I remember what it was like wanting new sex toys but looking at the price tag and then looking to God and asking, "b*tch where?", as in where is that money about to come from? So I try not to gawk at people awkwardly with my crazy eyes when they exclaim how $60 is too much for a sex toy, especially as I learned that people very seldom prioritize their sexual health.
Sometimes pretty price tags ensure safe sex, guaranteeing toys free of toxic material, are highly porous, and so on.
What's more is that when people do get into toys, they limit themselves and their sex to those $5 handcuffs, and a $.50 cent outdated bullet and call it kinky. I'm not saying I'm not still basic but I've learned a thing or two about what one ought to keep in their sacred sex trunk. And while I'm not about to go off off, I am about to give you a few items to buy over time and round out your toy box, making it slightly more kinky than before. Well, depending on who you are.
By the end of this, you'll be throwing items in your shopping cart and with a little imagination, they'll be calling out Ms. Jackson. Here are 8 items under $50 that are the creme de la creme of adult sex toys.
1.Tango Mini-Vibe
We Vibe
You may have heard me talk about this vibrator a time or two or three...or ten because anytime I'm rounding up my favorite sex toys this is it. Outside of testing things for you all, the Tango is my default. I've had my tango for about six years now and it's just now starting to wane on the power and it's still got a strong vibe. This vibrator looks like a lipstick, giving you a pointed tip, and a flat surface to alternate between depending on what sensation you're looking for. It has eight vibrations moods for your picking, and it's very, very waterproof.
2.3" Bunny Tail Metal Plug
Hantioo
Perhaps you're curious about anal, perhaps you're already doing it. If either of these fit the bill then try out a beginners plug. This one has the fur addition because perhaps you're roleplaying Alice and Wonderland while being teased by the sensational pressure that anal plays provides. Lube up your plug really good and finger yourself while your partner inserts it. Those of us with bunny tails might call it living on the wild side.
3.California Exotic Shane's World Pink Harness with Stud
Pink Cherry
Whether you have a penis partner or a vulva bearing partner, you may want to add a strap on to your collection. I will acknowledge the double standard of us not liking men who want things in or around their butt, but just to get ahead of the comments, hear me out ladies: Your man's g-spot is in his butt. That is where he feels ultimate pleasure so if he's into it, maybe try not to knock it so quickly. And look, I get it because I'm struggling to open my mind too. The difference is, I don't have a man to open my mind up for at the time. However, I understand that's a jump and you may need to start with a finger soooo the alternative is being teased by the strap on prior to getting the real thing. Have your partner wear it, suck the strap on, give him a show – just don't knock it.
4.Black Glass Ben Wa Balls
yoniegg.com
As seen on Fifty Shades (the first one), these serve to tease and please, but they can also help strengthen your vaginal floor. A pair of glass ben wa balls reduce the bacterial build up and make for a range of sensations by doing something as simple as setting them in an ice bucket (perhaps you're at a hotel).
5.Crocodile Nipple Clamps
Nipple play is a fave and I was born this way. I turn into a whole faucet as soon as a tongue crosses my nipples, a man can even tug at them with his teeth, just as long as my partner pays extra attention to them. Nipple clamps can heighten this sensation by restricting the blood flow and with a good pair you can tighten and loosen the gauge based on your personal preference.
6.Black Bondage BDSM Leather Wrist Cuffs
Etsy/ProvocateurCreations
Let me upgrade you! Keep your cheap cuffs. Those can be handy sometimes, but also invest in a sturdy but sexy pair of wrist cuffs if you're really into being bound or binding – and there's no escaping these bad boys. Pair the cuffs with any number of the toys listed here, including the cockring or the wax play.
7.Happy Rabbit Ring 5 Function Rechargeable Cockring
A waterproof cockring is a sex trunk essential if your partner is a penis person. This one is made of silicone so you'll want to make sure that you avoid silicone or oil based lubricant and stick with a water based lube. Cockrings create the tightness that men so desire with the added benefits of vibration. Throw the cockring on him and deliver a top-notch blowjob.
8.Triple Pinwheel + Kama Sutra Massage Candle
Amazon
Level up on your freaky with this combo. The pinwheel creates a nice sensation as its semi-sharp edges roll over erogenous zones. Pair this with a massage candle, allowing the wax to dry over your nipples (my fantasy can be yours too) and then have your partner tease you by rolling the pinwheel over it. For heightened sensation, chill your pinwheel so that you can play with the varying sensations of hot and cold.
Featured image by Getty Images.
