How to Size Up Your Toys
TAWNEY SEREN
YouTuber, Reviewer, Author, and Host of Open Bobs BB

Are you looking to correctly size up your toys?

After The Yes (Twitter @aftertheyes1) is here to help! For more sex education, reviews, and advice from them, check out their blog HERE! So strap up, grab your toys, and let’s learn! (Please keep in mind this article was written by After The Yes with emphasis on vaginally sizing toys) 

How to Size Up (Vaginally)

So you’ve tackled dildos. You’ve got those realistically sized dongs tamed and perhaps even their double sized counterparts, and you want more. Perhaps you’ve discovered that the feeling of fullness is your main jam. Perhaps you wanted to try fisting for unmatched a-spot stimulation and you just couldn’t do it. Perhaps you’re keen on chasing the elusive size-only orgasm. Perhaps the thought of being pushed to your limits is just inherently a turn on. Whatever your reason for getting here, you do have a desire to take bigger challenges and need help getting there. You’ve come to the right place. 

Control is key

 The binding theme of this article will be control. All of the tips, tricks, and advice in how to stretch your boundaries revolve around being in complete control of your experience. Sizing up too much too quickly is obviously and intuitively understood as harmful—perhaps that’s even one of the reasons you are looking for advice. Much of the anxiety around sizing up comes from the expectation of pain and/or injury. It’s okay, these are far from unfounded fears, there is nothing wrong with you and there are definitely wrong ways to tackle size, it is just very unlikely you’ll do them if you establish control. While this article focuses on sizing up vaginally, this axiom equally applies to anal training. Our goal is that by the end of this article you are confident enough to either proceed in your size training or confident enough to decide it isn’t for you, and that you’ll be able to worry about more complicated things like getting macarons right for once (curse you relative humidity). 

A quick myth busting

Sizing up does not make you inherently “loose” over time. Vaginas do not work that way and elasticity is determined by other factors like age and injury. You can however make yourself temporarily more accommodating to size, in fact that’s partly the goal here—more on that later. Secondly I obviously can’t speak for others, but I have also never once encountered someone with a male partner that suddenly didn’t desire their dick after getting into large sex toys or fisting, in fact the opposite seems to hold true with our experience and with anyone I’ve ever talked to about it. For those of you unaware, that’s a major myth going around, that a woman getting into large toys means her man doesn’t satisfy. Size play may increase your desire for your partner rather than decrease it—that’s our experience too. With those myths out of the way let’s get to the fun part! 

