Read My Lips (17 page)

—
M
AGGIE,
61, California

If women aren’t able to get a sense of what other women’s vulvas look like from being in locker rooms or other public spaces, then what opportunities do women have to learn what’s common or not when it comes to vulvas? Friends? Perhaps. Some women may compare genitals with friends. Lovers? Yes, but this is only true if a woman has a sexual partner who also has a vulva. Even for the minority of women who do have female sexual partners, they may only have a limited number of female partners, thus giving them a limited view of the diverse range of vulvas in the world.

So, how are women supposed to know which genitals look “normal”? For all women, the story is likely a little different. We have both found that the vulva pictures that we show in classes or presentations are sometimes the first images of vulvas that women have ever seen (including their own). Other women have seen the vulvas of friends, lovers, or family members. Yet, those women who are curious about the appearance of women’s genitals who don’t have access to other women’s genitals may seek out the information from a variety of other sources.

WHEREFORE ART THOU, LABIA?

If you were curious about the appearance of women’s genitals, where would be the best place to look? We are not sure where you should look, but we certainly know where you should
not
look. Psychologist Ros Bramwell
⁴
at the University of Liverpool investigated a variety of “glossy” women’s magazines in search of pictures with a visible pubic area. These magazines were not the kind that you would have to request from behind a counter or extract from a protective clear plastic cover with “warning signs” for explicit material. These magazines were the kind that you might leaf through while standing in line at the checkout counter at your local grocery store—in other words, mainstream women’s lifestyle and fashion magazines.

In these magazines, Bramwell
⁴
and a research assistant extracted all pictures of women with a visible pubic area including pictures of models in bathing suits, underwear, tight-fitting clothing, and, of course, nude. From 240 pictures that fit these criteria, they analyzed the 49 pictures that did not require a magnifying glass to view the up-close details. From those pictures, they eliminated all pictures that obscured the model’s pubic area with shading, bulky clothing, crossed legs, and so on. In this final set of pictures, they looked closely at the model’s pubic area for bumps, humps, or other lady lumps. They reviewed many magazines and used a rigorous scientific method. Even without opening a magazine, we bet that you can guess what they found. If you guessed “nothing,” you would be correct. They didn’t notice any protruding labia. They found a surprising number of pictures (six pictures, or 14 percent of all pictures with a visible pubic area) that showed an “extrusion or indentation.” However, their description of these pictures was “of tight clothing being drawn up between the labia majora,”
⁴
which sounds like a formal description of camel-toe to us. We were not surprised by the lack of definable genitalia in these magazines. Sure, European magazines tend to be a bit more relaxed about nudity, but they were still mainstream magazines where airbrushing and other digital editing of photos are the norm and genital (or any) bumps/lumps are quickly wiped away.

PAPER MACHE PANTY PARTY

Panty party: sounds like something that would spontaneously break out during an all-girl sleepover following a really rambunctious pillow fight. Not quite, but it is designed to be a female bonding experience. Plus, the original French phrase,
papier mâché
(say “mah-shay”), means “chewed paper,” which we like because, if you think of the vagina dentata myth (the idea that vaginas have teeth), it’s kind of an interesting coincidence, yes? In English, it’s written as “paper mache.”

What You Need

• One pair of panties per person. They can be fierce, hideous, or lovely. They can be thongs or high-waisted bloomers. There are no rules on the types of panties you can use. Genitals come in all shapes and sizes and so should the range of panties!
  
• Newspapers, magazines, or printed pictures/words (try to use old paper to recycle). Newspapers work best, but magazines can work with enough patience.
  
• water
  
• flour or glue (the regular white sticky stuff)
  
• mixing bowl
  
• mixer (optional)
  
• balloons
  
• hairdryer (optional)
  
• paint
  
• decorations (Be Creative! We love sequins, feathers, and rhinestones.)
  
• clothesline and pins (optional)
  

Directions

1. Get your group together. This is a great activity for a group of ladies, but there is no harm in involving the fellas. Consider a panty party in lieu of your next couple’s game night. The point of the party is to get a conversation and celebration started. So decide on a group that will help make that happen. You can provide the panties and decorations if you are concerned about over-burdening your guests. However, the party is designed to celebrate diversity, and there is no better way to do that than by asking your guests to bring the items that represent their individuality!
   
2. Begin the party by asking everyone to tear off adjectives, words, or images that express how they feel or would like to feel about their genitals. The strips should be about one inch by one inch. As you all tear, discuss what words/images you are choosing and why. If you want a themed paper-mache panty, consider printing a variety of different words or vulva images. If you want to save your guests time, you can also consider doing this beforehand.
   
3. Time for everyone to get their panties in a bunch! That’s right; everyone sets up panty workstations. This is where the balloons come in (and you thought they were just for celebration). Blow up the balloon a little bit to give it some initial shape. Now stick it inside the panty and continue to blow it up until it gives the panty a full shape. The balloons are going to hold the panties in place while you paper mache.
   
4. Mix one part water to two parts glue, if you decided to use glue, or one part flour with two parts water, if you are using flour. If you are using flour, mix it together until it is smooth and not bumpy. It can get messy, so you may want to make a few different mixtures to reduce the amount of dripping.
   
5. Let the fun begin! Dip the pieces of paper into the mixture, making sure all sides are completely covered. Pull off excess mixture by running the paper through your fingers. Stick the paper pieces onto the panties, curling them underneath the edges to follow the shape of the panty. Continue until the panties have one layer of paper.
   
6. Wait for the first layer to dry. You can expedite this process by using a hairdryer. Complete at least two more layers to make sure that it maintains its shape. Always make sure the layer is completely dry before adding another one.
   
