Madison Young on motherhood and sexuality

Madison Young is a lot of things: a writer, a queer and BDSM porn star and director, a performance artist, director of the feminist art gallery Femina Potens, and most recently, a mother. Young gave birth to her daughter, Emma, last March. Ever since, she’s been exploring the intersection of sexuality and motherhood in her performance art, and is even working on a children’s book called My Mommy is a Love Artist.

Young’s art exhibits, with titles such as “Building Our Own White Picket Fences” and “Becoming MILF,” have explored queerness and sex, and how they converge with being a mother. In one photographic piece about the sexual and non-sexual roles of breasts, Young is shown topless with the image of a milk carton concealing one breast, and a television covering the other. Another piece was a quilt comprised of both burp cloths and “porn star panties.” At one exhibit, Young served breast milkshakes.

Salon writer Tracy Clark-Flory interviewed Young about what has changed since her daughter’s birth. In response to the oft-asked question, “What are you going to tell your child?”, Young describes her children’s book, which just happens to sound amazing:

What I tell everyone is that I plan on being honest with my child and talking with her in a language she understands, which is the same as I do with any member of my family or anyone who is outside of the adult industry.

. . . I’m creating a children’s book right now that’s called My Mommy Is a Love Artist. It’s about a mom who creates art and film that captures the love that people have for one another. There are hearts everywhere and it’s like, “My mom goes on a safari, she goes through the wildnerness and finds people who are having magical experiences together and then captures them on film as they have their magic love.” It shows them holding hands and kissing. It advocates for love and for connection. And a lot of the people that I do shoot are real couples. Everything that I do is about capturing actual authentic pleasure. I think you can explain pleasure to a child — they have pleasurable moments, they love to give hugs and to receive kisses and be tickled. I’ll inform her about more things as it makes sense to address them, but I want her to understand the basic concepts of what I do. Right now, though, it’s all Elmo to her!

Young has even launched “The Sexy Mamas Social Club” in San Francisco, where moms gather to share their experiences with sex and motherhood. The group members are writing an anthology.

Read the whole interview for more of Young’s refreshing view on balancing motherhood and sexuality.