How Sex-Positive Instagrammers Are Changing the Internet

How do you change the way the world looks at women and sex? One selfie at a time. Meet six badass Instagrammers with thousands of followers using the app to create a sex-positive movement. Their posts are shattering the norms, starting difficult conversations, and yes, occasionally getting censored. Up first, Lena Dunham interviews Insta-sex pioneer Kiara Delacroix about how she cultivated her online persona. Then, keep reading to meet five more sex-positive Instagrammers as they get real about why they’ve taken up the cause, advice they think is worth reposting, and what true sexual power looks like to them.

Kiara Dela­croix, 26, @eatingboys

What really makes a sex-positive Instagrammer tick? Lena Dunham sat down with Kiara Delacroix to find out.

At first glance the Instagram of @eatingboys (the Insta-moniker of 26-year-old Kiara Dela­croix, a name that itself is a pseudonym of sorts) appears to be a portal into the inner sanctum of an anime sex object. Colors are brighter, lips are wetter, and standard emotions—heartbreak, rage, jealousy—are translated into witty, barbed captions. But at the center of this curated universe, where milky self-portraits commingle with screen grabs of The Virgin Suicides and empowered former porn performer Sasha Grey, is Delacroix herself: thoughtful, thrillingly odd, with as much wit as she has porcelain cleavage and Bambi eyelashes. She also has a flair for subverting her own image, with a selfie of Catholic-school-inspired sexiness captioned “Patron Saint of ‘please don’t let me be pregnant.’ ” To quote the kids, LOLOLOL. I recently got dumplings and ginger ale with Delacroix, whom I’d connected with over Instagram, to discuss the dualities of art, sexuality, and what men expect after they slide into her DMs.

Lena Dunham: Can you explain to the readers of Glamour how your EatingBoys persona differs from who you are in real life?

Kiara Delacroix: My Instagram is all those thoughts I can’t express in real life to friends, and it’s where I show very submissive sides of myself. In my day job [something Delacroix doesn’t reveal, but it’s not in the arts], I have to be direct, and pretend to be more powerful than I am. I’m OK with not showing this [softer] side of myself at work, because it wouldn’t help me pro­gress in any way. On the Internet I can say, “Hey, I’m soft. Treat me gently.”

LD: But there’s a trick in there: You’re showing your submissive side, but you’re also in complete control of your image.

KD: Yes. I’m submissive, but only because I’m allowing you to treat me submissively.

LD: Do you feel as though your Instagram community really understands you? Because it’d be easy for someone to be like, “Hot girl with big eyes and gorgeous boobs.”

KD: The message definitely flies over some people’s heads. Some people are like, “Oh, this is just a slut Instagram. And I’m here to see boobs.” But then someone commented, “Came for the boobs, stayed for the weirdness.”

LD: That’s amazing. “Came for the boobs, stayed for the weirdness!” I want that on a T-shirt. How do you make the images you post?

KD: I usually take the photos with my phone or my computer. I’ll take, like, 10 and see which one looks best. My bedroom is like a photo studio: I have a white wall, a gray wall, and a pink wall, and soft lights that I got on Amazon.

LD: You recently posted one where you’ve hiked up a “Hollywood” T-shirt to reveal your bra. What was the thinking there?

KD: You know how everybody was posting pictures when they changed the Hollywood sign? In architecture, topography is the way that the land behaves. So I was like, “My boobs are the topography for this sign.”

LD: They really are. For me, being naked on television—and being naked in a way that I control—is really empowering. It’s allowed me to reclaim my body. Do you feel empowered taking these images of yourself?

KD: I do. Because, if you really look at my In­stagram, I never show much skin, except for my cleavage—

LD: It’s so true. You also make faces that could imply you’re experiencing sexual pleasure but could also imply something else. It’s all about what people read into it.

KD: Yeah! That, to me, is the most amazing part: I’ve created this sexual character with zero nudity. I identify a lot with Holly­wood’s idea of artificial intelligence: Samantha in Her, Ava in Ex Machina, and Lisa in Weird Science. Each was created for a male protagonist but inevitably became self-aware and evolved past the guys. At first my following was mostly boys, and I liked the validation. But once I started posting introspective, sometimes self-deprecating content, that’s when my popularity grew.

