When it comes to porn, Crystal Lust truly has the range. Whether she’s a Spanish teacher sneakily banging her students or the IRL embodiment of a Pikachu fantasy, Lust is a cinematic chameleon. Watch her back catalog, though, and you’ll find one constant: twerking.
The act of shaking your cakes to uptempo music isn’t new, but the popularity of twerking is enormous, especially in porn. Twerk porn? Pornhub returns 26,000 results for “twerking” videos in the “straight” section alone, which vary from clips of fully clothed women bouncing their butts to porn stars throwing it back during doggy. But should you, an average person with a butt, also be twerking during sex?
According to the good people of the world wide web, you should certainly make a valiant attempt. Back in 2015, YouTube sexpert Tyomi Morgan made a highly requested video about making it clap for your partner (or rather, on them). In the clip, she specifically advises the receiving partner to throw it back during doggy-style so that their cheeks clap in tandem with each thrust. “If you can’t take it in this position, though, [it] is not going to feel good because he’s going to be thrusting deeper and deeper into your vagina,” she explains. “That’s when you get that clapping noise! You can even just stay in one place and twerk your booty. It’s just like riding on top, except you’re on your knees now.”
Reddit also features the occasional thread extolling the joys of twerking not only in doggy, but in cowgirl and reverse cowgirl, too. The general consensus is that doing this makes the penetration deeper, feels insane for the person getting twerked on and, most importantly, “looks hot as fuck.” “[Twerking] is the exact right movement to get a good angle and speed for cowgirl,” one user advises. Another says that when his girlfriend twerks on his dick during sex, it feels like “Jesus is winking at [him] and giving [him] finger guns.”
“I feel quite aroused if I say so myself, this is god’s true gift to us men,” writes a third. “Magnificent to observe for the human eye.” There’s even an entire subreddit dedicated to twerking porn.
“If you can do it and want to show off during sex, I’m all for it,” says Bobby Box, a certified sex educator and journalist. “Hell, I’d do it if I could! As long as it feels good and you aren’t experiencing any sort of discomfort, twerk away.” Approach with caution: Start slow and build up; there’s literally nothing less sexy than a dick-breaking twerk-gone-wrong. “Don’t get carried away and slam down on a penis so hard that it fractures,” Box advises. “It’s happened to me, and it’s not pretty!”
Anal requires a different approach to twerking, too. Box says the key to twerking while bottoming is lube, and the more, the better. “People think spit is a suitable lubricant, but it isn’t for a number of reasons,” he explains. “There isn’t enough of it, it dries quickly and it leaves the area drier than it was before. Butts don’t self-lubricate like a vagina does, so it needs some extra glide. If we’re talking anal sex with a penis-owner, you want to lube the penis, the anus and lube inside using a finger or lube injector.” That’s true of all anal of course, but twerking is uniquely lube-able — the more slide you have, the more power you get out of your twerk.
Box also advises prepping your hole for the main event with a butt plug — that way you’ll feel more comfortable and less likely to experience friction when you shake those cakes. If you’ll be twerking during vaginal penetration, you can always practice on a dildo to get the motion down.
So there’s your basic how-to guide, but when and why did people start twerking during sex?
Cultural histories of twerking acknowledge that it’s a dance with roots in West Africa and a word that apparently dates back to the early 17th century. But it was pioneers of New Orleans’ high-octane bounce music that established twerking as the cultural phenomenon we know today. Back in 1999, DJ Jubilee released the gloriously frenetic “Back That Azz Up,” which doubled up as a butt-shaking instructional; in 2002, Choppa was on the lookout for a “slim fine mama with some twerk in her.” A decade later, Big Freedia paved the way for her bounce domination with “Booty Whop.”
In 2016, director Diana Spaghetto documented this history with #Twerkumentary, a documentary about the history and culture of twerking. Featuring interviews with Khia, Too $hort and Big Freedia herself, the movie deals with everything from the evolution of twerking to its appropriation. “Too $hort says it perfectly: The action, the pelvic movement, was around for many years, but it didn’t have a name,” Diana tells me. The names they did come up with were censored for being too sexual, so “twerking” became the SFW descriptor it needed to go mainstream — well, that and Miley Cyrus’ 2013 VMA performance, which spawned a million clickbait headlines and fueled the erasure of twerking’s roots in bounce, strip club and hip-hop culture.
Twerking during sex wasn’t a trend that Spaghetto specifically encountered during filming, but she explains that the last few years have spawned everything from gym classes to online tutorials about how to master hip control. “I went to a few twerk classes and saw that people really had to learn to move their hips,” she explains. “The teachers often said stuff like, ‘Imagine moving your hips up and down like you’re having sex,’ but I guess many people never had sex that way.”
In other words, these twerk classes were actually reconfiguring the way people move their bodies, and Spaghetto predicts that changed the way they moved them in the bedroom, too. “I’m sure a lot of people are now having better sex because they learned how to let go of their stiffness and shyness, and how to rhythmically control their pelvis movements — and all thanks to twerking!”
Whether it works for you personally or not, it seems most twerk-capable people think that twerking in the bedroom can be a whole lot of fun. Twerk on your partner’s face while they eat you out to add an element of performance, throw it back during doggy to get the dick deep inside or just shake it during foreplay to show off a little. And if it’s a trick you can’t pull off? Don’t feel bad — you can always learn a new, less jiggly sex trick like the one Lust recently showcased: eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while you ride. Not bad!
Jake Hall
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist, fashion features editor and author. Their debut book 'The Art of Drag' is scheduled for release in May 2020.
