Butt Seriously (by Dr. Evan Goldstein)

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I talk a lot about stuff that involves the butt. In and out and around the butt. Butt stuff. That butt stuff discourse that I frequently engage in has been thus far exclusively focused on literature. How are people depicting butt stuff in the written word? Do I like it? How do I think people could do better? And as part of this very serious literary endeavor, I have talked a lot about the activities that surround butt stuff. Getting ready for it, preparation, protection, aftercare. All, again, in the context of literature.

Until now. Butt Seriously by Dr. Evan Goldstein is a book also about all of those things, but it's written by a medical professional, something that I am not. And I think that this is a very worthwhile read, certainly for authors who want to think about verisimilitude in their depictions of butt stuff, but also for anyone who is thinking about engaging in butt stuff. And even if you already do, there might be some stuff in here for you too. There's a lot in here about number two, actually. And yes, as the title would lead you to believe, it is full of puns.

This book covers the anatomy of the region, how to successfully use the anatomy, whether you are on the giving or the receiving end, how to diagnose common problems. It's like a user's manual for your butt. And there's stuff in here that even like very serious practitioners of the craft may not have considered. Like, for example, if you are the kind of person who wants to very thoroughly prepare the area before use, both externally and internally, there are some like good medical reasons why you might not want to use tap water to do that. Something that never even really occurred to me.

There's also a very interesting chapter in here, which I would say it is for butt stuff newbies or people who have tried butt stuff and it hasn't worked very well for them. Dr. Goldstein has a six-week booty boot camp where you can use some specialized equipment that you can find on the internet to maybe get yourself to a point where you are in better shape for something like that. And through that, you can also be self-diagnosing if there's anything potentially physiologically challenging with engaging in butt stuff. And then that's something that you could take to a medical professional to take a look at if you go through this whole process and you find that you're still not having success with it.

And I'm one of those people who has tried this stuff multiple times and hasn't had a lot of success with it. So I have mostly been in a position of service or, you know, sampling things on the side. But the chapter in here has me thinking that maybe I either wasn't trying hard enough or alternatively just wasn't trying in the right way. So I don't know. Maybe it's time for a little boot camp.

I think Dr. Goldstein has put together a really great resource, certainly not just for authors, but for anyone who is interested in any way about butt stuff. It is obviously very sex positive, but Dr. Goldstein is also very inclusive. This is a book for people with any kind of equipment down there. And I will point out, it is very thoroughly illustrated, like very thorough in its illustrations. And those illustrations are refreshingly diverse. Different body types, people of all kinds of genders and gender expressions, people using their own equipment or like external equipment that they are marshaling for the occasion.

Dr. Goldstein has a whole chapter on that deep internal cleansing that some people like to do. And he starts very clearly saying he doesn't recommend anyone doing this. But he also knows a lot of people are going to do this. So this is the best and safest way that he thinks that someone should do it, even though he thinks you don't need to do it. I think that is a very supportive, very inclusive, very positive way to engage with a community.

My only critique of this book is that Dr. Goldstein also has a product line that he mentions fairly frequently. There is a set of equipment that you might want to use for the booty boot camp. And he has some. If you're going to do that, like internal cleansing, you might want to use a very specialized formulation to do it that is best for your body chemistry. And he has one of the only ones of it. Very convenient that you might not want to use water or over-the-counter things. You would want to use this very special formulation. "And I have that formulation". I'm certainly not saying that it is a grift. The science seems to make sense to me behind most of the things that he's talking about.

He's just in the business of butts, and I certainly don't think you need to buy anything to get a lot of value out of this book. The anatomy lessons, aftercare lessons, the illustrations, and for most of the things that he hawks through his company, you can find alternatives on the internet as well. He's not a pain in the ass about it.

Butt Seriously is a pretty great user's manual for something that you might want to use, or if you're already using it, you could use better. Butt Seriously is out May 28th, and thank you to Hachette for sending me the copy.

Oh, and TikTok, this is a statue. This is a photograph of a statue. No real butts were harmed in the making of this video.