LD: Do you feel like the guys you date, especially ones you meet online, expect you to be this wild and crazy sex lunatic?

KD: Actually, guys that I have met on the Internet usually say, “This is exactly what I pictured. I knew you were gonna be a prude.”

LD: No way!

KD: They’re like, “I knew you were all talk.” First date, I’ll be like, he’s expecting some version of me, so I have to play up the EatingBoys part. But then, after we start dating, he’ll be like, “Is this EatingBoys or is this Kiara talking?” It always becomes this thing: “Calm down, EatingBoys. I want to talk to Kiara right now.”

LD: “Calm down, EatingBoys.” I think that’s the most perfect ending we could have imagined.

Lena Dunham is a writer, actress, and director living in New York City.

Shannon Boodram, 31, @shanboody

When Shannon Boodram, a sexologist, author, and YouTuber, started out, “my mom said boys were going to masturbate to my work,” she says. “Now she’s my biggest supporter.” And about this picture? The matching necklaces are actually vibrators. “My partner and I wear them to say, ‘I’m not ashamed of what makes me feel good.’ It works for us, and I always try to represent myself in an accessible way, but you shouldn’t look at somebody else as a ­sexual-empowerment role model. Instead, it should be ‘That’s cool, they figured out what works for them, now I feel empowered to see what works for me.’ It’s not all going to be the same.” —Alanna Lauren Greco

Eileen Kelly, 21, @killerandasweetthang

“I lost my mom young, so I had to figure out puberty on my own,” says Eileen Kelly, founder of the site killerandasweethang.com. “That shifted to an interest in sex and sexual health. All my friends would come to me with questions! I realized talking about that stuff is what I love to do.” Now Kelly is on a mission to guide millennials and Gen Z-ers navigating their sexuality in the digital age. “There is so much misconstrued information out there,” she says. Her feed clears it up, on subjects from vagina maintenance (don’t douche) to abstinence-only sex ed (it’s ineffective). “In this image I’m not in sexy lingerie; it’s a training bra I got when I was 15. But it’s something I’m comfortable in; knowing exactly what I want and am comfortable with makes me feel sexually powerful.”
—A.L.G.

Torraine Futurum, 21, @torraine

Around three years ago, model and artist Torraine Futurum, who is trans, decided she wanted to “push beyond what is deemed respectable” on social media. Now her feed is sprinkled with provocative images—sometimes playfully censored with emoji. “I get lots of enthusiastic comments,” she says. “I have insecurities about my face and body, but the most recent person I dated made me feel like the hottest girl. They helped me become more confident, and this portrait shows that. It’s my internal spirit: Black Panther Barbie. It’s a mix of being hyperfeminine but also able to bite someone’s head off if I need to.” —A.L.G.

Karley Sciortino, 31, @karleyslutever

­Ten years ago, feeling that an honest conversation about female sexuality was missing online, Karley Sciortino founded slutever.com. “Pre-Instagram, depictions of female bodies were airbrushed pictures and idealistic sex in Hollywood movies,” she remembers. “Now women are saying, ‘This is the way I actually am.’ I admire women who are being overtly sexual on Instagram because there’s an amazing reverence in posting slutty photos of yourself in a way that’s self-aware. You can’t be slut-shamed if you don’t care. My feed plays with provocative imagery, and the image of me in animal print reminds me of something that Samantha Jones [on Sex and the City] would wear—to this day she’s my sex power icon.” —A.L.G.

Vex Ashley, 27, @vextape

Vex Ashley was an art school student and “camgirl” before founding, in 2013, Four Chambers, an independent creative porn project whose films are as stylized and artistic as they are titillating. The same can be said of Ashley’s Instagram, where she posts film stills and erotic selfies. “This image is me on set,” she says. “I can put my sexuality on film in my own way, and it’s taught me to be more confident and communicate better in bed. I’ve gotten good at asking for what I want. I hope that sharing my work encourages more people to explore sex in a way that’s personal to them.” —A.L.G.