GettyYou know those friends who will just grab your phone out of your hand if you mention a crazy email you got the other day, rather than just letting you read it out loud? They obviously don't understand that seeing someone's Gmail inbox is like looking into their bedroom. You don't just barge in uninvited, and if you do, you withhold judgment, whether it's spotless or there's a few socks on the floor. Or 13,000 socks. Or 13,000 unread emails. Or—as I had about six months ago—70,000 unread emails.
Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowFor a few years (like once I hit 20k until I topped out at 70k) my inbox resembled Grey Gardens, a once-stately institution overgrown with weeds and cat poop and dying dreams. I didn't do it on purpose, I just didn't delete the unread emails because there always seemed like something more urgent to do.
The bulk of it was spam. Not necessarily the "penis enlargement" or "Nigerian prince" variety (although I got those, too), but endless amounts of work spam ("Working on an article about Jennifer Aniston's hands?!?! Talk to our plastic surgeon who had nothing to do with that!" or "Hi Anna! Check out Swiss Cheese Incorporated's new single, 'Light Fixtures'" See above re. dying dreams). And the rest were email blasts from clothing or beauty stores like J.Crew, Net-a-Porter, Gilt, Rue La La, Sephora — basically anywhere I'd purchased at least one thing, at least one time. (Ann Taylor's were my favorite.)
More From ELLEOnce they start building up, defeatism takes over. How can one woman compete against thousands of unsolicited emails? As they accumulated, I briefly considered hiring an undergraduate to come over just to hit "Select unread" and "Delete" from sunup to sundown. But I didn't want them seeing my inbox, so I didn't go through with it. You can't blame me, considering it's such a mark of shame that there are tutorials online on how to delete the "Unread Email" number on your iPhone. But eventually, to be honest, it was… kind of fun? I had created an Internet-age monster, and it was alive, and (mostly) a secret. I even bought more space for my wild email greenhouse to continue thriving, because I was too overwhelmed to do anything else about it.
Earlier this month, a meme called "There are two kinds of people in this world" went viral. It posits that there are "the 0 unread emails people," and "the 13,000 unread emails people." Like many other memes about how there are "two kinds of people in this world," it's popular because it suggests that the world can all be boiled down to Divergent but with more boring categories (in this case, an unread-emails caste system) and lets one half of us look down on the other half. This implies, obviously, that the 13k people are disorganized, forgetful, and easily overwhelmed. It encourages the "0 unread" set to equate their efficient email management with some Olympian feat like swimming the English Channel or climbing Mount Everest.
Or maybe they just have the time-management ability, the reasonable workload, or even the available emotional bandwidth to face the unread-email grind—alas, not all of us can keep a sparkling inbox all the time. "I'll have a few days of back to back meetings, or a few days of work travel… and my inbox is the stuff of nightmares in no time," says Leah, 29. "I'm not one of those people who files to archive or puts everything in folders. I never will be." That said, she's made inbox management work for her: "I get a few spare hours one day on the weekend to plow through it and mass delete."
With inboxes becoming ever-increasingly linked to our social, professional, and private lives, it's easy to become overwhelmed—whether your inbox is pristine or a mess. "I delete emails really methodically/obsessively, but that's like a coping mechanism for me," says Carrie, a 26-year-old writer. "I do it when I'm procrastinating reading/dealing with legitimate emails from friends or bosses or editors. I have a lot of anxiety over email. I let a ton of important stuff go unread for hours or days at a time because I'm not ready to confront it. I get paralyzed."
Of course, there's also the fear of the Email that Got Away: What if you carelessly delete something important, or cool, or an email that would have changed your life, or whatever? Edith Zimmerman, former editor of the Hairpin, recalls: "I think I ended up opening pretty much all of my emails, even for just a second, in case there was something cool in there. Reading a random promotional newsletter gave me the idea for [viral Hairpin post] Women Laughing Alone With Salad, so you never know."
Ultimately, the turning point in my inbox arrived with my boyfriend. He was mercilessly organized with everything, including email. I thought I might be off the hook when I saw what a maverick he was with tabs — he had 50 open at any given time, and left them open. One time I closed them all (ironically, I hate browser clutter) and he was more incensed than I'd ever seen him. But he winced every time I checked my email in front of him.
He asked me if I needed any of the unread emails; I said no.
He said, "OK. Do you want me to get rid of them?"
I mentally said goodbye to my 70,000 unread PR emails. I thanked them for their constant, stable presence in my life, even when everything else was in a state of flux. And then I nodded.
He sat down in front of my laptop and did something (he just followed this weird YouTube tutorial) and they were gone. Sans any of my own effort—like, say, I'd been airlifted to the top of Mount Everest—I had 0 unread emails. I actually felt physically lighter, as if I'd finally set down a pair of 15 lb. kettlebells. Now that my inbox was cleaned out, I felt obligated to keep it that way, and ever since, I have. With unread emails. Not read ones, because I'm not a psycho.
I won't lie: It's surprisingly gratifying to step back and watch your email become a post-modern art project, if you can deal with the inconvenience, not lose any of your business correspondences, and gracefully handle the inevitable judgment. But it's nice to wake up to a clean inbox. Incidentally, I have yet to unsubscribe from any of the listservs and will probably never unsubscribe from Ann Taylor's.

