24. booty revolution: horizontal with a youtube star

This is Meghan Tonjes.

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24. booty revolution: horizontal with a youtube star

Welcome in to season two. Horizontal is the podcast about intimacy – sex, love, and relationships of all kinds – that’s entirely recorded while lying down. We were on hiatus while I made a 15,000 mile solo road trip, circumnavigating the US on a tour I called “horizontal does america.”

Meghan:  I grew up in a house with someone who was very charming, but very deceptive, and … there’s something in me that’s reliving that, trying to have a different ending than my mom did.

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Meghan:  There’s one person that I never even slept with, but, we became much more— we would sext a lot and it became much more like, sending photos, and that was something I’d never done before but it was like— it felt so empowering, ‘cause I would send him these photos and then he would just like, die over them.

Lila:  Mmm.

Meghan:  And it would make me— it made me feel so good and so sexual and so powerful and so I’ve noticed that like now when I go into other situations, that’s something that I carry in with me is like I always want to like send photos and like do all these things before anyone else even does it, and like, I almost crave that, like I would almost, before we ever sleep together, sext, and see, and figure out like, that buildup.

Lila:  Like if he can talk you through…

Meghan:  Yeah, there’s something about it, like something, if like a guy can— can—

Lila:  —an arousal—

Meghan:  —yeah, like describe, describe things that he wants to do to me and that he— I— he wants me to do to him. For me it’s like, that is the foreplay. Like that, really gets me going.

Lila:  Have you found that, when someone— because in my, when I’ve had that, when someone’s written me a story of what they— how they’re gonna do the thing and what they’re gonna do and where they’re gonna touch and how hard they’re gonna grab and— and— it doesn’t wind up being that way.

Meghan:  Yeah. Yeah I think, yeah, sometimes it is better in the sext than it ever— I mean that person that I really did that with, we never ended up sleeping together. He kind of just kept ghosting me, and then he’d be in a relationship with someone else, and then he’d come back and then he’d ghost me again. There’s a pattern in my life. And he was so— but he was so attractive and like even recently, he’s like sent me photos and stuff and I’ll go on Facebook and I’ll see there’s a girl that definitely thinks she’s dating him — even though he says he’s single on Facebook because she’ll post all these photos saying like, “My love” and “So happy”—

Lila:  Ohhh.

Meghan:  Yeah.

Lila:  And he’s sexting you—

Meghan: And he’s like sexting me or sending me things—

Lila:  Oh! Well that brings up this really great important question that people are not so much talking about that Esther Perel brings up in, in her Ted Talk on infidelity. [link] The thing is: What is cheating?

Meghan: Yeah.

Lila:  What is cheating and … if we don’t talk with our partners about it which, I don’t think I’ve ever had a talk with any of my partners about what constitutes cheating for me—

Meghan:  Yeah.

Lila:  —and what constitutes cheating for them. Because y— then you can’t, you can’t calibrate, right, you’re just sort of guessing according to your intuitive sense or your moral compass of wrongness— what is not okay.

Meghan:  Yeah.

Lila:  Is sexting cheating? Is sending a photo, clothed, to someone, with the intent to flirt with them, cheating?

Meghan:  Is sending a video of you touching yourself cheating, (chortles) because that’s what he sent me! (laughs)

Lila:  Is sending a video of you masturbating, cheating? I think a lot of people would say: Sending a video of yourself masturbating is cheating … sexting nude photos is cheating … and I think there would be a divide over whether people thought that just, you know, continually trading photos, selfies of you in your life, is cheating.

 

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In this episode, I lie down with my dear friend Meghan Tonjes, YouTube sensation, singer-songwriter, accidental leader of the booty revolution, Instagram darling, podcaster, and body-positive role model. I first met Meghan when she visited the Villa to interview us as the host of Sex-ish, a documentary TV series produced by Morgan Spurlock’s company, that will hopefully grace your screen … one fine day.

