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Lenny Kravitz Doubles Down On Celibacy + 12 Other Celebrities Who Shared A Similar Journey
People decide to become celibate for many reasons. Whether it's for spiritual reasons or waiting until marriage. Whatever your reason for practicing abstinence is your business, but know that you're not alone. There are several celebrities who have spoken about their celibacy journey. From Ciara and Russell Wilson to, most recently, Lenny Kravitz, each of them shared their journey with the world, proving that there isn't one way to look at celibacy.
Check out what these A-listers had to say about it below.
Lenny Kravitz
Lenny recently doubled down on his decision to be celibate while speaking to The Guardian. “Yes. It’s a spiritual thing,” he said. This follows his 2008 Maxium interview, where he first talked about practicing celibacy. "[It's] just a promise I made until I get married. Where I'm at in life, the women have got to come with something else, not just the body, but the mind and spirit,” he revealed at the time.
Ciara and Russell Wilson
Russell Wilson and Ciara
Photo by Stefanie Keenan/VF24/WireImage for Vanity Fair
The Wilsons revealed that they both were practicing celibacy before they got married. Russell opened up about their decision in a past interview at The Rock Church. “I asked her, ‘What would you do if we took all that other stuff off the table and did it Jesus’ way, no sex?’” he said. “I knew God had brought me into her life to bless her and for her to bless me and to bless so many people with the impact that she has and I have.”
Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey shared that she was celibate prior to marrying Nick Cannon in 2008. In an interview with Mirror, she said, “It’s not that we had NO intimacy, we just didn’t have complete intimacy. It’s just me, and my feelings.” She continued, “I definitely don’t want to push it on anybody else, But we both have similar beliefs, and I just thought that it would be so much more special if we waited until after we were married. And it was, and it still is.”
Nick Cannon
Nick decided to abstain from sex again in 2022 after having his eighth child with model Brie Tiesi. “My therapist was one of the ones who said I should probably be celibate, and the reason why is because I had shared that news about Bre being pregnant,” he said on his now defunct daytime talk show. “And it was like, ‘Yo, I don’t know what to do.’ It felt like–I was trying to get a grasp, I got a new show coming out and that was the reason why I started my celibacy journey back then. So for anyone who’s thinking, ‘Oh, he wasn’t celibate,’ I was!”
He added, “I was like ‘Yo, I gotta get my life under control’ because I felt like I was out of control, and honestly that celibacy did help me through the journey of getting one with myself, being able to deal with this (the pregnancy) and so now everybody knows why I was being celibate.”
Nicki Minaj
Nicki Minaj
Photo by John Shearer/WireImage
When Nicki Minaj appeared on TheEllen DeGeneres Show in 2017, she revealed that she took a break from dating. “I’m just chillin’ right now,” she said. “I’m celibate. I wanted to go a year without dating any man. I hate men.”
Jordin Sparks
While guest co-hosting The Real, Jordin Sparks opened up about the self-love journey she went on before marrying her husband, Dana Isaiah Thomas. “I married Dana because after I went through therapy and I really worked on myself—I cut myself off from dating, and I went celibate,” she explained. "And I just was like, ‘I have so much love in my life. The next person who comes into my life in that way needs to add so much more than I already have.’”
Evelyn Lozada
Back in 2019, Evelyn Lozada shared that she got baptized and was now waiting to have sex until marriage. "I'm done with premarital sex. I felt like… [in] those relationships I lost a piece of me, every time I had sex [out of wedlock]," she told Baller Alert.
Yvonne Orji
Yvonne Orji
Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images for BET+
Yvonne Orji has been open about her virginity. During her 2017 appearance on The Breakfast Club, the comedian opened up about how she found God in college and made a vow to remain a virgin until marriage. "Personally, I had plans to have sex when I turned 18. I was dating [a guy], and I had it figured out. But, I got to college at 17 in D.C., and then I got saved,” she explained.
Meagan Good
When Meagan Good and DeVon Franklin were married, they wrote the book The Wait, which talked about them waiting to have sex before marriage. When the former couple appeared on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday, the actress shared how a man who is willing to wait is husband material.
"That was a big issue for me because if he does leave me because I am not worth him waiting in his eyes, then he's not my husband," she said. "If someone does not think I am worthy of wanting to be the best version of myself, and wanting to get healing, and wanting to set myself up for success, if they won't do that with me, then I don't want to spend the rest of my life with them,."
Adrienne Bailon and Israel Houghton
Adrienne Bailon Houghton revealed that she and her husband, Israel Houghton, practiced abstinence before marriage. During an episode of The Real, the couple detailed their wedding night. “You don’t understand, we’ve waited for this moment. So I opened the door, and I had to kick Shane [The Real’s cameraman] out because he was following us around with the camera. Like, ‘You gotta go. Thank you for following us this far, but your time is up. Feel free to go to bed,'” Israel hilariously recalled.
