What It's Really Like to Be an Award-Winning Sex Toy Critic and a Mom

By: Cheryl Wischhover

Cara Sutra, 34, went from being a stay-at-home-mom in the U.K. to running a popular website featuring original erotica and sex toy reviews. She has won awards for her erotic journalism and estimates that she owns about 2,500 sex toys.

I used to work in a bank and I stopped because I had a baby. I found I couldn’t support working with a baby, because of child care costs and everything. So I was a stay-at-home mum, and I wanted to have a hobby that was just for me. I was online and chatting with my friends on a forum and one of them was an Ann Summers rep [a U.K.-based company that sells sex toys and parties]. She said she was on this really good forum called Lovehoney. I went on to the Lovehoney chat forum, and it was a place where you can be open about your sex life and what you’re into in a friendly environment. I noticed a lot of people on there had blogs where they would review sex toys and I thought, Well, this is something I can get into! That was about six or seven years ago.

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I’ve always liked writing anyway. English was my strong subject at school, so I started this blog. I did some initial posts on toys I already owned as well as some other posts on my sex life and what I was into. It was very amateur. When the baby was asleep in the afternoon, for a couple hours, I’d write up a little post or review. Lovehoney noticed I was writing these reviews because I would talk about it on the forum, and they offered to send me some products for the purposes of review and it just snowballed from there. My partner I’m with now is a web developer so he’s helped me with the technical parts. I’m not into coding and all that. He’s helped me make [my website] a very presentable platform.

I’ve always been honest about what I do. I don’t find any shame in owning sex toys. Ever since I was 18, I’ve gone to home sex toy parties and thought it was fun. I’ve never seen a problem using sex toys or introducing them to a partner. I’ve been with people who are OK with me saying, “How about we try this together?” whether it’s a cock ring or a vibrator. I’ve never been OK with somebody who wasn’t accepting of me having a full solo sex life. Men masturbate a lot and it’s always been seen as fine for them to do it, but if women do it, the world can sometimes see it as a shameful thing. That’s odd to me. It should be a positive thing, no matter what your gender.

I am into the kink scene and I also write erotic posts, which is the fantasy element of [my website], things which haven’t happened yet, but never say never! They are things that I just think are sexy and hopefully I write them up in a way that readers think is sexy as well. If they’re in my sex diary, it will be things that have happened to me. They might be jacked up a bit because you have creative license when you’re writing, and maybe in reality the bedroom was full of laundry to be done, which isn’t so sexy [laughs].

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My first child is going to be 10 this year, and I was with a different partner then. I’ve left him, and I’ve got a second child with the partner I’m with now. I wasn’t married. It was a committed relationship though. My partner I was with when I had my first child wasn’t kinky, although we had a good sex life. The partner I’m with now is into the kink scene with me, so we’re more compatible on both a sexual and kink level.

I’m open about my job, but it’s not something that I go and advertise on the school playground. I talk about so-called normal things like the cake sale or what we’re doing on the weekend. But if people ask what I do I say, “I write and I help promote products and I’m in the adult product industry.” I find it usually gets a good reaction.

My kids are obviously shielded. I don’t have sex toys lying all around the house because I don’t think it’s appropriate. I use sex toys the way any other adult does. They’re under my bed and they’re in the privacy of our bedroom with the rest of our love life. The ones I take pictures of for the purposes of review are in a separate office and it’s locked when I’m not in it. My oldest child knows not to come into the office because it’s our adult work space.

Most of the sex toys are in the storage room of my office because I can’t fit them in my bedroom. I normally have five to eight that I’m using on a regular basis at any one time. The rest of them are inboxes in storage. I’m thinking [I have] about 2,500 all together now. A lot of them are really pretty. Some of them you can almost see as ornaments — beautiful glass butt plugs and things. You can use it as a paperweight [laughs]!

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My favorite sex toys are the Doxy Massager Wand, the iGino One, and the Palm Power Swan Wand. The Doxy is the U.K. version of the Hitachi wand, but it’s much more powerful. I have a thing for wands. The iGino actually looks like a white iPhone. You take the cap off and it’s got a little nub at the end. It’s USB rechargeable.

I’m actually planning to write a book this year, which will be on the subject of digital marketing to the adult industry specifically. Hopefully it will help startups out there that are trying to [start] a sex toy or shop. They can’t go to the run-of-the-mill marketing company because there are things that are not allowed in the adult industry, which are allowed everywhere else. There are certain key words that only someone in the industry would know are important. I’m trying to get that together.

I’ve also got a bondage kit that I’ve created that’s for sale at the moment called Fantasy by CaraSutra. I think there’s a lot of negativity about Fifty Shades of Grey from people who were already in the kink scene. I read all three books myself and to me it’s a love story that has a little element of kink. I don’t necessarily think it was a brilliantly written book, but I do think it was good for putting BDSM into the spotlight, instead of BDSM being a seedy underground activity that only weird people do. And it’s made people more likely to be a bit more adventurous in the bedroom, which can only be a good thing. You don’t have to go whole hog and have a dungeon.

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