choice to be sexually active comes with responsibilities to protect both you and your partner. Safe sex does not have to come at the cost of pleasure, and can actually be sexy!

What is the role of sex education? Sex education is very broad and starts as soon as we are born. We are our own best teachers about sex. Often I believe that children are the best sexual beings, because they behave without any moral or social biases.

So those are some of the topics I can think of to discuss when it comes to sex. If I missed a topic that you want to hear more about, just let me know in the comments. Everyone have a happy, sexy, and safe Valentine’s Day Weekend!