The Little Book of Vaginas: Everything You Need to Know

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In some cases, the hymen may fully cover the vagina. This can lead to complications, as it may prevent menstrual blood from leaving the body. Imagine writing a book about cooking while refusing to cook or even eat the foods you write about...

The clip of Stewie from "Family Guy" (gay as he may be) is a comedic but frightening example of the level of unease and fear around what should be a beautiful, normal, and celebrated part of our body.I'll Show You Mine" features 60 vulvas photographed from the front and head-on by Katie Huisman and edited by Wrenna Robertson. Each photo set is accompanied by participants' short text entrée about their vulvas and participation in the project. In keeping with the book, these are unedited images taken at approximately the same angles as the book's images, with natural lighting taken this morning with my iPhone. Consultant gynecologist Dr Pandelis Athanasias says “there’s no such thing as a normal vagina – they naturally vary in size, shape or colour.” It is a paean to the magical vagina that would be seen as embarrassing if it was a paean to the awesome complexity (or simplicity) of the penis. I should probably have seen the red flags earlier on. In her introduction, Wolf casually mentions she is going to ignore LGB experiences because they deserve whole books of their own. It was basically a bald-faced “this is hetero white feminism, deal with it” and I remember a few alarms going off when I read it—but I trudged on. In retrospect, considering the other problems with this book, that statement is so much more harmful. Firstly, notice that Wolf doesn’t even mention the T, Q, A, etc. Not everyone with a vagina is a woman, and not every woman has a vagina—but Wolf blithely uses one as synecdoche for the other. Secondly, claiming you’re only going to talk about straight women to “keep things simpler” isn’t just a cop-out; it’s offensive—to everyone. It further “others” queer women, setting up heterosexuality as normative and queerness as deviant—something that can be sidelined for “later books.” It might be less obvious, but I also don’t see this as a great thing for straight women: it asserts a rigidity to sexuality and gender identity that does not necessarily exist. It’s possible to be straight, bi, gay, or ace—but it’s also possible to locate oneself somewhere outside of, in between, or in transition between, these restrictive categories. Wolf seems so intent on liberating the understanding of the vagina—but for who? Why gatekeep?

Perhaps surprisingly, the genre to speak most explicitly about the vagina through cinematic history has been horror. While romantic films may lean on the tasteful pan away at their stars’ most intimate moments, horror movies have frequently placed the vagina centre stage. In these films, it becomes a symbol of frightening power.With that in mind, she couldn’t not confront her own vulnerabilities. “When I first looked at my vulva I thought, ‘Whoa, there’s a lot going on there!’ But taking part has been transformative for me: I’m more comfortable in my skin as a woman. It’s a pivotal experience to do something like this because it’s so exposing. My personal reaction of the book was that it does exactly what it needs to do. The outside cover is discreet and the forward and texts are empowering. There are many different participants, including a transwoman and a few trans-masculine or non-gender specific models. While the book is dedicated "For Every Woman", I think it's important to remember that being a woman does not necessarily mean you have a vulva (and having a vulva does not necessarily mean you are a woman). Furthermore I think that anyone can benefit from the breadth of diverse images. And it should be said that projects like this can keep going in terms of representation showing more and more differences with each additional participant. Naomi means well. She read a survey once about how Western women reported lower levels of happiness and satisfaction even though our freedoms have grown over the years. And while feminists might well try to tell you that the continued existence of inequality might just have something to do with that, Naomi would like you to know that really, you just have a sad vagina in an overworked undersexed world. The vagina is a “gateway to a woman’s happiness and to her creative life” and if we all just remember that, life would just be one never ending orgasm no matter what happens. I never wanted to have children until I developed reproductive health problems. When I was 19, I had a Mirena coil fitted and that caused me to get pelvic inflammatory disease, which was excruciatingly painful. I grew a cyst on my right ovary very rapidly. I was in and out of A&E and I had to suspend my studies at uni. In the end I had emergency surgery that resulted in the loss of my right ovary and fallopian tube and they drained five litres of fluid from the cyst.

Perhaps no television show has done quite so much to put vaginas at the forefront of its agenda than Sex and the City. Running for six seasons from 1998 until 2004, the show unashamedly spoke about the vaginas and desires of its four stars, in particular Samantha Jones, the sexual savant who declared, “My vagina waits for no man.” Although Laura admits to being nervous at the beginning. “I hadn’t knelt before a woman with her legs spread before.” She then refers to this same "sexual healer" as a whore, but you know, the good kind, like Pretty Woman in reverse. She directly invokes the "whore with a heart of gold" stereotype, and seemed cynically skeptical at his audacious and far reaching claims. Ironically, she remained ignorant of her own far reaching claims. There are so many vulva shapes and sizes and colours. There are different hairstyles, piercings and tattoos too! It’s impossible to cast hair well and tattoos and skin colour don’t translate in the casts. So there photos are perhaps an even more useful resource to show vulva diversity. Half the population has a vulva and they are all unique and different and beautiful. Now anybody with internet access can participate from anywhere in the world.You can Google this, the porn industry is smaller than each of those industries. Porn brings in about 14 billion per year, whereas conventional film, records, and books bring in 40 billion, 15 billion, and 28 billion respectively. I'm not sure what she means by "video", I certainly hope she's not referring to the 90 billion cable television industry or the 20 billion local television industry. Porn may be big business, but it's smaller than each of her examples, and obviously much smaller than the combined revenue of those industries. Now, let’s be clear: I have nothing against anecdotes. Interesting stories are the life-blood of non-fiction. What’s problematic here is the way Wolf seems to accord anecdotal evidence the same level of privilege as scientific evidence. She constantly mentions hundreds of responses she receives from people in response to articles she has written, as if this correspondence should have the same weight as lab studies.

Hate the word "yoni." Probably because it's a diminutive for a Hebrew name that always grated on my ears (sorry, Yonis). Also, it's unclear why men who charge women hundreds of dollars for masturbating them while calling them Goddess = good, but diff'rent strokes and all. Naomi, you’re seriously starting to turn me into a raging bitch with this two dimensional woman whose very fulfillment relies on a man's ability to remember her favorite flowers. She really is self-entitled narcissistic out of her goddamn mind a woman who seriously needs to get a grip an incredibly selfless woman.In Manhattan, the Private Eyes Gentlemen's Club advertises with sings on top of taxicabs. A few years ago, the women's faces in such ads simply looked fetching and seductive. About a year ago, the women began to gaze into the camera with an expression that was slightly frightened or angry, ... Recently, I noticed, faintly but unmistakable, on a sign for the Private Eyes strip club-- that on the upper cheekbone of a lovely model advertising the club, there was now a single drop. Was it a tear?" One inner lip may be longer than the other. Asymmetry in the labia is not necessarily a cause for concern. When people refer to the vagina, they usually mean the visible, external part of the genitals. The anatomical term for this area is the vulva. Even though she refers to it as the hardest part of the project, Laura believes including so many of these harrowing experiences adds to the impact of her message – because there is no singular female experience. It got to the point where I was obsessive in my desire to have a child. My mum told me I needed some counselling. I started to re-evaluate what womanhood could look like for me, outside of my biological capabilities. I think we kind of take for granted that we’re going to be able to have children. Not being able to conceive doesn’t reduce your value as a woman, it doesn’t make you less of a woman – but that’s kind of what society tells us.