Since the Bend Over Beginner Harness is marketed for beginners, you’d think it’d be a bit easier to use or come with instructions. I was fortunate enough to have the perfect Beginn-ee to guide me in its usage and I learned quite a bit about the harness in the process.

I was the beginner, a bottomy girl who has long had a fantasy of pegging a guy. The beginn-ee was a very experienced bisexual guy, a switch who is a frackin amazing communicator. I could not have done this nearly so well without him and I’m very glad I didn’t try this first on a guy who had even less experience than I did.

The Bend Over Beginner is excellent quality and a very good value with strong nylon straps, plastic and metal fittings, a velvet pocketed facing, two 100% silicone dildos, two O-rings, and a bullet vibe. It’s all easy to clean (use appropriate cleaning methods and lube for silicone toys). Even the fabric, although it can get messy, cleans easily. The harness comes in a clear plastic box with a noticeable lack of instructions. This lack was first noticed when I couldn’t get the vibe to turn on. The button didn’t seem to do anything and I couldn’t figure out which direction to insert the three watch batteries. Once I figured out that I had to remove the little plastic insert in the vibe, it came on no matter how the batteries were inserted, and, in fact, even if all the batteries weren’t. That’s right. The vibe runs when open, meaning with the ton and button on the other side of the room from the bottom and battery, and even with only one battery in. The vibe, once it turned on, would not turn off at all. It is, however, fairly strong - outside the velvet pocket. Inside the pocket, it’s a much-too-hard, only slightly buzzy, battery eater that doesn’t do a darn thing for me. I see other reviews have various issues with their vibes as well, but I do feel that I must have somehow damaged it when I first got it for it to behave so strangely. Good luck with yours.

The straps were relatively easy to adjust but it couldn’t be done quickly. Take some time to “costume” yourself ahead of time. I put on the smallest O-ring because I was a bit paranoid about it all staying tight and I did rather enjoy walking around with my cute little dong waggling about. I took the time alone to work out where I thought the straps should be adjusted to angle it properly and where to place the little pocket in case I got the vibe to work right. One thing that I haven’t seen anywhere else that might not be obvious to the true beginner – the adjustment of the straps for when you are strutting about in the mirror completely changes when you bend over. Again, rehearsal before you perform will be important. If you bend over, or go into some such position, you will have to adjust them differently if you want them to stay tight, so my image of having it all worked out ahead of time, then strutting up to the bed and having at it doggy style wasn’t really accurate in real life. Overall though, I thought the straps were strong, easy to adjust, and fairly comfortable - no chafing for me, but my partner said they were chaffing to him. He recommends covering them with fabric if they are going to be rubbing against your partner’s skin.

A word about the O-rings and switching them out – as a seamstress, I felt that the metal snaps were a bit large and a bit too tight for the weight of the strap. In other words, I was concerned that pulling the stud might pull the socket out of the strap, leaving a hole. (I see a customer comment that this did happen to them.) I was careful to support it and to use something to pry it apart slightly so that I didn’t stress the area of the strap around the snap. Fortunately, though, the smallest O-ring also fits the larger dildo in the set so you don’t have to change it to switch between these two dildos. This proves important because my partner took one look at the wee one and said it would be way too small for him. He’s experienced, after all. I still wanted to start with it, though. This was fine, because when he proved right, it was easy to slip the little one out and the bigger one in without even taking the harness off. I count that as a plus in the design.

The dildos are both very good quality, but the small one is quite small. The diameter could still be fine for someone who hasn’t been penetrated anally but in a harness, it’s really hard to use. It’s too short to use for pegging if your partner has any roundness to his bottom at all, at least in the position I wanted to try it. You simply need more length to reach past the buttocks. The other issue with the small one is that it’s very floppy. That might be ok if you were pegging vaginally, I don’t know, but it’s not easy to work something super soft and floppy into a tight hole… nervous guys everywhere will know just what I mean. The wee one is also quite curved which tends to make it bend away from a tight hole even more. Given that the wearer has no sensation, it’s easy to slip out without knowing it. A note on the curve: Wearing it up as would be natural for a penis is probably a good idea for vaginal penetration in missionary but, depending on the position, my partner warns you may need to turn it. With him on his stomach and me behind, for instance, it needed to be “upside down” to reach the prostate. Again, not something that would have occurred to me as a complete beginner.

Overall, this is a great product, well-made and a good value even with the vibe issues. I recommend it, but it’s not as easy to use as a beginner might imagine. It’s possible that a different design might prove more intuitive or physically easier to handle, but this one will require some experimentation, some practice, and some solid communication.