Okay, ONE more thing about vaginas. Then I'm done. Possibly.

I was recently dog sitting at a friend's house and, to my credit/surprise, I didn't swim naked in her pool, find her dog using my favorite vibrator as a chew toy or have an inadvertent fellatio experience with her dog (on me, it was...complicated).  

However I did tart up her Apple TV by putting THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES on her "recently watched" queue, there for anyone to see.  

(In related news, I am available for dog sitting! I don't charge much, but on the other hand, I am not that good at it.)  

It was actually the first time I'd seen The Vagina Monologues performed, but it reminded me of this post on the book from waaaaay back in 2012, a time when young, innocent us knew little of what complete assholes some of our fellow humans were.  

Take my hand, will you, and travel back to that sweeter time when we could just hang out and talk vaginas.  

(And if you're wondering, I still have a weird prudishness with the word "vagina."  It's okay. I don't feel that bad about it. Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues, wrote "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say." Which, yeah.  I'm tentatively testing out "pussy" but it feels weird and obvious every time I say it, like "I am saying 'pussy' and we are all uncomfortable now.")

*******

Today I'll tell you a quick story from the book I just read which is--this will come as no surprise to you--The Vagina Monologues.

I'm telling you the story because it's just so fucking heartbreaking but also to remind us (me) why it's important to talk about this $%$# even though some people (well, this one dude on reddit who said I'm like a 12 year old boy) think it's unladylike. (Motherfucker calling me unladylike! What the fuckity fuck?....oh...yeah...I see.)

In the story, Eve Ensler interviews an old lady from Queens who was extremely hesitant about talking about her "down-there." "What's a smart girl like you talking to old ladies about their down-theres for?" she barks. After much prodding, she finally tells about the last time she ventured down there, in 1953. The woman--let's call her, oh, Agnes--tells about a date she had with Andy Leftkov, a real catch, a cute tall boy who asked her to take a drive in his new Chevy.

She and Andy were sitting in the car, recalled Agnes when "he just kissed me in this surprisingly 'Take me by control like they do in the movies' kind of way. And I got excited, so excited, and, well, there was a flood down there. I couldn't control it. It was like this force of passion, this river of life just flooded out of me, right through my panties, right onto the car seat of his new white Chevy BelAir."

Instead of realizing he'd found himself one hot little number, Andy was horrified. He said she'd stained the car seat and that she was a "weird, smelly girl." Agnes tried to explain that the kiss had caught her off guard and that she normally wasn't like this, but Andy drove her home in silence and never spoke to her again. "When I got out and closed his car door, I closed the whole store. Locked it. Never opened for business again. I dated some after that, but the idea of flooding made me too nervous. I never even got close again," said Agnes.

Years later Agnes got cancer and the surgeons pretty much cleared out her reproductive system, thus ending any worries about flooding ever again.

When Ensler asks Agnes a typically squirm-inducing Vagina Monologues-esque question, "If your vagina wore something, what would it wear?" Agnes replies, "It would wear a big sign: 'Closed Due to Flooding.'"

As the interview ends, Agnes says, "You happy? You made me talk--you got it out of me. You got an old lady to talk about her down-there. You feel better now?" [Turns away; turns back.] "You know, actually, you're the first person I ever talked to about this, and I feel a little better."

Knowledge is power, brothers and sisters.

xoxox
jill

(photo source)

The Lush Sexuality of a Woman in Full Bloom

I've been writing about vaginas a lot lately.

Which is weird, because I can barely even say the word "vagina." (I'm even a little iffy on "angina," though rest assured, if there were a medical emergency, I'd probably manage to choke it out.*) I'm not alone in this. Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues said: "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say."

True that. However, I think I am going through some sort of vaginal consciousness raising which, I know, sounds completely horrible, like it would involve attending meetings, holding hands with caftan-clad strangers, and answering dreadful questions like "What is your vaginal song?"

But you see, vaginas don't just exist as they are--well, I mean, they do--but they're also subject to the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day. In the 19th century, for example, girls who learned how to masturbate were considered to have a medical problem. Writes Ensler: "Often they were 'treated' or 'corrected' by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or 'miniature chastity belts,' sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach.'" Which, I imagine, certainly did the trick.

It was only a few hundred years ago that the existence of the clitoris was still a matter of serious scientific debate. And even today, we're still sort of iffy on some pretty major issues such as the G-spot's validity, what the hell a woman's ejaculate is, and whether or not there are different types of orgasm. Science, it seems, doesn't quite know what to make of female sexuality, and by association, vaginas.

So, yes, vaginas are mysterious and hard to figure out. But guess what? That's what so good about them. What fun would it be if you solved it all at once?

I think that's why the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day re: vaginas and the stupid bleaching and plastic surgery are bothering me so much. Because all of those things are about making the vagina chaste-looking and less, well, womanly. Like a beginner vagina that doesn't know anything. The lips of a vagina that has birthed babies and been well fucked are lush and flushed and swollen. They are not tiny and pink and virginal. They are full and open and just...so ripe.

