These Celebs Aren't Afraid To Get Real About Masturbation

Wanking, tossing off, flicking the bean - whatever you call it, around 95% of men and 89% of women admit to masturbating and yet, for some reason, it’s still a taboo subject when it comes to actually talking about it.

Masturbation is totally natural, normal, safe and let’s be honest, just great. You can’t go blind, it won’t stunt your growth and you won’t get hairy palms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with knocking one out every now and then. In fact, it can actually help you relax and even improve your sex life because, the better you know your own body, the better you can know how to enjoy sex. Basically, yay masturbation!

With that in mind, it’s high time it became a bit more acceptable to talk about something that we pretty much all do, a lot, so we’ve rounded up a few celebs who aren’t afraid to talk about a little bit of self-love to get the conversation going:

Miley Cyrus

Obvs Miley is top of this list. Whether it’s masturbating via FaceTime for her Interview Magazine cover shoot, in her Adore You video (it’s no secret what’s going on there…) or all over her Insta, Miley is never afraid to get very open about masturbation, and that’s just one of the many reasons we love her.

Shailene Woodley

Sex-positive actor Shailene has some pretty wise words to share about the value of knowing your body and speaking to Porter, encourages women in particular to get to know their bodies: "As a young woman you don’t learn how to pleasure yourself, you don’t learn what an orgasm should be, you don’t learn that you should have feelings of satisfaction. 

"I’ve always had a dream of making a book called There’s No Right Way to Masturbate," she added. Can't wait to read it tbh. 

Emma Watson

As a feminist, Emma is all about encouraging women and men to think about female pleasure and in a talk last year with Gloria Steinem, revealed that she's a big fan of OMGYES.com - a website that's all about teaching people about women's sexual pleasure through videos and instructional tutorials. 

"It's based on research, which is a complete study on female sexuality," Emma said. "It's a pretty cool website. I wish it had been around longer. Definitely check it out. It's an expensive subscription, but worth it."

Anna Kendrick

THIS tweet has us in stiches and, yep she probably didn’t actually do this - but we love it all the same.

Taylor Momsen

The singer is an oracle of wise words when it comes to breaking down the taboos around masturbation and female pleasure. Chatting to The Guardian, Taylor said: "I'm a promoter of masturbation. Don't sleep around—learn yourself first!

"Guys do, but girls don't. And that's why girls have so many bad experiences. But you can know your body, know yourself, know what feels good. You don't have to give yourself away just to have sexual relevance. Because I don't think sex is something people should be afraid of. It's part of human nature, so I don't think it should be so shameful—particularly for girls and young girls."

HELL YES, Little J. 

Gina Rodriguez

The Jane the Virgin actress can be relied upon to keep it pretty real when chatting about masturbation and in a recent interview with Bust, said: "In all honesty, I used to feel guilty for masturbating. Oh my God, this extreme guilt! And that lasted way too long. Or maybe I masturbated too much!"

But now she has a healthier mindset about solo sex thanks to a few realisations that wanking isn't that much of a biggie: "It’s okay to look back in retrospect and be like, it wasn't good that I felt bad about touching myself," she said.

Aubrey Plaza

Speaking to Conan about that scene in The To Do List, Aubrey Plaza confessed that things may have been a bit more real than you’d expect. She says she was expecting a simple shot where her hand moves down out of screen but found out that this wasn’t the case. “I asked the director what should I do and she said, 'masturbate, like it says in the script.’” Fair enough.

James Franco

Is anyone really surprised that James Franco doesn’t mind talking about masturbation? Pretty much one of the most open guys around, James confessed that: “I'm in hotels a lot for a lot of my life. And I don't mind it because I have a lot of stuff to do on my own. I have a lot of reading to do for school or whatever.... You asked! So, when I'm alone, I do masturbate a lot.” Gotta kill the time somehow!

Eva Longoria

Eva is a massive advocate for masturbation, so much so that she even buys her friends vibrators for their birthday. Speaking to Contact she said: “I was working on a movie and knew I'd be there for a month, so I used my per diem to buy a vibrator. I didn't begin enjoying sex until I started masturbating...It's a shame I didn't discover it sooner...Everybody should [masturbate].” Preacccccch.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Speaking of vibrator gifts; Maggie has taken talking about masturbation one step further and actually starred in Hysteria, a film about how the vibrator was first invented to cure women of “hysteria”. By the time the film was finished Maggie said she’d been sent so many vibrators that she had to starting giving them out to her friends.

Daniel Radcliffe

When talking to Playboy, Daniel found himself discussing what it was like growing up on the set of Harry Potter, and if there’s one thing we all discover when growing up, its masturbation. Daniel said that, of course, he did discover masturbation around the time they were filming but that he never did it on set, “I wasn't going, ‘When is Alan Rickman [Professor Snape] going to nail this scene so I can run back to my trailer?’” he said. Sureeeee.

So there you have it. A big shout out to these super open celebs who aren’t afraid to talk about something that we really should feel more conformable talking about, so let’s all take a leaf out of this lot’s books and start opening up. Later though, we’re off to ummm, have some alone time now.