Meghan is a warrior of deep intimacy and vulnerability, sharing so candidly about her internal emotional landscape as well as her external physical landscape, that she clears a path for the rest of us to do the same. For all things Tonjes, including her music, podcasts, and extremely articulate YouTube rants, find her on meghantonjes.com 

This episode was recorded while horizontal in Meghan’s bed at her home in Los Angeles, California, about seven months before I went on the road. In the first half, we talk about sexting, how I met my partner, the feelings ambush, getting disowned, and her grandma, who was her person.

The second half will be released next week, by popular demand.

C’mon darling. Come lie down with us.

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Links to Things:

The horizontal storytelling pajama party, first in a series of live horizontal events!

The story of the booty revolution. Also here on Refinery 29 and here on Upworthy. And also, there’s this article, titled “Instagram Did Not Fat-Shame Meghan Tonjes. The Music Industry Did.” (I think they both did— but the author makes a strong point about the expectations constricting American female singers.)

Meghantonjes.com, for all things Tonjes

Esther Perel’s Ted Talk on infidelity

What is Circling?

Connection Camp, a summer camp for adult humans produced by The Connection Movement’s Amy Silverman

Meghan’s roommate and podcast collaborator, Keith

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Show Notes (feel free to share quotes/resources on social media, and please link to iTunes, this website, or my Patreon!):

iTunes link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/horizontal-with-lila/id1238031115&ls=1

website link: https://horizontalwithlila.com/

Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

[5:58]  What did Meghan learn about sex, growing up in Michigan?

[7:13]

Meghan:  The moment that I really remember was — I had these sliding window doors in my room and I remember kind of like opening my legs and looking into the window or the, uh, the mirror, and, having my book and then trying to figure out the different parts and I remember touching my clitoris for the first time, and I think I like instantly peed! Like my body just didn’t know what to do, I was like, “What is this! What happened?” And uh— (Lila laughs) I just like, I so clearly remember like how confused I was, like looking at my face and then looking at my vagina and then looking back at my face. (Meghan laughs)

Lila:  How old were you?

Meghan:  Probably like 11. Maybe 11. I think I was — I don’t know if I was 12 yet.

Lila:  Did you pee on the floor?

[8:00]  The Spice Channel on Meghan’s childhood TV. What sex toy infomercial does Meghan remember most clearly?

[9:45]  Meghan’s sibling dynamic with her brother.

[10:42]  

Meghan:  So I didn’t start having sex ‘til I was 26. So I’m still pretty— I’m 31 now. I’m still pretty much in the beginning phases I feel like.

Lila:  So five years of experience.

Meghan:  Yeah, and a lot of just like casual sex experience too, so now I’m for the first time I’m starting to get into the, “Oh I feel things for you and there’s a sexual connection, we— how do I balance that?” Which is, is— I feel like I’m going through a lot of things that people went through in their 20s, but I have the mindset of a 30 year-old, and so it’s very confusing.

Lila:  Oh my god.

Meghan:  To feel and to think on two different levels.

[11:15]  On virginity.

Lila:  I was 19.

Meghan: Hmm.

Lila:  So it was later than a lot of the people that I knew and certainly when I got to college, most people kinda just—

Meghan:  Yeah, went for it.

Lila:  Went in right away and … and I was waiting … for it to feel right and it never really did but—

Meghan:  —yeah—

Lila:  —but I did it anyway because I just wanted to … be an adult? You know, feel like an adult and that seemed like an important thing.

Meghan:  Did you feel like an adult afterwards, ‘cause I feel like I woke up the next morning and I was like, “Oh! That’s it?” Like I couldn’t figure out if—

Lila:  I had that. I had that reaction. “That’s it?”

Meghan:  I couldn’t figure out if there was like a, I was like, “Is there supposed to be some shift that happens?” ‘Cause I just … I don’t know what I felt. I don’t know if I felt like a little less than before, but I just didn’t feel what I imagined I would feel.

Lila:  I f—

Meghan:  I just felt like it’s another day and, okay that happened, and now I don’t have that “virginity” anymore, that’s something that I don’t have anymore.

Lila:  I felt disillusioned.

Meghan:  Yeah…

[12:16]  The story of Lila’s virginity.