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Amber Riley has the type of laugh that sticks with you long after the raspy, rhythmic sounds have ceased. It punctuates her sentences sometimes, whether she’s giving a chuckle to denote the serious nature of something she just said or throwing her head back in rip-roarious laughter after a joke. She laughs as if she understands the fragility of each minute. She chooses laughter often with the understanding that future joy is not guaranteed.
Credit: Ally Green
The sound of her laughter is rivaled only by her singing voice, an emblem of the past and the future resilience of Black women stretched over a few octaves. On Fox’s Glee, her character Mercedes Jones was portrayed, perhaps unfairly, as the vocal duel to Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), offering rough, full-throated belts behind her co-star’s smooth, pristine vocals. Riley’s always been more than the singer who could deliver a finishing note, though.
Portraying Effie White, she displayed the dynamic emotions of a song such as “And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going” in Dreamgirls on London’s West End without buckling under the historic weight of her predecessors. With her instrument, John Mayer’s “Gravity” became a religious experience, a belted hymnal full of growls and churchy riffs. In her voice, Nicole Scherzinger once said she heard “the power of God.”
Credit: Ally Green
Riley’s voice has been a staple throughout pop culture for nearly 15 years now. Her tone has become so distinguishable that most viewers of Fox’s The Masked Singer recognized the multihyphenate even before it was revealed that she was Harp, the competition-winning, gold-masked figure with an actual harp strapped to her back.
Still, it wasn’t until recently that Riley began to feel like she’d found her voice. This sounds unbelievable. But she’s not referring to the one she uses on stage. She’s referencing the voice that speaks to who she is at her core. “Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind,” the 37-year-old says. “It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women. I got so comfortable in [doing so], and I really want other people, especially Black women, to get more comfortable in that space.”
“Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind. It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women."
If you ask Riley’s manager, Myisha Brooks, she’ll tell you the foundation of who the multihyphenate is hasn’t changed much since she was a kid growing up in Compton. “She is who she is from when I met her back when she was singing in the front of the church to back when she landed major roles in film and TV,” Brooks says. Time has allowed Riley to grow more comfortable, giving fans a more intimate glimpse into her life, including her mental health journey and the ins and outs of show business.
The actress/singer has been in therapy since 2019, although she suffered from depression and anxiety way before that. In a recent interview with Jason Lee, she recalls having suicidal ideation as a kid. By the time she started seeing a psychologist and taking antidepressants in her thirties, her body had become jittery, a physical reminder of the trauma stacked high inside her. “I was shaking in [my therapist’s] office,” she tells xoNecole. “My fight or flight was on such a high level. I was constantly in survival mode. My heart was beating fast all the time. All I did was sweat.”
There wasn’t just childhood trauma to account for. After auditioning for American Idol and being turned away by producers, Riley began working for Ikea and nearly missed her Glee audition because her car broke down on the highway while en route. Thankfully, Riley had been cast to play Mercedes Jones. American Idol had temporarily convinced her she wasn’t cut out for the entertainment industry, but this was validation that she was right where she belonged. Glee launched in 2009 with the promise of becoming Riley’s big break.
In some ways, it was. The show introduced Riley to millions of fans and catapulted her into major Hollywood circles. But in other ways, it became a reminder of the types of roles Black women, especially those who are plus-sized, are relegated to. Behind the scenes, Riley says she fought for her character "to have a voice" but eventually realized her efforts were useless. "It finally got to a point where I was like, this is not my moment. I'm not who they're choosing, and this is just going to have to be a job for me for now," she says. "And, that's okay because it pays my bills, I still get to be on television, I'm doing more than any other Black plus-sized women that I'm seeing right now on screen."
The actress can recognize now that she was navigating issues associated with trauma and low self-esteem at the time. She now knows that she's long had anxiety and depression and can recognize the ways in which she was triggered by how the cult-like following of the show conflicted with her individual, isolated experiences behind the scenes. But she was in her early '20s back then. She didn't yet have the language or the tools to process how she was feeling.
Riley says she eventually sought out medical intervention. "When you're in Hollywood, and you go to a doctor, they give you pills," she says, sharing a part of her story that she'd never revealed publicly before now. "[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that's not fixing my problem. If anything, it's making it worse."
“[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that’s not fixing my problem. If anything it’s making it worse.”
Credit: Ally Green
At one point, while in her dressing room on set, she rested her arm on a curling iron without realizing it. It wasn't until her makeup artist alerted her that she even realized her skin was burning. Once she noticed, she says she was "so zonked out on pills" that she barely reacted. Speaking today, she holds up her arm and motions towards a scar that remains from the incident. She sought help for her reliance on the pills, but it would still be years before she finally attended therapy.
