Bad Girl Protocol

Let’s take something out of the Dominatrix playbook to put ourselves back in the seat of power post-election.

We’ve been subjected to the dark imagination of Donald Trump, JD Vance and their Project 2025 cronies for a while now. Frankly, it’s getting a little old.

Maybe you can relate. It’s rather exhausting to be exposed to a constant barrage of all the ways they intend to diminish our body autonomy. And don’t get me started on “your body, my choice.” As if we wouldn’t go down kicking and screaming.

The fantasy of the Republican party seems to include a Stepford wife that is as subservient as she is sexy. Arm candy. A woman without body autonomy or an opinion of her own. In other words: property.

That sounds like a bad Dom to me. The golden rule of BDSM1 play is consent. None of “your body, my choice” sounds consensual to me. Naughty boy, naughty Republican Party.

Fox News told women that voting differently from their husbands is the same thing as having an affair, and grounds for divorce2. These people play dirty.

Let’s play a little game of our own, shall we?

The game is simple.

Complete this sentence:

“If I were a bad girl, I would…”

Fill in the blank.

And repeat until there’s nothing more you can imagine.

If you were a bad girl, what decisions would you make? How would you channel your inner deviousness for your own delight?

The more dark and selfish and indulgent you can be, the better. Because chances are, indulgence is not your primary M.O.

Welcome to an exercise designed by Kasia Urbaniak, legendary Dominatrix and founder of The Academy.

By playing Kasia’s Bad Girl Protocol, you get to remove the prohibition on desire and dream up delectable things to make you cackle. All bets are off.

This may include:

Becoming a cat burglar and lifting millions in diamonds from your least favorite people in power.
Keeping a harem of lovers whose only role is to pleasure you.
Enacting a meticulously planned revenge against someone who deeply wronged you.
Planting a secret agent in the other party’s office to wreak havoc at inopportune times.
Asking your ex to buy you and your kid a house. (This actually happened to one of Kasia’s students)

Let me be clear:

The point isn’t to do the things on your Bad Girl Protocol.

It’s to unleash your imagination.

Be grandiose. Be reckless. Be wild. (Heavens knows the other side is dreaming big.) With the exception of doing this exercise with a friend, no one needs to know what’s on your list (unless, of course, you decide to share in the comments section)

This exercise is meant to be a permission slip: a way for you to excavate what desires are alive deep inside of you. Here’s the point — as you explore your Bad Girl Protocol, chances are you’ll find some desires that you didn’t know you possessed. As Kasia says:

“When you witness that in the area that says do not enter, there are treasures to be mined.”

Years ago, I did a sort of Bad Girl Protocol of my own, before I even knew about Kasia and her reclamation work. I was working in a creative job that looked like a dream from the outside, but on the inside, began to feel off somehow. There was a hazy desire inside me to skip town, get a casita in the desert and devote myself to dance.

Fast forward to 2019: I left the job, took a solo trip to Spain to recharge my battery, moved to a casita in the desert and devoted myself to dance.

I let my desire be the map.

“You have no say in what you want. The desire isn’t created. You don’t make it up. It’s blameless, shameless, innocent, childlike, and authentically you. What you want is not negotiable. It doesn’t mean that everybody has to comply, it just means that you have to accept it. ”

— Kasia Urbaniak

After years of denying myself the desire that was flashing like a beacon in the darkness, I did the fucking thing.

This week, as I’ve grieved the election results and the unraveling of women’s rights on the horizon, I’ve been at a loss for what to write. This was my first presidential election that I’d had the honor to vote in. I thought we were better than this.

I wanted to introduce a different approach to this political pickle we find ourselves in.

Let’s not be paralyzed by politics. I’m not suggesting that we deny and bypass our feelings. Feeling them fully is part of the alchemy that will allow us to rise.

However. If we allow ourselves to stay immobilized in fear, then they win.

Let’s use our imaginations to put ourselves back in the seat of power.

Sex and Style is written by Certified Somatic Sex and Relationship Coach and Wardrobe Stylist, Sarah Ward. She has spent the last 20 years studying human sexuality and minted it in 2021, certifying in the VITA™ Methodology with Layla Martin, and as an Erotic Blueprints™ Coach with Jaiya. Sarah was personally mentored by one of 10 Certified Image Masters in the world. She has styled over 5000 photo shoots and dressed thousands of bodies. Her work has been published in Seattle Met Bride and Groom and Women’s Wear Daily.

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