Sex, Gen Z & ‘The Big O’ book launch

Notably, the rise of social media personalities in the sex industry has cemented safe online spaces of conversation. In this space we can exchange our relationship dilemmas with our favourite sexpert agony aunts, uncles, thems and theys who have filled our sex-ed school curriculum gaps. Regarding communities of colour, Oloni and her renowned Twitter threads have greatly enlightened the reality of pleasure for all and have placed her as a prominent forerunner in this industry.

Through her Laid Bare podcasts and her recent debut book The Big O, Oloni has continued to raise the sex-conversational bar. At her live show and book launch hosted at 21 Soho House this week, crowds of women from diverse backgrounds congregated over cocktails and wine in anticipation of the sexpert’s arrival. Once seated on the stage, Oloni began explaining her sex educator journey is one she had stumbled upon after casually enjoying conversations about sex and relationships with her friends before the internet.

Describing her school sex education as a ‘terrible’ experience likened to Coach Carr from Mean Girls, Oloni emphasises The Big O allows women to take ownership of their sexuality by having the sex they deserve on their terms. Oloni explains she wrote the book as a tool she wished had existed at the time of her adolescence for understanding sex. This is because the book emphasises women as sexual beings whilst exploring sex for women outside conventional cis-heterosexual and monogamous relationships. 

Sex talk culture with Gen Z today is more accepting and eagerly anticipates conversations that explore non-heteronormative sex. Therefore, Oloni’s inclusion of external experiences outside of her own in the book seeks to provide an intersectional analysis of pleasure that is most familiar to Gen Z. 

Similar to the sexpert’s second half of her live show, Oloni is one of the few black women influencers who have created safe communal online spaces predominantly for black women to gather, vent and advise one another in their sex and self-expression journies. Therefore, it was no surprise that the latter segment of the launch consisted of a vibrant panel of TikTok Influencer Miss Rita B, sexperts Come Curious and her podcast co-hosts who proceeded to solve dilemmas from the audience. Overall, the book and Oloni’s work at large seek to provide a liberating, fun and informative getaway guide to sex, especially for women of colour who have been deprived of access to such conversations. 

The Big O is available to purchase HERE