I was wandering around Paris one afternoon, doing a bit of window shopping, when something in the window of a sex shop caught my eye. It was some lingerie I thought was super chic, so naturally, I went inside for a closer look.
I was browsing the lingerie section when I noticed a group of young women laughing outside the window. They were pointing in at me, not particularly discreetly.
And to reiterate, I wasn't holding anything outrageous. I wasn't standing there contemplating some enormous piece of equipment. I was looking at black lace.
Just black lace. The sort of thing you could find in every department common store.
Still, I felt my face getting hot. I suddenly became extremely aware of myself. Of where I was standing. Of what I was looking at. Of the fact that, from the street, these women could see me shopping in a sex shop.
Which is objectively funny, because they couldn't possibly have known anything about me. Maybe I was a stylist. Maybe I was buying a gift. Maybe I was doing a very committed bit of window shopping.
But I knew, I was there because I wanted to be.
And somehow, that was embarrassing? I remember being genuinely shocked by how quickly the shame arrived.
This was Paris, after all.
Paris!
The city of Moulin Rouge and tiny balconies and women smoking cigarettes in impossibly shoes. The city I'd mentally filed under sexually liberated, obviously.
And yet there I was, feeling like a teenager caught looking at something I wasn't supposed to.
And the thing is, I don't think I'm particularly prudish. Quite the opposite.
I'm the friend who will happily ask, “Wait, which XXX wax salon do you go to?” over coffee. If one of my friends tells me she's bought a new vibrator, I'm not clutching my pearls. I'm asking which one.
I love when women tell me what they like. I love the weird little details of people's private lives. I love hearing about someone's particular flavour of pleasure, or the thing they bought that they were initially too embarrassed to buy.
And I'm always cheering. Not because I think everyone should like the same things. Quite the opposite.
Because I like that there are so many different ways to be a person.
So why did I suddenly feel so embarrassed when I was the one being observed?
Maybe there's a difference between being sexually open with your people and being visibly open in public. Maybe we're much more comfortable with the idea of sexual freedom than we are with being seen actually participating in it.
I don't know.
And this was *just before* Chérie Hurts existed, which makes the memory feel slightly more significant now.
Because somewhere between that Parisian shop window and starting this business, I started thinking a lot more about the strange little category of things we keep hidden.
The things we put in drawers.
The things we buy with our heads down.
The things we joke about with our girlfriends but suddenly feel awkward about when someone else might notice.
And I think that's part of what I wanted Chérie Hurts to play with. Not making sex feel shocking, but not making it feel overly serious, either. Just making these things feel a little more like things.
Objects you can be curious about. Objects you can have an opinion on. Objects that can be beautiful, funny, colourful, slightly ridiculous, and maybe even worthy of taking up a little space in your life.
Because I still think about those women in Paris. (ugh.)
I wonder what they were laughing at.
I wonder if they were actually judging me, or if they were just being silly with each other and I happened to be standing in the window.
And, honestly, I hope it was the latter.
The funny thing was, there was nothing particularly shocking about what I was doing. I was just browsing the lingerie section, looking at things I could have easily been looking at in any other shop.
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