Tamera Mowry-Housley
Tamera Mowry-Housley revealed that she was celibate before marrying her husband, Adam Housley. But before getting married, she learned how to please herself first. "So as you know, I've waited a really long time to have sex. But the thing is, is I knew what I liked and what I wanted because I can remember reading a magazine, actually it was ESSENCE, and it was about you know, sex education, pleasing yourself, and knowing what pleases you and what you like," she said on The Real.
So when she got married, she was knowledgeable about sex and what she wanted in the bedroom. "So even though I wasn't having sex I knew what I liked so I was in touch with myself. So, you know, once I got married with Adam and all of that, I knew what I wanted."
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London Alexaundria is the contributing editor for xoNecole. She is an alum of Clark Atlanta University, where she majored in Mass Media Arts and has worked in journalism for over ten years. You can follow her on Instagram and TikTok @theselfcarewriter
This Black Woman-Owned Creative Agency Shows Us The Art Of Rebranding
Rebranding is an intricate process and very important to the success of businesses that want to change. However, before a business owner makes this decision, they should determine whether it's a rebrand or an evolution.
That's where people like Lola Adewuya come in. Lola is the founder and CEO of The Brand Doula, a brand development studio with a multidisciplinary approach to branding, social media, marketing, and design.
While an evolution is a natural progression that happens as businesses grow, a rebrand is a total change. Lola tells xoNecole, "A total rebrand is necessary when a business’s current reputation/what it’s known for is at odds with the business’s vision or direction.
"For example, if you’ve fundamentally changed what your product is and does, it’s likely that your brand is out of alignment with the business. Or, if you find your company is developing a reputation that doesn’t serve it, it might be time to pump the brakes and figure out what needs to change.
She continues, "Sometimes you’ll see companies (especially startups) announce a name change that comes with updated messaging, visuals, etc. That usually means their vision has changed or expanded, and their previous branding was too narrow/couldn’t encompass everything they planned to do."
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The Brand Doula was born in 2019, and its focus is on putting "the experiences, goals, and needs of women of color founders first," as well as brands with "culture-shifting missions."
According to Lola, culture-shifting is "the act of influencing dominant behavior, beliefs, or experiences in a community or group (ideally, for the better)."
"At The Brand Doula, we work with companies and leaders that set out to challenge the status quo in their industries and communities. They’re here to make an impact that sends ripples across the market," she says.
"We help the problem solvers of the world — the ones who aren't satisfied with 'this is how it's always been' and instead ask 'how could this be better?' Our clients build for impact, reimagining tools, systems, and ways of living to move cultures forward."
The Brand Doula has worked with many brands, including Too Collective, to assist with their collaboration with Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and Balanced Black Girl for a "refresh," aka rebrand. For businesses looking to rebrand, Lola shares four essential steps.
1. Do an audit of your current brand experience — what’s still relevant and what needs to change? Reflect on why you’re doing the rebrand in the first place and what success would look like after relaunching.
2. Tackle the overall strategy first — before you start redesigning logos and websites, align on a new vision for your brand. How do you want your company to be positioned moving forward? Has your audience changed at all? Will your company have a fresh personality and voice?
3. Bring your audience along the journey — there’s no need to move in secret. Inviting your current audience into the journey can actually help them feel more connected to and invested in your story, enough to stick around as changes are being made.
4. Keep business moving — one of my biggest pet peeves is when companies take down their websites as soon as they have the idea to rebrand, then have a Coming Soon page up for months! You lose a lot of momentum and interest by doing that. If you’re still in business and generating income, continue to operate while you work on your rebrand behind the scenes. You don’t want to cut existing customers off out of the blue, and you also don’t want so much downtime that folks forget your business exists or start looking for other solutions.
While determining whether the rebrand was successful may take a few months, Lola says a clear sign that it is unsuccessful is negative feedback from your target audience. "Customers are typically more vocal about what they don’t like more than what they do like," she says.
But some good signs to look out for are improvements in engagement with your marketing, positive reviews, press and increase in retention, and overall feeling aligned with the new branding.
For more information about Lola and The Brand Doula, visit her website, thebranddoula.com.
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If you’ve never heard of the word “anorgasmia” before, it’s the technical term that is used for women who have trouble achieving an orgasm. Actually, if we’re gonna get super technical about it, women who have infrequent ones (check out “Why Are My Orgasms So Damn Inconsistent?” and “Why Do Orgasms So Often Seem Like A ‘Hit-Or-Miss’ Experience For Women?”) or women who experience orgasms that oftentimes lack intensity can also fall under this category.