Proper Geometry

Toys come in many shapes and sizes and most generally aren’t designed for safe controlled stretching. First, let’s address size. You need to know what your current maximum is. Find whatever object that is—fingers, partner, whatever—and measure it, take careful note of the circumference. You certainly don’t want to go beneath this, but you won’t want to get much larger than that either. Getting this wrong could result in a toy that is uninsertable rather than trainable, and I personally wouldn’t go more than an inch in circumference bigger than where you are now, but there’s another trick to this, the shape! If the ideal sizing dildo had a body type, it would be triangle. Toys that progressively get wider as you go are ideal for establishing control in size training. This makes for more forgiving choices in sizing, and forgiving is a word you’ll be seeing a lot in this article. Forgiving is good for beginners full stop. Toys meant for g-spotting or have aggressive tapers are something I would avoid. What is normally a pleasurable feature of these toys can be a hazard when sizing up. After you ‘crest’ the widest parts of these toys your vagina will pull them in. Problem is if that widest point happens to coincide with the size at which you should stop and rest it will pull itself in anyway and that won’t be a fun time. When it comes to sizing up we don’t want our toys doing anything ‘on their own’ even if that technically is your body doing what comes naturally. Let’s look at some examples.     First, let’s look at a toy that gets this design very right. The Boss Hogg XS (featured in picture below). Now, Emily and I are fantasy toy enthusiasts so for this guide I wanted to find something a little more mainstream that fit our general design preferences for sizing up. Perhaps the difficulty of that search is one of the reasons we got into fantasy toys to begin with. We’ll be including some of our favorite fantasy designs for this task as well. I stumbled across the Boss Hogg design from Hankey’s Toys (what a coincidence, they are also well known in the fantasy design market, really gets the ole noggin joggin’ dunnit?) and it ticks all the major boxes, and wouldn’t you know it Tawney has an excellent review on it here https://www.openbobsbb.com/toy-review-boss-hogg-xs/. So how did I quickly pick out Boss Hogg’s design as a winner without having one myself? Let’s go over the factors. 
  We grabbed this picture straight from their website. As you can see the Boss Hogg XS, despite its size, maintains that gentle taper we’re looking for to about halfway down. While it does taper down in size after the middle it is a taper slight enough to be controllable and won’t cause that sudden pop that graduated ridges will or even more aggressive tapers. Boss Hogg XS is also soft and smooth, which makes it very forgiving. The texturing is all at the narrowest end. In other words, Boss Hogg is controlable, forgiving, and has a shape you can work up to if it is initially too big and even if it is too big you’re likely to be able to insert at least some of it rather than none of it, which is a huge deal in size training. These are the design features we are looking for. Now let’s find an example of something to avoid in size training.
 Yeah that’s right, I’m picking on not only one of our favorite dildos but one of the most popular dildos on the market. Actually, that’s exactly why I picked it. Fit for purpose. This is something I alluded to earlier, the double coronal ridge on the large Splendid rocks worlds to much acclaim, including our own, but that sudden pop the head of Splendid does is exactly that kind of involuntary motion we’re trying to avoid when playing the size training game. The head is also the largest feature, meaning if the largest portion of the toy is too big, then you can’t use any of it. Bummer. There are actually toys on the market that purport to be size trainers with this exact design characteristic and we can’t agree with that decision and recommend avoiding them. Finishing out this section is a fantasy example of good sizing design. 
These are both two separate sizes of the Tentacle from Goblin Dildo Emporium. These conic cephalopods give you full control of your experienced girth and although the texturing looks quite aggressive it’s actually very gentle thanks to the soft smooth silicone. We highly recommend these if the aesthetic doesn’t put you off.  

Going Solo

We recommend at least starting your size training by flying solo. There are many complications and temptations when exploring size with a partner. The most obvious problem is that you will be testing your limits with someone who strictly can’t feel them. By the time you get the words ‘okay stop’ out it may already be past your limit. Size training also takes time and patience, it may be prudent to set aside as much as an hour or even two for a size session. That can make a partner with even the best of intentions impatient. There’s also a temptation by partners to ‘help out’ when you’re ‘almost there’ that covers motivations both selfish and altruistic. You need to be in control. Having a partner around may, heck likely, will cause thoughts either conscious or subconscious about getting them off too. That’s a distraction you don’t need while sizing, especially to start. Is it impossible? Nah. Just something we recommend newbies avoid for now. 

Relaxing

It is important to remove distractions and unwanted stressors when sizing up. You want to be in a mood where you can just relax and allow yourself to experience what you are experiencing. You’re going to rush if you have a dinner date or a project due or, well I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you what your urgent stressors are. If it takes some music, use that, if it takes a certain scent, or location, or time of day or night, use that. Focusing on the journey is the quickest path to your goals, rushing to get there will slow you down at best and cause you to go backwards at worst. Slow is fast. 

Use Your Own Power 

With size sessions being potentially long you may be tempted to let gravity assist your size play. Don’t do this! This is unsafe for the same reason that using gravity is unsafe for stretching and exercise routines. Control! Do some people do this and get away with it? You betcha, but that doesn’t make it safe. Once you get more size experience under your belt you’ll know exactly which toys do and don’t test your limits and you can feel out better when to let gravity assist. Do not do this as a newbie or ever with a new challenge. 