Model: Philippe Salomon; makeup: Steven KrauseAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowWe usually praise makeup artist Pat McGrath for her virtuosic creations. This time, we're thanking her for keeping it simple. With CoverGirl's new Smoky ShadowBlast sticks, she offers coordinated eye shades—one for the lid, the other for the crease and lash line. The result? Perfect smoky eyes, no master class required.
Starting next month (exact date to follow) you can score Smoky ShadowBlast sticks before the masses at covergirl.com/blastpresale

ImaxtreeAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowErdem's fall 2009 collection was filled with pretty-as-a-picture dresses in rich shades of blue, red, and purple, some adorned with lace, many splashed with watercolor-like petals. But designer Erdem Moralioglu's prints were anything but ethereal. Instead, he chose to create blooms ready for a night on the town rather than a walk in the park. In contrast to spring's almost surreal quality, fall is grounded in structured pieces you can easily imagine on Sienna Miller or Jessica Alba. According to Moralioglu, he designs clothes that have "color, optimism, and oddities." He combined all three qualities to create party-ready dresses fit for a modern-day queen.
SEE MORE PARTY-READY DRESSES HERE

From Friday, January 9 through Friday, January 16, ELLE.com is doing a deep dive into the world of female sexuality—from the perils of being a 24-year-old virgin in New York City to a beginner's guide to exhibitionism to the steamiest scenes in film history. Is it getting hot in here? Or is it just us?
I am 54 years old, but I usually date men in their twenties. That's how I became aware, about seven or eight years ago, that today's freedom of access to hardcore porn online combined with society's reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex has resulted in porn becoming sex education by default. Six years ago, I launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, where we're pro sex, pro porn, and pro knowing the difference. I also gave a somewhat notorious TED talk on the topic:
Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowThe four-minute spot went viral and thousands of people responded, making it clear that we had tapped into a huge global issue in need of a bigger solution. Two years ago, co-founders Oonie Chase, Corey Innis, MadamCurator Sarah Beall, and I launched MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a user-generated, crowdsourced, video-sharing platform that celebrates #realworldsex complete with a revenue-sharing business model for contributors, or, as we call them, MakeLoveNotPornstars. Our mission is simple: to make it easier for everyone to talk about sex—both publicly and privately.
More from THE SEX ISSUE20 articles The 25-Year-Old Cam Girl Changing Porn The 10 Most Empowering Sex Scenes for Women Inside the New 'Lubed Up' Brooklyn Burlesque Rave... I Reenacted 'The Thomas Crown Affair' Sex Scene That said, MakeLoveNotPorn was an accident: I didn't consciously set out to do what my team and I are now doing. But it's literally the startup the world was begging for. I'm also equipped to make it work: I've spent 30 years working in the business of communication, and I know that everything great in business (and life) is a product of great communication. And sex is no different! Here, my top three rules to getting what you want while getting down:
1. Talk during sex.
Let's face it: We all get vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are fragile, which is why we can find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex with the people we're actually having it with. We worry that if we say anything at all about what's going on, or comment on the action in any way whatsoever, that we might put our partner off, hurt their feelings, derail the encounter—even derail the whole relationship.
At the same time, we want to please our partner, and we want to be "good in bed." This is where porn tropes too often come into play. Because in the absence of communication, we often latch on to cues about how to give someone a good time from anywhere we can. Not the greatest idea, really.
Every sexual partner you will ever have is different; what your last partner loved may not be what turns the next partner on; and part of the fun of sex is mutual exploration. Obviously, at a baseline level, talking during sex is about consent: making sure everyone is comfortable and happy with everything that's going on. But talking during sex is also reassuring: it's how you know that everyone is enjoying themselves. Plus, talking during sex is fun! This is when you share intimacies, find things out about each other, or simply have a laugh. And why not? Let's face it: Sex is often (enjoyably) awkward, ridiculous, and screamingly funny.
