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Does who you are in life have to be who you are in bed? Or does who you are in bed have to be representative of who you are in life? Many, many people would respond with a resounding “No,” to both questions. The best sex is always the sex in which you feel free. Every other part of your day, from your work to your time with friends to simply grocery shopping, comes with limitations. Expectations. There’s a certain way people expect you to be in many situations. And, there’s a certain way you want to appear in most situations. So the beauty of sex can be – or should be – that it’s a time to relinquish any expectations you have of yourself, or that your partner has of you. It can be time to play and push the normal boundaries of who you are.
All of this is leading to what you might have guessed: role play! Role play allows you to play out certain parts of your personality that are usually downplayed or suppressed. It allows you to be a certain way, for a little while, without any commitment to being that way all of the time. It’s exploratory and exciting. It can also, of course, get a little awkward sometimes when not everyone is entirely sure what is going on. The moment you bring in costumes and new identities, things can get confusing. Here are ways role play can go terribly wrong.
When a fake nurse finds a real problem
If you’re going to play nurse or doctor, you might want to start with a physical exam. Maybe a rectal exam. You want to really get in there, and have your partner bend over and take his pants off. You might have even purchased a little stethoscope. But when your partner is in a compromising position and you’re feeling around down there just “Checking for abnormalities” or “Large masses,” you may find an actual mass. Or lump. Or growth. Or mole. Or rash. Now the mood is kind of ruined because you’re genuinely worried about this abnormality you found on your partner’s body, and think he should go get that checked out.
The maid does real cleaning
Any good little maid costume comes with a little duster. It’s a real duster, too, that can actually remove dust. And as you’re playfully running it across banisters and TV stands while doing a seductive dance, you might realize that there really is a lot of dust in your home. Ew. It’s like everywhere. It’s caked on. Now you’re coughing because you stirred it all up. And now you’re arguing with your partner about how you said you two really should just hire a real housekeeper because the place is disgusting. And now you’re arguing because each person thinks they’re too busy to clean, and the other is insulted at the suggestion that they aren’t busy.
When the costume is too realistic
While authenticity can bring the scenario to life, some genuine uniforms are actually a bit harder to play with than just the costumer version. A sexy police officer costume has little more than a zippered leotard with some pretend badges of honor, a faux gun holster, and very easy-to-use handcuffs that go on and off with the press of a button. If you take things too real and get an actual police officer uniform, you’ll be amazed at how long it takes to remove every single holster and belt and button, and how that really kills the vibe. Oh, and the real handcuffs kind of hurt, and are impossible to get off if you lose that pesky key.
This isn’t a costume
If you’re into fashion and like to take some stylistic risks, sometimes your partner will mistake your real outfit for your costume, and launch right into dirty talk. Like the time a partner mistook my cute (so I thought) outfit for a “sexy British investigative journalist” costume and started making comments about the mystery I was solving. I wasn’t in costume. I was just wearing a tasteful beige plaid full-length romper with a flowy white blouse under it and glasses and oh I see it now. My partner basically accidentally roasted my style. The tiny notebook I carry around didn’t help.
When sexy talk gets too technical
If you’re going to dive into the world of particularly smart professionals, like playing nurse and doctor or scientist and assistant, remember that it’s okay if you don’t know the actual terminology. You don’t actually have to remember the name of every tool you’re hypothetically using and virus you’re hypothetically studying. Definitely don’t try to work words like “heliocentrism” or “prophylaxis” into your dirty talk because you’ll all be stuttering and Googling things before you can move the dialogue along. It can help to be the one leading the charge, and just have a few simple lines ready. If your partner corrects you, just gag him.
Being a stickler for accuracy
If you’re going to go the historical route, like getting costumes from certain famous periods in history when bloodletting and jousting was still a thing, try not to get too caught up in the accuracy of it all. So if your partner references driving there in his car, but it’s the 1800s and there are no cars yet, you don’t have to mention that. Sometimes, storylines get intermixed during role play. Or if your partner wants to do it one time with a handmaiden before going off to war, but references the wrong war, that’s okay. It turns out that you don’t need to stop and correct them on these details.
When sexism ruins it
Sexism is built into many of the most popular roleplay costumes. The nurse and doctor game usually involves a female nurse costume and a male nurse costume. Or the CEO and secretary one has a male CEO costume and female secretary costume. The fireman fantasy has a male costume for the fireman and a female costume for the…person being saved? It is all a little antiquated. And it can lead to some arguments about gender norms, the gender pay gap, gender inequality, and the inherent sexism in the patriarchy. It can lead to those arguments. But you may want to ask yourself if sexy time is really the time to get into that.
Too much backstory
If you’re going to play a hot farmer’s daughter hooking up with a cowboy passing through town for the night, you don’t really need to give the specifics of how you get the bigger bedroom now because your older sibling died from polio and that you have the house all to yourselves because your father is at the vet with a cow that had complications during labor. Yeah, you can skip all that. A surprisingly little amount of backstory is needed to get into roleplay. Nobody will test you in the hopes you have an airtight story.
When it’s cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation, like sexism, is unfortunately embedded in some of the most popular roleplay costumes as well. You know the ones. We’ll spare you the specifics. But if your partner gives you, for example, a headdress and your ancestry makes it entirely inappropriate for you to wear one…it may or may not be time for a lecture on that. Maybe spare the poor sales associate at the sex shop the lecture on how wrong the costumes are. She’s getting paid minimum wage and has to deal with men coming in to “sample” the lube in the adult video section. She deals with enough.
Whose role is it anyway?
If you decide to play college student and hot professor, or doctor and patient, or cop and prisoner, just make it clear in advance who is playing who. If you accidentally both dress up as professors, you’ll suddenly be trying to make a peer review or discussion about tenure sexy. If you’re both a patient, there will be a lot of confused self-diagnosing going on. And if you’re both the cop, it will be very difficult to decide who the dominant and submissive one is. There will just be a lot of yelling going on. If you’re both handcuffed, who is going to undo the handcuffs?
