As a part of our Creative people in the Sexual Wellness industry series, we asked Berlin-based Kinky Karrot's Founder & Artist Marie Sann for insights on how to create amazing content, based around sexuality.
Hi Marie, could you first introduce yourself?
Hello! I am Marie, a passionate artist from Berlin, Germany. I work as a freelance illustrator and at the same time I'm growing my own project called Kinky Karrot. It's about a topic that is personally very important to me: Female empowerment and healthy sexuality. With Kinky Karrot I want to inspire people (with a focus on women) to learn more about their sexuality and desires, in a fun and entertaining way. Sex is so great and natural - so why are there so many taboos around this topic? I want to help people seeing it for what it really is - something fun, enjoyable and exciting!
How long has Kinky Karrot's been around, and what led you to create this project?
Kinky Karrot is a super new project. I started it in the end of 2018 with the goal of creating a platform that I myself wished would have existed when I was a teenager or young woman. I was interested in the topic of sexuality at an early age, but when I wanted to learn more about it, I quickly encountered the problem of not finding any content that really spoke to me. Sex education in school was uninspired and insufficient. Pornography in the internet quickly scared me off by the male perspective and the misogynistic depictions. So, many years later, I decided to build my own brand that educates, inspires and entertains around the topic of healthy sexuality and female empowerment. And here we are with Kinky Karrot.
How was the initial feedback from people around you?
The feedback is really wonderful. It is incredibly touching for me to hear what positive impact my project has on many people. They feel encouraged and inspired to deal curiously with their own sexuality. They are thankful for the fresh, open and humorous approach to the topic of sex and kinks. They like the female perspective from which my content emerges. They realize that they are not the only ones with those desires and preferences, and that they are perfectly ok the way they are. They see Kinky Karrot as a safe space and the rapidly growing community also helps each other, which I find amazing.
How did you grow this project overtime?
Well, slowly in small steps... I never learned how to create a brand and grow it. So I needed to find my way into it and was very much much about trials and errors. I still learn something new each day. I started at Comic Conventions, presenting some art prints there and the feedback was so overwhelming that I decided to turn it into something bigger. The brand name was created, then the website with the online shop and an Instagram page followed. It's been about a year since the start of Kinky Karrot's online magazine, which is a great enrichment to the brand content. Here, each month an article about an exciting topic around Kinks, Body Positivity or Healthy Sexuality is published, and concrete tips are given to the readers to try out. I have the feeling now that the brand has reached a level where many people tell their friends about it. Which is wonderful and helps a lot growing it further.
What are you most proud of during your time running Kinky Karrot?
Well, first of all I am proud that I created Kinky Karrot at all. It can be scary to build something on your own without having the know-how about it at the beginning and without knowing if the hard work and investment will pay off in the end. But now I am very much rewarded and so happy that I can help so many people with this project. My most valuable work within Kinky Karrot is to draw real people as self-confident cartoon characters. With those custom drawings I encourage them in their sexuality and in accepting their bodies and loving themselves even more. I help them to feel empowered. I appreciate it so much that these people entrust their personal secrets to me and know that I handle this information with absolute confidence. I am proud that with Kinky Karrot I have managed to really create a safe space where people feel confident and secure; where they can simply be as they are.
Did you face any restrictions from Instagram or negative comments?
Oh yeah! I have an extreme love-hate relationship to social media. Instagram is the platform where I reach most people. It's where my audience is and the Kinky Karrot account is growing fast. So I need to make use of it and I love to connect with my community there. BUT: Their "community guidelines" for content related to sexuality are mind-bendingly stupid and challenge me with nearly each post. With my brand and my posts I want to speak up for openly talking about sexuality in a healthy way. And I want to make sure that the female body is not further oversexualized. With their guidelines this is nearly not possible. They tell us they want to protect people from offensive content. But what is really offensive to me is that a female breast or an open word about healthy sex is already too forbidden to post.
What do you think is currently missing from Sex Education, and how is Kinky Karrot helping?
Sex seems to be everywhere, and yet nobody really speaks about it. First of all we need to manage that the topic of sex and sexuality isn't such a taboo anymore. We are all sexual beings and there is nothing to be ashamed of. The world could be a better place if people would learn more about their real sexual needs and how to deal with them. Especially women are told that it is a big no-go to feel sexual desire or to explore themselves for sexual pleasure - yet they are so much sexual beings, maybe even more than men. It cannot be good to suppress this. It means to deny a large part of yourself. Most content around sex, eroticism and sexuality is still made by men. We need more content about it made by women to get other perspectives. Sex education in school should be more fun. I remember teachers who where extremely embarrassed to talk about it and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. It should be more than only explaining how to put a condom on a banana or where to insert what part during sex. It should be also about intimacy and how to talk with the partner about sexual desires. It should show how many sexual orientations and inclinations there are and how wonderful and exciting diversity is. It should cover the subject of sexual rape and that it is important never to do anything for someone else if you don't really want it yourself. It should talk more about female lust and female anatomy (I remember that in school I never learned anything about the vulva - it was only always about the vagina). It should talk about porn and how it can be helpful and inspiring if watching the right (realistic) type of porn. But also how it can be extremely destructive and illusory if watching the wrong type with terrible role models. ....there is much to do! I hope that with Kinky Karrot I can help a little bit in this regard.
How can people support Kinky Karrot?
It is a great support if people tell their friends about Kinky Karrot. The more people know about it the more can profit from the hopefully inspiring and educational content. If they are a real fan of Kinky Karrot they could get a little something from the shop or they can even be drawn by me in a unique and empowering way.
