So, I finally got my hands on The Butters – the lube that the sex blogosphere has been talking about for as long as I’ve been on the scene. It came free with a toy from my friends at Peepshow, and to be honest it’s been sitting in my “to be reviewed” box making me feel guilty for a couple of months.
I finally gave it a go during an extended play session. Let’s have a look, shall we?
So just what is The Butters?
I was first introduced to the existence of this product by my dear friend Kayla Lords. (If you don’t listen to her podcast, it’s wonderful in many ways but it’s worth it just for the way she says “lube”).
It’s created by Jerome Nichols, the brains behind LTASex, who describes himself as a “kinky, polyamorous, black, gay, socially woke stoner millennial“. (You want to be best friends with him now, right? I definitely do). He started making The Butters products in his kitchen in Ypsilanti, MI in 2016 and it’s grown into the amazing business it is today.
The Butters is an oil-based lubricant made from a small mix of simple ingredients. It comes in little tubs which remind me of the tubs of bath and shower products that you get from Lush.
The Butters retails for $5 for 2oz (great for travel, if you’re just testing it out to see if you like it), $12 for 8oz, or $14 for 8oz of the special raw honey and cocoa butter version.
Good Points
Let’s be clear: this lube has plenty to recommend it. It has only 9 ingredients, and they’re all completely natural, plant-based and healthy for your body. The main ingredients are aloe vera, shea
butter, coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil. There’s also grapeseed oil, palm kernal oil, soy lipid emulsion (which comes from soybeans), apple cider vinegar, and arrowroot gel. Nothing harmful, toxic or questionable in there!
According to their website, each ingredient is chosen for its specific properties. Shea butter, for example, is moisturising as well as being an anti-inflammatory and having a lovely smell. Coconut oil is amazing for the skin and used to aid treatment of a wide variety of skin conditions, and has long been considered suitable as an intimate lubricant.
The Butters is also vegan, in the sense that it contains no animal-derived ingredients and is not tested on animals. As a vegetarian, it’s really important to me that my intimate products are cruelty-free. A perfect choice if you want a guaranteed cruelty-free oil-based lube.
The Butters Original Lubricant has a lovely, creamy, pale-yellow colour to it, and a nice smell – I guess that’s the shea butter at work. It’s actually marketed as lubricant and moisturizer, so you can also use it to make your skin super soft!
Be aware:
Oil-based lubricants do not play nicely with many barriers, and will break down things like latex condoms and dams. Therefore, The Butters is generally not a good choice for you if you’re using barriers. Stick to water-based or silicone-based lubes in that instance. The one exception is that The Butters is safe with polyurethane barriers.
Oil-based lubes are safe with all body-safe toy materials including silicone, hard plastic, borosilicate glass, treated wood, treated ceramic and stainless steel. It also doesn’t damage leather, should you attempt to slap your own cunt with a piece of leather and get lube on it. Or something. (I can neither confirm nor deny personal experience of this particular issue).
Also: since this lube is in a tub rather than a pump or bottle, you have to dip your fingers into it to get some out. Wash your hands thoroughly first, or better yet use a sterile non-latex glove, otherwise you’ll contaminate your lube with germs and possibly risk giving yourself an infection. Even better still: decant a little bit from the main container into a smaller one with a clean spoon before play.
So did it work for me?
Sadly… not really. I really, really wanted to love The Butters. I cannot tell you how much I was prepared to love this product and rave about it. Unfortunately, it just didn’t really do it for me.
I don’t like the feeling of oils on my hands. When I cook, if I get some oil on my hands I have to wash it off as soon as possible as I find the sensation of it on my skin really unpleasant. Same with massage oils and so on – I can cope for a short amount of time, but the feeling of them in my hands cannot be described as enjoyable. So, I suppose, an oil lube was never going to work super well for me.
I smeared a generous helping of The Butters over my dildo and rubbed it in, as well as putting some directly on my vulva. Sadly, then I had to stop and wipe my hands on a nearby towel. I didn’t enjoy the feeling of touching myself using this lube. The feeling of the oil was just really… distracting? I don’t want to come away from touching my vulva going “urgh now I need to wash my hands immediately”.
Also getting it off after was a nightmare. As you’ll know if you paid attention in science lessons, oil repels water, so washing it off is a hassle. My cunt still felt unpleasantly oily even after a good wash.
I hate to have to say this lube didn’t work for me, but there you go. Bodies are different and mine goes “nope!” to oily textures.
So do I recommend it?
To be absolutely clear, I don’t think this is a bad product. On the contrary, I think it’s basically a great product. I am 1000% here for natural, body-safe, vegan lubricants. However, this experience has taught me something, and that is that oil-based lubes aren’t for me. That’s not a slight on The Butters by any means – it’s just my preference.
If you don’t like oil-based lubes for the same reason I don’t, this product won’t work for you. But if you do like oils, this might just be the highest quality and safest one you can get.
You can buy The Butters from Peepshow Toys, and send a small commission my way to help support the blog. I really encourage you to try this one for yourselves and see if you like it – so many people love it, and it’s body-safe and cruelty-free, and we should all be supporting the work of queer POC entrepreneurs like Jerome. I’m really disappointed that the lube didn’t work for me, but I’ll be going back and buying some skincare products from The Butters, for sure.
Thanks to Peepshow Toys for sending me The Butters lubricant for review. This post contains affiliate links. All opinions, as ever, my own.