When Did You Last Look At Your Vulva?
Go ahead and gawk
When is the last time you actually saw or heard the word “vulva”?
Was it when the sex education teacher, coughing nervously, blushing brighter than a ready-to-harvest McIntyre, was pointing at a horrible comic-y drawing that looked more like a mountain goat’s head than the lumps and humps in your panties?
Maybe you’re blushing because…guess what…more blushing…you’ve never actually looked at your own genitals?
So, first, let me clarify… Vulva is the noun for “the female external genitals” (Oxford Dictionaries). It is “the whole external package” whereas the vagina, which is traditionally used to describe female genitalia, is actually “a muscular tube which leads from the cervix (the neck of the womb) down to the vulva” (Laura Dodsworth).
And second: I get it. I only recently developed an I-see-you relationship with the parts of me between my belly button and my upper thighs.
Oh sure, I knew they were there and quite enjoyed their presence both on my own and with partners…but look at them? Why would I need, or want, to do that?
Truthfully it was only while snapping photos for my lover that I began to actually gaze at my own vulva. So that is what it looks like?
How is it that I have a Women’s Studies degree and little fear in openly discussing genital needs (small-town grocery store aisles or the staff room at school even) and yet I don’t even know what my own genitals look like?
Last evening as I scrolled Twitter an image stunned me. A beautiful image that stunned me more than it should have…“tell your genitals how hot they are today” read @AndreShakti’s tweet as she unashamedly flaunted her incredible genitalia.
It stopped me…I stared…and wondered several things:
Why am I feeling slight shock at this image?
How is she so damn brave?
Is that what someone else’s vulva looks like?
You mean they don’t all look like the “tight” 20-year-old ones I only seem to see on display in the rare bits of porn I have ingested?
Mine is not ancient and ugly?
Why is it that we haven’t checked out our own genitalia? Is it taboo? Just not discussed? Why is it yet another form of shame in which we as the “babymakers” are steeped?
Laura Dodsworth, who photographed 100 vulvas, explains
there’s a world of difference between how you see vulvas in porn — and how you see them in real life. It’s so important for women to know what vulvas look like. It can help with body image anxiety. We really need to talk about them because many women haven’t looked at their own. They don’t know what’s down there.
Along with the fact that “a lot (if not all) of these pictures have been photo-shopped” Dodsworth shares that we see a certain “type” of the female anatomy.
According to Monty in “What Does A Normal Vagina Look Like?”: “Due to magazines and pornos, a ‘normal’ vagina to most of us looks like a neat little slit with no hair”.
Great.
Another part of us snipped and shaped to “perfection” — and this is without even getting into the horrible reality of female genital mutilation occurring regularly around the world.
Sonya Renee Taylor’s message in her book The Body Is Not Apology is about Radical Self Love. And how it, in turn, will change ourselves and the world positively.
How can we love our own bodies…accept the gorgeous vessels we’ve been gifted…if we don’t even know what parts of them look like?
Get out a camera. A mirror.
And gawk at your vulva.
Yes, you read that correctly: gawk at your own vulva.
Because then you’ll have a wonderfully well-researched answer as I ask: when did YOU last check out your genitals? Your labia? Do you know what your vulva looks like?
