Read My Lips (32 page)

The name of the figurines, sheela-na-gigs, is about as unclear as their purpose. While some have claimed that the name translates to “immodest woman,” others believe that it is simply a name for the crouched position of the sheela-na-gigs. Like the name, people have speculated that sheela-na-gigs are everything from gargoyles that protect buildings to evil spirits to warnings against immodesty to representations of goddesses.
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We may never be sure what the meaning of sheela-na-gig is (although our vote is for the goddess) but we do know that we like the idea of hanging a vulva statue outside our door to welcome guests. We are particularly fond of this idea for gynecologists’ offices.

SOCIAL CUNTSRUCTIONS

What are the exterior parts of women’s genitals called? Hopefully, at this point in the book you guessed “vulva.” If you did, you’re correct. Okay, now hop into an intellectual time machine and go back to before the fourteenth century. Same question: what do you call women’s genitals? Sure, you can still use the terms “vulva” or “genitals,” but now you have another option. You can also use the term “cunt”! That’s right, once upon a time, the term was not insulting or derogatory; it was simply another term used to refer to women’s genitals. The name is believed to have stemmed from the Asian goddess Cunti (knowing what you now know about the relationship between goddesses and the vulva, we hope that this is not as difficult to believe as it once was). Therefore, it is quite possible that the origin of the word was positive and powerful.

We really need a good word that means “vulva, labia, vagina, and clitoris.” A positive word. People get snarky and mean about women who say “vagina” when they mean the genital area as a whole, but I think that is a load of crap. People often use a part to represent the whole, especially when there is no good word for the whole. Don’t be a douche. Most of the women doing that know perfectly well what the word vagina really means.

—
P
EGGY,
24, Minnesota

One of the first-documented uses of the word “cunt” was found on a street sign from the Middle Ages in England. The name of the street was Gropecunt Lane because of the purpose of the street at the time.
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In the same way that some cities use grids systems, they used to name streets for the purposes they served. So the street received its name for the number of prostitutes who worked there. There were several other streets with similar names throughout Europe. Can you imagine proposing that street name at your local community board meeting today? Forget the meaning, the word “cunt” would probably send everyone into a frenzy. Well, it was apparently just fine until approximately the seventeenth century when the word was deemed obscene and inappropriate.
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Even today, in contemporary times, many people feel that cunt is a negative word. (And in all fairness, it is often used in a derogatory way, so that doesn’t exactly help things.) Some feminist activists hope to reclaim the word and the power behind it, returning it to its positive place. Vanessa tried to be a part of this cunt-positive movement in graduate school. It’s tricky, though, as, “thank you” is often not the automatic retort to being called a cunt. However, we recommend giving it a try!

THE STORY OF SARAH BAARTMAN

In the early nineteenth century, a few centuries after “cunt” went out of style, the vulva had another major blow to its self-esteem. In 1825, a woman by the name of Sarah Baartman was a slave in Capetown, Africa. Originally Khoisan, the family she worked for encouraged her to travel to England under the false guise that it would lead to her emancipation and corresponding riches.
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To her surprise and horror, freedom was a far cry from what she was forced to endure throughout her life and after her death. She shared the distinctive feature common to many Khoisan women called steatopygia, which was characterized by protruding buttocks and portly thighs. In order to display these “distinctive” features, all of her clothing was taken from her, and she was paraded around stages/cages as a spectacle for the fine men and women of England to gawk at. While her “large protruding buttocks” were her primary claim to “fame,” you can find extensive descriptions about her genitalia if you dig through the history books a bit deeper. She was poked and prodded while onstage in order to display her vulva to crowds of judgmental onlookers.
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The English men and women of the time gave Ms. Baartman the nickname of Venus Hottentot and her long, flowing inner labia received the most scrutiny of all. Thus, inner labia that were long or dark in color became labeled as “other,” as “deviant,” and as “improper.” After her death, her genitals were pickled and placed in a museum for years to shame her and any onlookers who may have had similar genitals hiding underneath their petticoats. (Sadly, the genitals of some African men were also kept in jars by Westerners who saw these individuals as more curiosities than living, breathing humans of equal value.)

FREUD’S PSYCHO-GENITAL-ICAL ANALYSIS

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory in the early twentieth century, is often considered controversial by contemporary psychologists. However, one thing can be said for certain about Freud: he put a lot of thought into the importance of genitals (or lack thereof). In fact, he believed that the genitals played a key role in the psychosexual development of both males and females. He believed that it was a psychologically momentous event for young boys or girls to see the genitals of someone of the opposite sex for the first time.
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For young girls, the scene would go something like this: newly out of diapers (somewhere between 3.5 and 6 years old), she is sitting around minding her own business when she suddenly notices a penis. She looks down between her legs to find that she is without such a bulge and becomes overtaken with envy of the long schlong. Why? Well, the answer is simple. According to Freud, the sight of a penis leads to the realization that she will be unable to sexually satisfy her mother. Yep, her mother. So, she develops a desire for her father, and the soap opera plotline thickens. This, of course, is not an entirely conscious process, making it a tricky theory to test.

What do we think about penis envy, you ask? We say penis envy, schmenis envy. Not to hate on male genitals (we want men to feel good about themselves, too!), but vulvas have distinct advantages:

1. With a vulva, you never have to worry about covering your excitement with a book when called to the front of the classroom.
   