Lube

I was tempted to make this entire paragraph just a giant image of the word lube, but seriously it’s a big deal. Use a long lasting lube that goes the distance, and do not mix silicone lubes with silicone toys ever. We really recommend checking out The Butters line of lubes for extended size play. Apply liberally! 

Fun 

Don’t turn size play into a chore. Remember that the fastest way to get to your goals is to focus on the journey. If you’re 10 minutes in and you just can’t stand how teased you feel and you just wanna finish the session off you go for it. Don’t ruin your fun by making it a competition with anyone else either. 

Consistency Is Key 

Make regular time for size play. As mentioned above, your vagina is a wonderful resilient elastic thing and you can and will lose ground (we’ve done it for sure) if you ignore your size play for long enough, especially in the beginning as you’re doing a lot of acclimating to sensations. I mentioned earlier that getting temporarily accustomed to larger sizes was part of the goal. The other part is acclimating to the sensations of size play and figuring out the language of your body in this area. On that note. 

Listen To Your Body

Perhaps this could have also gone in the myths section, but this isn’t supposed to be painful. If you experience pain, STOP. Immediately! If you follow the recommendations so far in this guide, this shouldn’t occur in the first place as you should hit mild discomfort long before pain—and you’re in control of the action right?! We’ve drilled that into our heads yeah?—but if pain does occur don’t question your body and just S-T-O-P stop. This is also an appropriate place to mention that you shouldn’t be shutting your body up with things like numbing cremes and gels. This practice is unsafe, pain is a messenger, listen to it. Be confident though. As long as you have control you shouldn’t have to deal with listening to pain.  

Specifics 

So you’re with me so far. You know how to pick a training toy by knowing what your current limits are, how to pick a shape that lets you safely challenge them, and how to be in complete control of the experience and thus safe. Many of you will feel fine filling in the specifics for yourself but many of you might still be wondering what size play or size session means to the point that you feel unwilling to proceed. Here’s an example of a size play session that incorporates these guidelines. Anyone who’s made it this far and already feels confident about what they learned may simply skip the bulleted list below.
  • You’ve acquired the items you’ll need. You’ve already had a very short test run to make sure nothing was completely out of whack to spare you disappointment later. You’ve got the dildo you’ve selected to use, you have the right lube and at least some of it fits right away.
  • You’ve secured the venue, whatever your living situation you’ve cleared your schedule of distractions. Your roommates are gone or at the very least know you’re not to be disturbed, or perhaps your husband has taken the kids somewhere and he knows exactly why and for how long. You’ve put your phone on silent or turned it off completely.
  • You set your space up to be relaxing and/or arousing. Perhaps it’s a lavender candle, or relaxing music. Perhaps you’ve done some baking to make your whole house smell like fresh cookies.
  • You grab your supplies and find yourself a position that is both comfortable and that you know helps you out. If supine perhaps you’ve found the arm of a couch or a wedge pillow so you won’t get tired. If this position is rear entry you made sure your toy had a good suction cup to use on the wall so you’re not straining awkwardly reaching under or around. You brought a vibrator with you because it just helps you relax your muscles more.
  • You lube up and get to it, focus on your breathing and listen to your body, you notice when you tense up or when your breath goes sharp and you stop and hold position, focusing on relaxing. You feel the stretch but it is not uncomfortable. You test yourself this way until your time is either up or you feel you’ve gone long enough. Maybe the process alone got you off, maybe it didn’t, maybe you feel the need to bring yourself to climax, maybe you’re just happy with what’s already happened.And that’s really all there is to it if you need that sort of guidance.

    In Closing 

    I know I’ve gone over a lot, and maybe I’ve made this seem more complicated than it is, but don’t be daunted, you are now armed with information. All of these things we’ve gone over are just thoughtful details of a few basic principles, namely being in control and some slight thinking about how your body reacts to certain shapes. You now know how to explore size confidently and safely. If you’re still on the fence and have specific questions not covered here, please feel free to contact us on Twitter with @aftertheyes1 or via info@aftertheyes.com