'I'm just going to say it: Fingering is back.'

I'm just going to say it: fingering is back.

According to a recent study by Lovehoney, the next 12 months are set to be something of a 'Fingerenaissance' — with fingering as one of the biggest sexual trends making its comeback.

TBH, it's about time old school foreplay came back — but with proper discourse.

Watch: On No Filter with Mia Freedman, Naomi Watts gets candid about sex, menopause, hormones and the shame she carried for so long.. Post continues below.

My first time being fingered was at 15.

I was at the house of a boy I liked, because his parents were away and he'd invited me over. He'd made me dinner that was so impressive I was ready to make out mid-meal. It was (sadly) the most romantic set-up I'd seen thus far.

So, when he took me into his bedroom, put on some Erykah Badu and trickled his finger all the way down and into my undies, I let him underneath.

I had no idea what to expect. No-one had educated me on foreplay. Not in high school, not at home and not in mainstream media. There was no conversation around how to properly finger, or what its function even was — it just felt like the precursor to sex, with less potentially life-altering consequences.

My teenage girlfriends seemed to like it; or so they said.

"So-and-so fingered so-and-so" was excitedly whispered throughout the schoolyard, spreading like wildfire as the single most exciting thing to happen all lunch break.

It might've been "soooo good", according to their retelling but none of us had access to a realistic concept of female pleasure, so how did we really know?

"In movies, you still so often see a woman have an orgasm on screen that is anatomically not possible," said Halina Reijn, director of the Nicole Kidman erotic thriller BabyGirl.

This film notably features a significant amount of enthusiastic fingering that isn't necessarily a precursor for sex, but often the main course itself).

It's fingering purely for Kidman's character's pleasure.

It's true that many of the films that influenced me as a teen were written and directed by men, with intimate scenes that don't imitate real life. While they "centred" around the female orgasm, foreplay was nowhere to be seen. The mainstream arc of kissing > penetration > orgasm gave us no insight into the nuance of pleasure.

But at 15, I didn't know that.

Listen to the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud discuss the 'fingerenaissance'. Post continues below.

It wasn't until I started properly discovering self-pleasure and learning about the female body that I learnt what fingering is supposed to feel like.

That it's a form of pleasure in and of itself; a way of understanding your mood, responsiveness, sensitivity and current state.

That it can be a turn on, if it's done right.

That, like everything when it comes to sex, it has a language we haven't been taught. That there's an art to it; that confidence comes with knowledge; that it can be an essential tool in the pleasure toolkit.

Why a fingerenaissance?

Pop culture has led the charge in this arena, with a renewed focus on women's pleasure, led by not only the desire for spicy content growing amongst women, but also the female writers, directors, storytellers and producers answering the call.

Movies like BabyGirl, as well as shows like Sex Education, Normal People, Bridgerton (ahem, THAT carriage scene between Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington??) all tackle the nuances of pleasure, relationships, kink and sexuality with honesty and self-awareness.

They all spotlight women's pleasure and enjoyment as something that actually matters.

This genre of storytelling didn't exist within the same space even 10 years ago. It's a space that explores the awkwardness of everything we don't know about sex, giving us a newfound language to tackle similar conversations in our own lives.

They make us feel seen with their honesty; seeing scenarios played out on screen that actually happen in real life.

Thankfully, we're also in a renaissance of sex education, where conversations about pleasure, consent, and bodies are breaking free from outdated, shame-ridden narratives.

The fingering renaissance is part of this bigger sex education surge. With more information on the art of foreplay, we're able to actually engage with fingering in a way that makes sense. We've even come up with new terminology for it, coining phrases like "hand sex" and "outercourse" — adultifying something that perhaps felt illicit in the inexperience of youth.

This lends further insight to our evolution of sexual language, understanding elements of the sexual experience with less shame and more knowledge allows us to put words to what we actually want to experience.

I remember the first time my current partner fingered me.

It was a vast contrast to my first ever fingering experience at 15. He'd done the proper preparation — sexual tension-fuelled dinner, post-dinner kiss, couch kiss, bed kiss, grabbing with clothes on, going down on me… just to set the scene. By the time we got to the fingering portion of the menu, I felt safe, comfortable and horny.

It was the first time — outside of self-pleasure — that I'd felt what fingering could bring to a partnered sexual experience.

I was relieved to find that I was right to be disappointed by my first fingering at 15. It wasn't supposed to feel rough, fast and dry. It was supposed to feel like this.

With his care and awareness and my newfound language, voice and confidence, we were able to have an experience that felt much more aligned with my teenage fantasy.

So I say YES to the fingerenaissance. A big fat welcome back to fingering. Let's do it right this time.

Feature image: ian dooley on Unsplash