There was CAKE! Bear with us now, we are onto something big, we promise! No, no - we are not trying to top Darwin's evolutionary theory on "the origin of species." CAKE wants to document the origins of women's sex lives to discover, for each of us, where it all began and how we have since evolved.

Contrary to popular thought, women are conscious of sexuality in the first years of life and all throughout childhood - leading up to puberty. Our childhood not only informs and sets in motion how we feel about our bodies, as well as imprints upon us what we like, think and act on, but is also key to our discovery of pleasure.

While the range of experience is virtually without bounds, there are common themes that run throughout women's stories of their sexual origins including: playing with Barbie dolls, experimenting with childhood playmates, exploring our bodies for the first time and recognizing that "special" parts are more sensitive than others, and being spontaneously aroused in the classroom. These formative moments are key to how women experience sexuality later in life as adults, as mothers, as women and as partners.

Of course, at such a young age, many of these thoughts and feelings cannot be construed in retrospect as purely sexual. When we are children, sexuality is not compartmentalized or taboo - it just is.

"I was raised by Southern professors who were alternately open-minded and repressive about sex. I always had a cerebral idea of what sex was, but I never connected those ideas to my body by actually masturbating or having sex, until later in life. I did have a very rich fantasy life and Ôsex dreams.' In my first sexual fantasy, from around age 6, I am a (grown-up) princess in a passionate embrace with a prince who is Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon or John Taylor, depending on who I am more in love with that day. I am wearing a blue gown with a tight bodice, held together by a long seam of buttons down the front. The prince is unbuttoning my dress and kissing down my body as he goes along. The most arousing part of the dream for me is the action of him unbuttoning all those tiny buttons and revealing what is underneath. My inspiration for this fantasy was definitely my older sister's copy of DD's Seven and the Ragged Tiger, in particular the picture of the band on the cover." - CAKE Girl reflecting on her first sexual thoughts

By asking women about their childhood experiences, we can discover an amazing array of sensation, thought, provocation and stimulation, and track the roots of women's sexual pleasure back to when we were girls. Women evolve as sexual beings over a lifetime and this evolution starts in our early childhood. From a girl's body comes the self-discovery of a woman's mind...and yes - the origins of a species.

Love,
CAKE