Lila:  I had … a very similar experience, and it was with someone that I was infatuated with but who was unavailable to me. He … he’d started a business when he was in college and, you know, been this young entrepreneur, hotshot, with this company, with three or four other guys and made a bunch of money, and they sold the company, and then he— he had this loft in Soho and I was very impressed with him and he was very (sigh) physically beautiful in this (sigh) it’s not stereotypical, that’s the word that’s coming to mind, it’s in … the mold … that I liked. […] He was blond hair, like dirty blond hair and blue eyes, he had this goatee, all things that I really like, you know, to this day. […] And I was— he had a life that looked so good to me, right, he had this loft and he had beautiful furniture and he was a foodie, and he would take me— I had fois gras for the first time with him, I had an omakase tasting menu at a sushi restaurant with him for the first time, so it … was … it felt like this elevation of my life. […] You know, and it felt so classy. And then once he, he— he wouldn’t hold my hand on the street, because he didn’t want people to know that we were … romantic. And I guess maybe people might have thought … I don’t know, sister or a friend, you know, so that people m— might … wouldn’t mistake it. And I felt s— always so hurt by that, that he just, he’s like, “Yeah, I just don’t like holding hands,” and I know that that’s not true because years later, when… we… we would maybe periodically when both of us weren’t seeing someone get back together and we would sleep together and I would be reminded of, Oh it doesn’t really work. It’s not really that good with us. I am attracted to him and he smells good to me, I’m— excited and, and he, you know, bites me in the way that I remember and all that’s good but when we … the intimacy isn’t there. (laughs in a strained way) I very clearly remember how … I brought— I showed up at his door one day with a pint of strawberries … and he was like, “Oh, Thanks!” And he took them and he ground them up in his protein shake. (laughs bemusedly)

Meghan:  (laughs sympathetically) Ohhh, no! Nooo! What a metaphor for that relationship.

Lila:  It was exactly that relationship. You know, I wanted us to feed them to each other—

Meghan:  (giggles) He’s like, “Hold on. Let me destroy this.”

Lila:  (makes grinding noise) Rrrrrrrrrrr. He’s like, “I got this new Vitamix!” Rrrrrrr.

Meghan: No! No!

[17:29]

Lila:  My friend just went to Lamu island and he said that that’s where all the “cool kids” are going now, instead of Tulum, except that it’s covered in donkey shit and flies, (giggles) and he said that he f— (giggles) that he feels like it’s this great— not conspiracy, but this, this cool kid agreement not to tell people how shitty it actually is. (Meghan laughs) And, that’s sort of how I felt about sex.

Meghan:  Yeah.

Lila:  That everybody must know that it’s just—

Meghan & Lila:  —not that great—

Lila:  —but they keep the fiction alive because they don’t want to look like the only one who says—

Meghan: Hmm.

Lila:  —Hey this isn’t really that great. That— that’s what I walked away feeling, at 19. Although I couldn’t have put it into those words then.

[18:39]  Meghan on sexting.

sexting (verb) = an explicitly sexual text message, which may or may not include nude photographs and/or pornographic video clips.

[22:05]  Meghan’s never been in a full-on relationship. What did she learn from her sext connection?

[23:50]  Lila on being “all in.”

[24:32]  Lila briefly explains Circling, and tells the story of Connection Camp and how she got together with her partner Alex.

[29:01]

ambivert (noun) = a person who displays introverted and extroverted tendencies at different times; one who sometimes recharges their energy in the company of others, and at other times recharges alone.

[30:43]

woo-woo (adjective) = slang for spiritual, New Age, or esoteric (outside of the realms of mainstream religion), typically jocular or pejorative.

[47:42]

Meghan:  I’m looking back at past situations and I’m realizing that like, when I feel hurt, it’s— I don’t have a problem communicating. It’s, I want to communicate everything that I feel it—

Lila:  Yeah!

Meghan:  —so it’s like if I feel hurt, if you’ve done something that like whatever, I’m gonna tell you everything I’m feeling and why it feels that way and what I wanna do about it—

Lila:  Right away!