This stress was only compounded by the trauma of growing up in poverty and the realities of being a "contract worker." "Imagine going from literally one week having to borrow a car to get to set to the next week being on a private jet to New York City," she says. After Glee ended, so did the rides on private planes. The fury of opportunities she expected to follow her appearance on the show failed to materialize. She wasn't even 30 yet, and she was already forced to consider if she'd hit her career peak.
. . .
We’re only four minutes into our Zoom call before Riley delivers her new adage to me. “My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway,” she says.
On this Thursday afternoon in April, the LA-based entertainer is seated inside her closet/dressing room wearing a cerulean blue tank top with matching shorts and eating hot wings. This current phase of healing hinges on balance. It’s about having discipline and consistency, but not at the risk of inflexibility. She was planning to head to the gym, for instance, but she’s still tired from the “exhausting” day before. Instead, she’s spent her day receiving a massage, eating some chicken wings, and planning to spend quality time with friends. “I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I’m not going to talk down to myself. I’m going to eat my chicken wings, and then tomorrow I’m [back] in the gym,” she says.
“My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway."
This is the balance with which she's been approaching much of her life these days. It's why she's worried less about whether or not people see her as someone who is humble. She'd rather be respected. "I think you should be a person that's easy to work with, but in the moments where I have to ruffle feathers and make waves, I'm not shying away from that anymore. You can do it in love, you don't have to be nasty about it, but I had to finally be comfortable with the fact that setting boundaries around my life – in whatever aspect, whether that's personal or business – people are not going to like it. Some people are not going to have nice things to say about you, and you gotta be okay with it," she says.
When Amber talks about the constant humbling of Black women in Hollywood, I think of the entertainers before her who have suffered from this. The brilliant, consistent, overqualified Black women who have spoken of having to fight for opportunities and fair pay. Aretha Franklin. Viola Davis. Tracee Ellis Ross. There's a long list of stars whose success hasn't mirrored their experiences behind the scenes.
Credit: Ally Green
If Black women outside of Hollywood are struggling to decrease the pay gap, so, too, are their wealthier, more famous peers.
Riley says there’s been progress in recent years, but only in small ways and for a limited group of people. “This business is exhausting. The goalpost is constantly moving, and sometimes it’s unfair,” she says. But, I have to say it’s the love that keeps you going.”
“There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman,” she continues. “We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
"There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman. We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
Last year, Riley starred alongside Raven Goodwin in the Lifetime thriller Single Black Female (a modern, diversified take on 1992’s Single White Female). It was more than a leading role for the actress, it also served as proof that someone who looks like her can front a successful project without it hinging on her identity. It showcased that the characters she portrays don’t “have to be about being a big girl. It can just be a regular story.”
Riley sees her work in music as an extension of her efforts to push past the rigid stereotypes in entertainment. Take her appearance on The Masked Singer, for instance. Riley said she decided to perform Mayer’s “Gravity” after being told she couldn’t sing it years earlier. “I wanted to do ‘Gravity’ on Glee. [I] was told no, because that’s not a song that Mercedes would do,” she says. “That was a full circle moment for me, doing that on that show and to hear what it is they had to say.”
As Scherzinger praised the “anointed” performance, a masked Riley began to cry, her chest heaving as she stood on stage, her eyes shielded from view. “You have to understand, I have really big names – casting directors, producers, show creators – that constantly tell me ‘I’m such a big fan. Your talent is unmatched.’ Hire me, then,” she says, reflecting on the moment.
Recently, she’s been in the studio working on original music, the follow-up to her independently-released debut EP, 2020’s Riley. The sequel to songs such as the anthemic “Big Girl Energy” and the reflective ballad “A Moment” on Riley, this new project hones in on the singer’s R&B roots with sensual grooves such as the tentatively titled “All Night.” “You said I wasn’t shit, turns out that I’m the shit. Then you called me a bitch, turns out that I’m that bitch. You said no one would want me, well you should call your homies,” she sings on the tentatively titled “Lately,” a cut about reflecting on a past relationship. From the forthcoming project, xoNecole received five potential tracks. Fans likely already know the strengths and contours of Riley’s vocals, but these new songs are her strongest, most confident offerings as an artist.
“I am so much more comfortable as a writer, and I know who I am as an artist now. I’m evolving as a human being, in general, so I’m way more vulnerable in my music. I’m way more willing to talk about whatever is on my mind. I don’t stop myself from saying what it is I want to say,” she says.
Credit: Ally Green
“Every era and alliteration of Amber, the baseline is ‘Big Girl Energy.’ That’s the name of her company,” her manager Brooks says, referencing the imprint through which Riley releases her music after getting out of a label deal several years ago. “It’s just what she stands for. She’s not just talking about size, it’s in all things. Whether it’s putting your big girl pants on and having to face a boardroom full of executives or sell yourself in front of a casting agent. It’s her trying to achieve the things she wants to do in life.”