And although everything from age and hormonal imbalances to stress/anxiety and even low self-esteem can play a role in why climaxing can be difficult, after touring with an organization that dealt with porn and sex addiction for almost 10 years, having countless sessions with married women and also researching and writing on sex for over two decades at this point, what I realize hasn’t been discussed enough is that a lot of women can have orgasms — just not vaginal ones via intercourse (check out “Ladies, Please Stop Pressuring Yourself Over Vaginal Orgasms”).
The next thing that should be brought up more in the discourse is the fact that many women have orgasms — they’re just not always earth-shattering ones (like the ones that you feel when you have, say, a blended orgasm).
Today, we’re going to hone in on the latter point. If you know (that you know that you know) that you have orgasms yet the more intense ones don’t happen nearly as often as you would like, there is something that you can do that has been proven to help you out — and the title of this piece is a huge hint as far as what that is. #wink
How Does Weed Help to Create More and Better Orgasms?
Weed and sex being a cool combination is not something that I haven’t addressed before. A few years back, I penned a piece for the site entitled, “7 Proven Ways Weed Makes Sex So Much Better.” So, why did I feel the need to write this one too? Because I think all of us (who’ve had sex before) can vouch for the fact that you can have a wonderful sexual experience and still not have an orgasm or the kind of orgasm that you’d prefer to have. And when that is indeed the case, well, something that can help you out is yep, marijuana.
For starters, did you know that there are literal studies to support that weed can help women to have more frequent orgasms? Yep. One article that I read stated that out of almost 400 people surveyed, 52 percent said that they had trouble climaxing; however, after a bit of weed use, orgasm frequency increased by almost 73 percent, orgasm satisfaction by 67 percent, and the ability to have orgasms more easily increased by 71 percent.
And since some of these individuals deal with something known as female orgasmic disorder (FOD), because the findings are so significant, there are some states that are actually pushing for FOD to qualify for medical marijuana treatment. Yep, that’s how effective weed use is proving itself to be in this realm.
So, just what is it about weed that makes climaxing a more probable experience for so many of us? For one thing, weed is seen as an aphrodisiac by many individuals. One reason is that it contains properties that help to relax your system as well as intensify the sexual experiences that you have by literally helping to make them feel more pleasurable.
Some studies also reveal that weed use can lower your inhibitions and increase the amount of time you spend engaging in foreplay too. If you add to that the fact that weed also amplifies the sense of touch — well, I’m sure that you get how all of this combined can help you to have not just more but better quality orgasms, for sure.
How to Effectively Bring Weed into Your Sexual Experiences
So, now that you know all of this, I’m sure some of you are wondering how to bring marijuana into your boudoir in a responsibly effective kind of way. Good question. For one thing, it’s definitely best to start off in small amounts (if you’ve never experienced weed before); you can probably do this best with edibles because many of them are sold in pre-dosed amounts. In fact, although you might think that, when it comes to weed consumption, “the more the merrier,” the reality is actually that overdoing it could decrease your libido instead of elevate it.
Also, it’s a good idea to remember that while CBD is good for ointments and creams that can help to reduce anxiety before sex or enhance afterplay (check out “Sure, Your Foreplay Game Is On Point. Now What About The ‘Afterplay’?”), THC — the active ingredient that is responsible for getting you “high” — is what has a stronger reputation for making sex itself a more pleasurable experience; especially as far as women go. So, what you might want to do is start out with something like a chocolate edible (since it also is an aphrodisiac) with a low amount of THC in it along with a CBD-based lubricant.
Just make sure to keep in mind that edibles can bea bit unpredictable (as far as how high you will get and how soon along with how you will feel once you come down from the high experience), plus, their effects tend to last longer than smoking (edible highs can sometimes last six or more hours while smoking ones are around four or more) — so, if it’s your first time trying all of this out, a night before going to work isn’t a good idea; wait until the weekend instead.
On the other hand, if you’d consider yourself to be a bit of a “weed pro” at this point, you might want to experiment with some different strains of weed. Ones that are somewhat popular in the sexual stimuli department contain what is called limonene. It is actually a chemical that isfound in citrus fruit; however, when it’s combined with weed, not only can it help the weed to taste better, but it canelevate your mood, reduce your stress, andgive your libido and energy levels a bit of a boost as well.
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Listen, if there’s one thing that I’m gonna do, it’s provide a hack to make sex better for you — and there is just too much data out in these streets to not shout out weed as far as achieving quality orgasms go.
That said, if weed ain’t your thing, don’t force it to be just because you read this. There are other ways to have amazing orgasms (check out “15 Women Share Their Personal Hacks For Better Orgasms (And Sex Overall)”). Oh, but if it is (or if you’ve always been curious about it), why not approach cannabis from a strictly sexual angle? At the very least, you’ll get a bit of a euphoric feel. At the most, you’ll have an avenue to experience more of the orgasms that you crave.
Hell, sounds like a win/win to me, sis.
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