7. Once the final product is dry, it is time to decorate! Have some negative words or pictures on the panties? It is your time to cover them up with paint. Choose colors that represent how you feel about your genitals. Snazz them up by decorating with buttons, sequins, or feathers. Get creative!
   
8. Have an organization or institution that you think would benefit from a vulva-awareness art project? If so, hang the finished projects on a clothesline to remind everyone that their vulva is beautiful and unique.
   

I wish there was more education on the variations of colour, sizes, symmetry etc. so women don’t feel like they’re abnormal. Where I come from it’s illegal to show unedited pictures of vulvas in magazines. It’s stupid and the reason why most of the vulvas I saw were cartoons/drawings.

—
K
ARA,
20, Tonga

It was disappointing to us that there were no depictions of defined genitalia in mainstream “glossy” magazines, but it was not entirely surprising; it can be tricky to see genital definition through women’s clothing. We had to wonder, what about pictures of women without clothing? How are those women’s genitals portrayed?

The
Playboy
Perspective

While in graduate school, Vanessa and two colleagues (Sarah Calabrese and Brandi Rima) decided that a content analysis of sexually explicit materials was in order.
⁵
The question was, where to begin? Although sexually explicit materials have probably been around since the beginning of mankind, stone carvings always left much to the imagination. Even paintings were simply a rendition of the artist’s view of the woman. Then, there was Hugh. Hugh Hefner mainstreamed nude images of women in 1953 with the introduction of
Playboy
, which boasted a wonderfully voluptuous, debatably size-12 Marilyn Monroe on the first cover.
^6
–
9

Since that original cover with Marilyn Monroe, a lot has changed. Poodle skirts went out of style, bras were burned, and leg warmers became all the rage. Just as there have been women’s clothing trends that have come and gone, there have also been changes in women’s bodies (or at least the ways in which women’s bodies have been portrayed) underneath all that clothing. Consequently, Vanessa and her colleagues set out to conduct an empirical investigation of these trends using rigorous and scientific methods. They gathered every centerfold picture (from 1953 to the most recent issue at the time in 2007) and set about looking for trends in women’s body size and shape over time. Because they all came into the project with theories about how the models would change over time, an objective way to understand the ways that models’ bodies changed over time (or did not) needed to be developed. In order to do this, they decided that they couldn’t be the ones who evaluated the centerfold models and found a few open-minded students who were interested in helping with the project. Next, the research assistants were trained on what to look for.

The first part was easy, as the models’ body measurements (breast, waist, and hip size, along with height and weight) are listed next to each one of the pictures. If you are reading this and yelling, “Girl, if I was asked to list my measurements in that magazine there is NO WAY that I would report my accurate measurements!” then you are in good company. (Vanessa has tried to give herself a few inches of height on her driver’s license every renewal year without any success.) Needless to say, we thought the same thing. So, how do we know the measurements listed are accurate, then? We don’t, and in fact, we would be surprised if they were. The research team made peace with this because the important thing wasn’t whether the model from January 1982 had larger breasts or a thinner waist than the model of May 1968. Women’s average breast size probably changes very little from decade to decade, so if the model said her breasts were a little bigger one year and a little smaller during the next few years, that was more interesting because it demonstrated a trend in cultural ideals of beauty. In other words, if women were fudging their measurements, we were interested in whether they were making the measurements bigger or smaller each year.

Next, the team had to decide on how to evaluate changes in women’s genitals. Unlike body-size measurements, there were no details listed about the models’ pubic hair length or labia size. The team had to ask themselves how much pubic hair could be missing before they considered the model to be “shaved” (waxed, electrolysized, etc.)? What would be considered “longer” inner labia, and what should be considered “shorter” inner labia? These were not easy questions to answer and required Vanessa and her research team to spend many long and tedious (but joyful) evenings debating these philosophical questions. They would come up with a set of criteria, and then two of them would evaluate a set of pictures. The next day they would come together and talk through how everyone had scored each picture. They did this again . . . and again . . . and again until finally, they were in almost 100 percent agreement. A few gray hairs later, they were finally ready to give the categories to the research assistants who would separately code the models’ pubic hair and genital appearance in an objective manner. As one final safeguard, the centerfold images were shuffled so that the research assistants wouldn’t know which models belonged to which years.

What did Vanessa and her team find? In the 1950s and early 1960s, they saw models with curvaceous frames, demure poses, big updos, large round breasts, and concealed genitals (most would turn their back or cross their legs, making the genitals difficult or impossible to see). The late 1960s and 1970s brought a sexual revolution along with a more natural-looking model characterized by straight hair and a curly bush down below, sometimes referred to as a “fur bikini” because of the ability of natural pubic hair to hide genital details such as the labia. The models of the 1980s got a little taller (about half an inch) and thinner (about 2.5 pounds) than those in earlier years. However, little changed south of the border. Over 95 percent of the models in the magazine in the 1970s and 1980s displayed seemingly natural pubic hair (e.g., pubic hair that had not been removed). That said, likely due to advancements in plastic surgery in the 1980s and 1990s, the average model’s breasts were about an inch larger than a decade earlier. As the models’ breasts grew, their pubic hair began to disappear. Over a third of the models in the 1990s appear to have modified their pubic hair (although few removed it completely). If that seems like a lot, then get this: that number more than doubled during the twenty-first century, when less than 10 percent of the women wore their pubic hair au natural. The most popular style was to remove the hair partially (over two-thirds of the women), but a new “style” also began making an appearance: approximately a quarter of the women were bare down there.