Riley says she has big dreams beyond releasing this new music, too. She’d love to star in a rom-com with Winston Duke. She hasn't starred in a biopic yet, but she’d revel in the opportunity to portray Rosetta Tharpe on screen. She’s determined that her previous setbacks won’t stop her from dreaming big.
“I think one of my superpowers is resilience because, at the end of the day, I’m going to kick, scream, cry, cuss, be mad and disappointed, but I’m going to get up and risk having to deal with it all again. It’s worth it for the happy moments,” she says.
If Riley seems more comfortable and confident professionally, it’s because of the work she’s been doing in her personal life.
She’d previously spoken to xoNecole about becoming engaged to a man she discovered in a post on the site, but she called things off last year. For Valentine’s Day, she revealed her new boyfriend publicly. “I decided to post him on Valentine’s Day, partially because I was in the dog house. I got in trouble with him,” she says, half-joking before turning serious. “The breakup was never going to stop me from finding love. Or at least trying. I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness, and you enjoy it and work through it.”
Credit: Ally Green
"I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness and you enjoy it and work through it.”
With her ex, Riley was pretty outspoken about her relationship, even appearing in content for Netflix with him. This time around is different. She’s not hiding her boyfriend of eight months, but she’s more protective of him, especially because he’s a father and isn’t interested in becoming a public figure.
She’s traveling more, too. It’s a deliberate effort on her part to enjoy her money and reject the trauma she’s developed after experiencing poverty in her childhood. “I live in constant fear of being broke. I don’t think you ever don’t remember that trauma or move past that. Now I travel and I’m like, listen, if it goes, it goes. I’m not saying [to] be reckless, but I deserve to enjoy my hard work.”
After everything she’s been through, she certainly deserves to finally let loose a bit. “I have to have a life to live,” she says. “I’ve got to have a life worth fighting for.”
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Director of Content: Jasmine Grant
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Photographer: Ally Green
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If you’re experiencing a bit of quitter’s remorse, here are a few tips on how to ask for your job back with your pride intact:
blackCat/Getty Images
1. Be sure you’ve weighed the pros and cons of going back to a former employer.
Maybe the new job you quit the old one for just didn’t stand up to the interview hype, or you just miss your old gig and coworkers. Write down all the benefits and possible pitfalls of going back. Will you have to settle for less money? Did you leave the company on good terms? Is this something that will advance your career? Do you just need the money to pay your bills? (In that case, you might want to just consider applying for a whole new job elsewhere.) Before asking for that job back, be sure you’re aware of all outcomes of your decision.
I once considered going back to an old job after hitting a slump early in my self-employment journey. After talking with a few friends I still had in the industry, they highly recommended that I push through and find other ways to bring in money while boosting my client roster. Looking back, it was the best decision not to return to an old job because I would not have the flexibility or job satisfaction I have today as a digital nomad, nor would I be earning the money I am today.
2. Reframe the ask.
To ensure you’re not coming off desperate, be sure to start off by emailing your former employer or HR department, briefly detailing what you loved about the position or company, and expressing that, after some reflection, you’d be interested in reconnecting to be rehired.
Xavier Lorenzo/Getty Images
3. Request a meeting to discuss your options.
This is a good idea since you can better pitch yourself to get back into the fold with an in-person or phone conversation. It’s much more personal, and you can really let your former manager or HR rep know the details of why you want to come back and why you would be an asset to the company if you did. This is especially important if your position hasn’t already been filled, if you took major contacts or connections with you when you left, or to leverage better pay or benefits this time around.
4. Be authentic and honest.
Oftentimes, people respect honesty, especially company leaders, with integrity. I once resigned from a job, thinking I was going to pursue higher education full-time. I didn’t want to have to juggle my studies with holding down a job that I really loved and wanted to give my all to. After a bit of thought, I decided that missing out on the opportunity to really thrive in that role and continue the work I’d been doing just wasn’t worth quitting to go back to school full-time, so I was honest, and I got the job back. My manager was very encouraging and actually was happy I’d asked to rejoin the team. If you left the job due to what you thought would be a good life pivot or for reasons that are positive, just keep it real with your former manager and allow them the chance to offer understanding and grace.
5. If the position has been filled, apply for another one.
Many companies keep employee files in their systems for quite some time after someone resigns, and there may be other opportunities for you to get your foot back in the door. If you find that your position has already been filled, apply for another position with your former department or another department altogether, either through your former company’s HR portal or via a recruiter. Talk to your former colleagues or industry friends and find out about what’s available. They might even be able to give you a heads-up when a position is opening that’s perfect for your comeback.
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