Meghan:  —like, it’s so much. It’s so much, and I remember, there was someone that I was like, I was sleeping with, kind of dating, and it was like this person that I really didn’t connect with that well, but I wanted to connect with. There were so many things in place, I was like: He’s this photographer, he’s so attractive, like, he understands what I do, he’s so comfortable with like, me taking the photos that I take and— there were all these things that I was like, check, check, check, but it was like, on a fundamental level it was like, I don’t think we had the same sense of humor. I didn’t find him that interesting. Like— there was just— I was forcing it… But then I remember he slept with someone else and it upset me so much that I remember sending him these texts and just like … almost like jumping ahead to the end of the story, being like: Well this is what happened, here’s a summary of what happened, here’s how I feel about it. And he said something to me that just struck me, which was like, “I’m so disappointed in you.” Which is like the f— ugh, the hardest thing to hear from anyone, even when you’re like, you’re angry at them. He was like, “I expected better of you. You— throw words out there and you say things and you wait for a reaction. When you don’t get the reaction you want, you—” um, I’m trying to think of exactly how he phrased it but like, almost like, “—you go crazy.” And it’s true it’s like, I would throw it out there and I would want a response that matched in intensity, to show me that he cared enough— and when he wouldn’t respond quickly enough, it was like, “Oh, okay, well I guess this is done!” Like that kind of mentality. And I— didn’t— and I still struggle with that, having the patience of just stepping back and realizing that, because I’m in the middle of this like, emotional frenzy, I don’t need to throw that on someone, and then when I don’t get the response I want immediately, I don’t need to then, withdraw myself completely—

Lila:  Yeah.

Meghan:  As like, Ok, well, I’m already hurt and I’m not gonna get hurt any more.

Lila:  Yeah.

Meghan:  And that obviously didn’t work out. And then I think like a year or two later, I actually sent him an apology, just being like: I don’t think I was in the right place— to deal with that and, you know, I don’t think I was mature enough to … understand what that was. And also that was like during, it was during a time when, there were a lot of things happening that year, it was like— what was it, 2014, so (sigh) I was like, not talking to my dad, so there’s a lot of issues there, my grandmother, I think had just passed away, so it was just like a lot of emotional— I was trying to cling on to something— and make it something more, and it wasn’t working, and so it was like all of these other feelings I felt about all these other situations— were being— funneled into this. It was like a lot of pressure to put on someone. And I ex— that’s the thing I struggle with, is I expect— I expect things from people— and them to act in a certain way that I would act. Like it’s h—

Lila:  (laughs) I recognize that so much!

Meghan:  You know, like it’s hard for me to be like—

Lila:  Ughh.

Meghan:  “Why would you do this? I would never do this to you.”

Lila:  Yeah.

Meghan:  And then I take it so personally. Even though I didn’t communicate that that’s not something— that’s something that would trigger me into whatever. This last situation it was like, you know, he started sleeping with someone else, and all of a sudden, I was in this public— when I made the realization, it was like, I was in— I was surrounded by other people, and I was watching it and I was— it was— everything was clicking, and I made the realization, and I still am very hurt by it, in the sense that like, “Why didn’t you give me a heads up?” Like if I were you, I would have given me a heads up. […] The entirety of my time with this person, he’s never been someone that gives more information than he thinks you need. So he’s more strategic, I think, or maybe smarter, or whatever it is, of like, deciding who needs to know what, right? And I am like, I want everyone to know everything so you can make the decisions you need to make.

[53:09]

Lila:  The thing you were talking about, of having— wanting to share everything at the— at the first … instant that you feel it, I am so … intimately connected with that. And feeling like it’s false if I don’t. And only in the past … two years … have I started to recognize … that timing is important. And that if I … spill on someone. (roommate shouting at his game in the other room, laughter) If I spill  on someone … at a time when they cannot receive it, I’m so unlikely to have … my tender feelings cared for. And so I really try now to— do as much processing as I can on my own, and with my, my loved ones, my close friends, my support network, my CoDA group, and then hopefully when I come it’s not in the heat of anger, or in the heat of some emotion, so that I can speak about it with clarity and precision, and also I really try to think, try to be considerate about it to both myself and that person, and I think what it was before was I was feeling like, “Well if I don’t share it now then I’m not being cons— considerate to myself! I’m not being true to myself!”