2. Invent your own language:
We all have sex. We all enjoy it. But as I've said, we don't tend to talk about it.
As a result, we don't have a socially acceptable, socially shareable vocabulary for sex in the real world—one that everyone is comfortable using both in general, public discussion, and as a way of articulating how much you enjoy what goes on in your intimate personal relationships and what you'd like to do. The language of porn has rushed in to fill that gap. This isn't ideal— especially because, unsurprisingly, the language of porn is predominantly generated by men.
The person who coined the term 'finger blasting' didn't have a vagina. Because, well, if you have a vagina, that term automatically makes you wince and want to cross your legs. And while words like 'bitch', 'whore,' and 'slut' can be turn-ons during mutually agreed-upon dirty talk sessions, to be addressed as such the very first time you get naked with someone can have quite the opposite effect. At MakeLoveNotPorn we're building a new vocabulary for #realworldsex: We tag our videos with terms like 'juicy,' 'yummy,' 'succulent,' and 'saucy;' our search term for 'oral' is 'downtown.'
We're doing this because we'd love our members to take this language and use it beyond our platform. You can use this language to talk publicly about sex without feeling embarrassed about what's coming out of your mouth. And it's always evolving: We ask the MLNP community to tell us what language they use to celebrate and communicate around #realworldsex in their own individual way.
I recommend taking this approach and applying it to your own sex life. What are your own descriptors for what you love doing? How do you like to express yourself verbally in bed? There are no rules. Talking dirty doesn't have to be dirty in the conventional sense. Invent your own language and have fun with it.
3. Say what you really think:
The key to great sex communication is honesty. I particularly mean honesty in a positive sense (but, obviously, you should be honest about anything you're not enjoying or don't like). We can focus so much on our own insecurities in bed that we don't verbally express enough appreciation of our partner.
For example, one of my personal bugbears is that we don't tell men often enough how beautiful they are. And by that I mean literally using the term 'beautiful.' Men's bodies are just as beautiful as women's, and porn does men a disservice by making them think that sex is entirely dick-centric. Great sex is about appreciating, enjoying, and being aroused by every single part of your partner's body, and having that reciprocated. I make a point of telling the men I have sex with how beautiful I find them, what great bodies they have, and how much I love looking at, touching, and appreciating them. It's clear from their reactions that they don't hear those things very often, if at all.
So if you're thinking, "Ohmygod, you're absolutely gorgeous, and I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be here naked with you," say it. If you're thinking, "The way your hair curls at the nape of your neck is really cute," say it. If you're thinking, "Nobody's ever done that to me before, and I love it," say it. If you're thinking, "Right now I couldn't be happier," say that, too.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below You know those lemon slices you've been flavoring your water with (see Day 1)? Well, turns out they come in pretty handy for Day 10 too! If you don't have the time or money to purchase a peel with fruit enzymes, you can amp up your daily face scrub with a twist of lemon. Simply mix a drop or two in your palm with a squirt of product and apply on your face as usual. I tried it this morning, and it did the trick!
—Emily Hebert



Photo: Clinique Exfoliating Scrub: Courtesy of Macy's; Background: Retna
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Free Kérastase Treatment & New Products!

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below In case you haven't heard, Kérastase Paris is providing a free—repeat, free—signature treatment and blowout to anyone who wants one! (And, really, who wouldn't want one?) Valued at over $100, the service is being offered for free tomorrow, and tomorrow only. Click here to view participating salons and don't worry; even though the event is tomorrow, some retailers accept walk-ins.
P.S. Kérastase is also rolling out a new Oléo-Relax Slim line at the end of June! For those of you that are obsessed with the Oléo-Relax products but crave more control and shine, this collection is for you. Containing three natural oils—apricot, camelina, and pracaxi—for extra slimming and anti-frizz protection, Oléo-Relax Slim was designed to put unruly locks in their place.
—Emily Hebert



Photo: Courtesy of Kérastase Paris