2. You always have the option to sit in the privacy of your own bathroom stall.
   
3. Your genitals have been compared to flowers and fruit.
   
4. You have your own private pleasure button.
   

That’s not to say that there aren’t advantages to having a penis, either. Some men play with their genitals to the point that they call it penis “puppetry.” And they can pee pretty much anywhere without having to worry about sitting down. To the extent that this makes lines for men’s public restrooms that much shorter certainly creates envy in many women. But still, we’re happy with what we have, and we hope that men are happy with their parts, too.

Speaking of their parts—if Freud thought that women had penis envy, does that mean that he thought males must have penis pride? Not quite. Let’s go back to our stage. A little boy in the same age range is again none the wiser when—BAM!—he is confronted with a vulva. Instead of being in awe of the beauty of the vulva or even thankful for his own little package, he is psychosexually traumatized by the event. That’s right; Freud proposes that his reaction is not actually one of appreciation but one of fear. To him, the vulva looks like a slit where a penis used to be, and he concludes that the woman (likely his mom) must have had a penis at one time that has since been removed. This leads to what Freud terms “castration anxiety” that someone will slice off his penis (although penectomy anxiety would be a better term because castration implies that only the testicles have been removed). How would this happen, you ask? As far as we know, Freud does not exactly specify how men fear this will happen.

Do Vaginas Have Teeth?

Freud’s non-specificity about castration anxiety would not be particularly noteworthy if it was not for the obvious omission of famous folklore that warned of a toothed-vagina. This belief is titled “vagina dentata” and has a long history from early mythology to contemporary stories in which men’s penises are severed after inserting them (often forcefully) into women’s vaginas. Depending on who tells or interprets the stories, they can be viewed as forewarnings of the dangers of women to men or a forewarning to men about the dangers of forcing oneself on a woman. Either way, according to Freud, seeing a vulva leads to castration anxiety in males. As such, although we wouldn’t describe it as the most positive of theories about the vulva, it did bring genital issues back up for discussion.

YOU SAY LILY, I SAY LABIA

If you ever mention vulva art to anyone who knows art, one of the first artists they are likely to mention is Georgia O’Keeffe. She was born into a large family in the late nineteeth century on a farm in Wisconsin. Later in life, she attended the University of Virginia and then Columbia University for art classes, where some of her later art was inspired.
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During this time, she also became involved with the National Women’s Party, an organization formed to advance the women’s suffrage movement. In 1924, she exhibited her first now-famous large still-life floral paintings.
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The similarity of the appearance of her flowers to vulvas in these famous still-life paintings is unmistakable. Still, she denied that the paintings were intended to represent anything other than flowers. When asked about it, she once said “when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower, and you think and see of the flower—and I don’t.”
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In other words, she attributes any aesthetic similarities between her paintings and women’s genitals to the natural resemblance of flowers to vulvas, as opposed to the intentional imitation many people had assumed. Because her initial art exhibits coincided with Freud’s early publications on psychoanalytic theory, the meanings of the flowers were further deconstructed by their relationship to women’s genitals. Whether or not the flowers’ resemblance to women’s genitals was intentional is unclear. Though, one thing we can be certain of is that the paintings remain one of the most popular representations of vulvas in history, even if unintentionally.

I wish women knew there is no one right model for how female genitals are supposed to look. Small is not better than large, “tidy” is not better than loose and floppy. They all are capable of doing their jobs—feeling good, giving pleasure, containing, taking in, protecting, accommodating, opening to give birth. Female genitalia are gorgeous, awe-inspiring, powerful, sensitive, diverse, vulnerable, and nothing to be ashamed of. Looking at female genitalia is like looking at a garden—tulips or freesias are not better than daffodils or tiger lilies.

—
B
ARBARA,
61, California

The relationship between Georgia O’Keeffe, art, and vulvas does not end with her artistic representations of flowers. She was also the most contemporary woman to be seated at the table for
The Dinner
Party
.
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This installation by Judy Chicago depicts 1,038 women who have made substantial contributions throughout time. Chicago’s piece was inspired by the belief that much of art was designed based on history, and she wanted to create an artistic piece that represented her-story instead. With a great deal of help from other women over several years, she created a vulvastic piece of art with thirty-nine powerful and influential women sitting around a dinner table (hence the name).

“Why so vulvastic,” you ask? First, the dinner table was shaped like a triangle with three equal sides. For many people, the triangle is evocative of the vulva (in particular, the mons). The real kicker comes from the way that the women at the table were represented. She could have created wax figures or paintings, but instead—as alluded to earlier in the pubic hair chapter—Chicago decided to pay homage to each woman with a beautiful and unique vulva-like place setting. There were also more than nine hundred names of other women who united these individuals or were worth recognizing in some way. As far as we’re concerned, beautiful + unique + female unity + vulva = vulvastic! The dinner party is still on display and can be visited at the Brooklyn Museum in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. It is a must-see on any vulva adventurer’s scavenger-hunt list.
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VULVACTIVISM

You may be thinking that Judy Chicago was pretty brave to bring vulvas to public awareness. She was, but she certainly was not the only one. In fact, the 1970s were a pretty revolutionary time for the vulva and vagina. The 1960s–1970s were the decades of vulva awakening and awareness. Women from around the United States began to come together to talk about their lives and roles as women in groups that were called consciousness-raising groups. It was an important time for feminism, and these women did some pretty kick-ass things. In some of the groups, the women would discuss their bodies and would become frustrated by how little they knew about them. They decided that the best way to take control over their bodies and sexualities was to take matters into their own hands (literally).

V-CRAFT: VULVA
MOLD
EL: MAKING YOUR VERY OWN VULVA ART