Meghan:  I need them to know how I feel right now—

Lila:  Yeah!

Meghan: —so that they can either fix it, or I’m done.

Lila:  Right.

Meghan:  Is how I feel.

Lila:  Right. But, they’re so unlikely to do the fix it option! (laughs)

Meghan:  Yeah, no.

Lila:  Not that, they can, that they can fix it for you, but there—

Meghan:  Usually, it’s they’re like, “This is too much. I gotta withdraw now.”

Lila:  It’s so unlikely to have the effect that— ostensibly you want it to, to work better, right, ostensibly, when you bring up these feelings, you want to be heard, you want to be understood, maybe you want to be soothed, and you would like, for … the trajectory to be transformed. The situation to be alleviated or to be elevated, or to be shifted in some way that is positive. And so, if I want that, I am trying not to do it, when he’s at work.

Meghan:  Yeah!

Lila:  Or when he’s really stressed out about … getting pulled over, or when, you know, there’s a huge deadline coming up, or …

Meghan: Yeah.

Lila:  … when some big blowup just happened in the family, or— you know what I mean?

Meghan:  Yeah. I need to be better at that.

Lila:  I’m trying to wait until the moment that the— the ground is ready, and it’s so— gardening metaphors are so useful for stuff like this, because you can’t grow … from a seed that you plant in parched soil. Nothing’s gonna grow from that. So if they’re depleted … what’s gonna happen?

[57:12]  “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” One translation from the French of this quote by Blaise Pascal.

[57:20]

Meghan:  It’s like I want to say everything, and I think it’s this desire to not carry it with me, like I—

Lila:  Yes.

Meghan:  I just want to shed it instantly—

Lila:  Yes.

Meghan:  —and I want it to be dealt with. And it— it never works out that way.

Lila:  And this—

Meghan:  —and then it feels like rejection, and it feeds into that feeling of like, I … am not enough for you to meet me halfway, when it’s like, I’m not really giving them a chance to meet me at all, because I’ve already just spilled all of this on them and I want them to like, fix it.

Lila:  And I know it doesn’t feel this way, and it didn’t really feel this way to me, but it’s actually selfish in a way, because it’s, it’s like an ambush, it’s like a feelings ambush.

feelings ambush (noun) = a barrage of intense emotions hurled at someone (likely a lover) with no regard for timing, setting, or social propriety [Lila]

[58:32]  When Meghan got disowned by her father, how did it alter her view of her childhood?

[1:01:20]

Meghan:  I got really sick when I was young, with Kawasaki’s disease, which is— some, such random, like I don’t even know how you get it. I think for a while they thought, uh, when they clean your carpets and stuff, uhh, those chemicals can kind of like mess with you, especially like young children. And I remember my parents getting like the carpets cleaned and I would like go in while it was still wet and like lay down, so I don’t know if that played a part in to it, but what it does is it essentially like thickens your blood … and you— so your hands swell up, your tongue turns like, bright red, they have to give you— they were giving me like tons of baby aspirin every day, and I was like three or four, so it was just like very painful, they had to give me a spinal tap. They don’t— they don’t know if it causes heart defects and things like that, and I remember hearing the story years later and it’s something I always remember that humanizes my dad to me — which is sometimes hard these days — but I was told that, I guess when they were wheeling me down to give me the spinal tap, I was crying for him … and um … and that he had to turn away, like he, he just started crying ‘cause he couldn’t deal with it ‘cause it was just like my, like, “Daddy daddy, please don’t let them take me, daddy!” And like, I just imagine my dad, like a younger version of him, and me crying and him reacting that way, and it’s almost … it’s weird to imagine that ‘cause I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad emotional. I’ve never seen him … be like that, but I can envision what it would be like to have a young kid and I see my friends with small children, I see how soft they are towards them and— it’s hard to remember that my dad probably was like that with me. Because as I grow— I grew up, he was very much a disciplinarian. I remember like, being sick and I couldn’t swallow pills when I was young, and him like yelling at me about it. And I was scared of him, you know, like, I was scared of—

Keith (Meghan’s roommate, from the other room):  Bitch!