I started thinking of them as being ripe, like a rose in full bloom, after reading this passage from Michael Pollan's Into the Rose Garden on roses and female sexuality. (Yes, I said "like a rose in full bloom." And yes, I know I sound like I'm talking about singing your vaginal song and all that, but hear me out.) In the piece, Pollan writes about his Maiden's Blush rose, also known as Cuisse de Nymphe Emue which means "the thigh of an aroused nymph."

Maiden’s Blush...seems to press her sexuality on us. Her petals are more loosely arrayed than Madame Hardy’s; less done up, almost unbuttoned. They are larger, too, and they flush with the palest flesh pink toward the center, which itself is elusive, concealed in their innumerable folds. The blush of this maiden is not in the face only. Could I be imagining things?

No, Maiden’s Blush is certainly not the old lady I expected when I planted roses. And though Maiden’s Blush bears an especially provocative bloom, every one of the old roses I planted, and all I’ve since seen and smelled, have been deeply sensuous in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Compared with the chaste buds and modest scent of the modern roses, these old ones give freely of themselves. They flower all at once, in a single, climactic week. Their blooms look best fully opened, when their form is most intricate; explicit, yet still so deeply enfolded on themselves as to imply a certain inward mystery....More than most floral scents, the fragrance of these roses is impossible to get hold of or describe “it seems to short-circuit conscious thought, to travel in a straight line from nostril to brain stem." Inhale deeply the perfume of a Bourbon rose and then try to separate out what is scent, what is memory, what is emotion; you cannot pull apart the threads that form this . . . this what?...

If the allure of old roses is in the frank sensuality of their blooms, then what are we to make of the development and eventual triumph of the modern hybrid tea? Maybe the Victorian middle class simply couldn’t deal with the rose’s sexuality. Perhaps what really happened in 1867 was a monumental act of horticultural repression. By transforming the ideal of rose beauty from the fully opened bloom to the bud, the Victorians took a womanly flower and turned her into a virgin, "a celebrated beauty when poised on the verge of opening, but quickly fallen after that."

Deeply sensuous? Frank sensuality? Short-circuiting conscious thought? Oh, Michael Pollan, this is why I love you so! (Oh, also for your excellent points on monocultures, sustainable farming techniques, and whatnot.)

But I wonder, are we doing the same thing with our bodies? Will we keep trying to bio-engineer chaste-appearing closed-up girl vaginas, forever "poised on the verge of opening," while foolishly missing out on the best damn part--the extreme fuckability and lush sexuality of a woman in full bloom? 

xoxo
jill

*This is a lie. Instead of "angina," I would say "chest pains."

(photo source)

A Farewell to Vagina

In Poland, you get a "pochwa"* to work with.

Vagina, vagina, vagina. Nope, still not comfortable saying it.

Oh, we tried. Believe me. But vagina, well, it rankles.

This despite Naomi Wolf's  Vagina: A New Biography becoming a best-seller, thus providing the enjoyable side effect of listening to NPR newscasters having to choke out the word.

This despite the general vindication of Representative Lisa Brown after she was boorishly silenced for saying "vagina" on the Michigan house floor.

And this despite (or, in may case, perhaps because of) my own dear Fight-the-Power mother being involved in a vagina-saying vaginal protest at the Michigan capital. (With t-shirts featuring Statue of Liberty saying "Vagina."  That no one wanted to wear again, ever.)

Yes, we made a valiant stab at vagina, as it were, but it's time to accept that "vagina" is just not gonna happen.

Vaginas get examined and might require special ointments. Vaginas rile overly vigilant feminists when used improperly in place of vulva. Vaginas do not get fucked.

Yes, I covered this breaking news back in 2010 in The Land Down Under, but it delights/pains to tell you that Caitlin Moran did it 8 thousand times better in her Jezebel article Naming a Vagina is Tricky Business. I mean, her bullet points alone!

There is a panoply of slang words that are, in their ways, just as truly awful as "vagina." Let's bullet point!

• Your sex: sounds like a preemptive attempt to shift blame.
• Hole: a bad thing that can happen to stockings or tights. My Johnnylulu is a GOOD thing that happens to stockings and tights.
• Honeypot: inference of imminent presence of bees.
• Twat: an unpleasant mélange of cow-pat, stupidity, and punching. No.
• Bush: the band of the same name are tiresome. The vegetation has spiders. No.
• Vag: sounds like the name of a busybody battleaxe, à la "Barb" and "Val." Suggestion also of chain-smoking Marlboro Lights, and borderline addiction to bingo. No.

So this whole idea of re-claiming "vagina"--well, I feel like we've given it a fair shake. And when it gets down to it--oh, just fucking admit it--no one really likes saying vagina.  Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues, wrote "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say."

Saying it more is not going to make anyone more comfortable with the word. Vagina is, and will always be, just too...vaginaey. And I, for one, am still on the lookout for a suitable replacement.

xoxox
jill

*Hej kretynie, srom pochwa nie jest! (translation from the Polish: Hey, moron, a vagina is not a vulva.)