X-Files Star Gillian Anderson Wants To Know All Of Your Sexual Fantasies
In order to compile an upcoming book, Gillian Anderson is asking women to tell her their sexual fantasies.
Gillian Anderson appealed to fans on Twitter to write to her about their deepest sexual fantasies. The post was made in conjunction with a piece Anderson penned for The Guardian outlining her plan to compile a book about women’s sexuality in the modern world. Anderson, once voted the World’s Sexiest Woman herself, was inspired to write the book by her role as a sex therapist on the Netflix series Sex Education.
Anderson compared the ambition of her new book to Nancy Friday’s 1973 nonfiction classic My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies. The book, which also documented the sexual accounts of women, came on a cultural wave of sexual liberation and started important conversations about sex among many women. Gillian Anderson read My Secret Garden in preparation for her role on Sex Education, and accounts recorded by Friday inspired Anderson.
“Its unfiltered and painful honesty shook me,” Anderson wrote. “These letters and interviews were incredibly intimate and very raw…they seemed to come straight from the mysterious heart of the women’s innermost yearning.” What struck Gillian Anderson even further was the frustration, guilt, and embarrassment that pervaded so many stories in the book.
My Secret Garden lifted the fog of taboo, igniting honest discussions among women about orgasms and sexual fantasies. 50 years later, Gillian Anderson is often asked whether her role on Sex Education has led people to open up to her about their own sexual desires, fantasies, and frustrations. According to Anderson, they don’t.
“Which ultimately is what gave me the idea for a book – a My Secret Garden for the 21st century, so to speak – that would be revelatory and profound, and inclusive across the board,” Anderson said. She encouraged anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of age, religion, sexual orientation, or marital status, to write to her about their fantasies and frustrations in order to show the progress women have made in the last half century, and what important conversations and changes need to take place next.
Composed of a curated collection of the letters written to Gillian Anderson, the tentatively titled Dear Gillian will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Anonymous submissions can be made via an encrypted portal at deargillian.com, which will be open until February 28, 2023.
This is not Gillian Anderson’s first foray into the publishing world. Anderson co-wrote a trilogy of science-fiction novels dubbed the Earthend Saga, along with the nonfiction book We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, which outlined freedom as a path to happiness for women. Apart from her writing career, Anderson is best known as an actress.
Though she has recently gained popularity on Sex Education, most viewers would recognize Gillian Anderson from the hit science-fiction series The X-Files. The actress has made notable appearances in Netflix’s The Crown, in which she portrayed former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, and in 2022, Anderson starred in The First Lady and The Pale Blue Eye. She is expected to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe in an upcoming role, but that part has not yet been disclosed.
Gillian Anderson has asserted herself as a sexually liberated feminist icon in pop culture, and her latest endeavor is certainly in keeping with that reputation. In a tense sociopolitical moment for women, Dear Gillian is poised to make waves. The effects of those waves, she hopes, will be positive.
Her aim for the book is that it will inspire and enlighten women of all generations by illuminating the truth of what it means to be a woman in the modern world. No release date for Dear Gillian has been announced, but the author is collecting accounts from fans now. 2023’s Valentine month is fans’ chance to express their innermost sexual feelings to Gillian Anderson as she looks to illuminate the experiences of womanhood.