Meghan:  (laughs) My roommate yelling “bitch.” That was, speaking of which, I was ska— (laughs again)

Lila:  Illustrating the anger issues of Meghan’s father—

Meghan:  —I know, he—

Lila:  —we have—

Meghan:  —he found another—

Lila:  Keith, in the other room!

Meghan:  —he found another loop into the, into the pattern. Um. (laughs) Uh. My dad was a much more physical person when it came to punishing us, and I was—

Lila:  Did he use the belt?

Meghan:  He didn’t use a belt, but he definitely spanked us, he definitely like— I just remember feeling like, and I, listen, I would— I’m sure I would say things, and I would push, but like, I just remember having that feeling of like, you push to a certain point and then you have to run to your room, but he’s going to hit you regardless, like that’s the memory I have of just feeling like, ok, you just have to like— take this, essentially, and just hope it ends quickly.

[1:04:03]  The time in Meghan’s life when she was close to her dad.

[1:04:25]  What triggers Meghan’s father? How has Meghan grappled with the traits that she shares with him?

[1:09:07]

Meghan:  I grew up in a house with someone who was very charming, but very deceptive, and … there’s something in me that’s reliving that, trying to have a different ending than my mom did.

[1:09:32]

Meghan:  My mom was like a cheerleader in high school, and I was like the fat kid that was in choir and drama and like, we just had very different experiences and so I think we related to each other differently, and I resented her for a lot of things, like, I went to Fat Camp when I was young and my, I was put on diet suppressants and, um, I w— my mom would sneak me into gyms, and I would lie about my age, s— when I was like 12, to say I was 14, I was old enough to be there and, there were a lot of things that just, were hard for me to process when I was younger, I felt very like— y— but my dad too, I remember my dad trying to pay me money to lose weight, like, “I’ll give you five dollars a pound, just lose it.”

[10:10:13]

Meghan:  And so my mom and I just like, we would— we would fight, but we were around each other a lot, so like, she was very nurturing at the same time, like, she also at the same time, was like, “Anything it is you want to do, we will figure out how to do it.” And so I was in all these— all these clubs and extracurriculars and anything that I wanted to do, she would push me to like, go do it. She never made me feel like, oh, because you look a certain way you can’t do something. She just let me know that it was gonna be a different path. It was gonna be harder.

[1:11:11]  Meghan on her grandma.

[1:12:24]  How a UTI altered her grandmother’s personality when she was in the nursing home.

[1:13:35]

Meghan:  It was really beautiful and heartbreaking to watch, because when my grandma went into a coma, my mom called 911 and I think regretted it. In the sense that, she watched my grandma go from a situation where she could have died in her sleep, peacefully, and all of a sudden we brought her back to go through this painful two year experience, where all of a sudden she couldn’t drive anymore, and she couldn’t really walk that well and she, you know, she was just different, a little bit, and she’d always been so independent, and it was hard for my mom, I think, to feel like, “Did I do the right thing?” But then I also think that, they became so close, and my mom realized that my grandma really loved her, and really appreciated her, in a way that I don’t think my mom would have felt if that hadn’t happened.

[1:14:36]  What were Meghan’s grandma’s last words?

[1:16:46]  How Meghan’s grandma was her person.

[1:19:23]  Meghan on giving her mother advice, as though she were a friend, rather than a daughter.

[1:20:32]  What happened when Meghan reached out to her father on a Father’s Day, after a long silence?

[1:21:23]

Meghan:  And so I sent him this text, and I go, “I love you, happy Father’s Day, but you fucked up a lot of things, and I need you to fix those so you can be in my life.”  And his response, a few hours later, was, “Fuck you bitch, don’t e— or uh— forget that I’m your father, I’ll forget that you’re my daughter. Don’t ever speak to me that way again, and have a good life.” Essentially.

24. booty revolution: horizontal with a youtube star

Welcome in to season two. Horizontal is the podcast about intimacy – sex, love, and relationships of all kinds – that’s entirely recorded while lying down. We were on hiatus while I made a 15,000 mile solo road trip, circumnavigating the US on a tour I called “horizontal does america.”