Vulva-Voom - Vulvas in Popular Culture

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Liz Hoggard reports for the London Evening Standard, 26 Aug 2011:

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23981319-the-naming-of-parts-a-new-frankness-about-vaginas.do

 

The naming of parts: a new frankness about vaginas

 

In the new Inbetweeners Movie, there is a jaw-dropping moment when the boys don pink "Pussay Patrol" T-shirts - and head off to "shoot clunge in a barrel".

 

Clunge (a slang word for female genitalia) is the new C-word. There are whole Facebook pages devoted to its etymology. You can buy T-shirts, mugs and mouse mats emblazoned with the word, which has rapidly become a cult term among Inbetweeners devotees.

 

Writers on The Inbetweeners claim they made up the word to get past the censors when the original E4 series started. But it sounds like the sort of bawdy slang you might find in a Restoration comedy or Moll Flanders.

 

What's undeniable is that there is a new frankness about the vagina in popular culture. And it's not just the potty-mouthed Inbetweeners teens.

 

Today young female artists and craftspeople are making representations of the vulva - reclaiming the female body in all its 3D glory. The aim is to be out and proud about a neglected area of the body.

 

At ravelry.com (the collective of radical knitters), they'll show you how to knit vagina purses. A London-based group called Fannying Around - with an unusual approach to feminism - held a life drawing class last week at Bethnal Green's The Pot where women were encouraged to draw themselves. At the class, called Private Portraits, women sat in front of a mirror and sketched their pudenda. It was a clear reference to the Seventies feminist practice of holding vagina parties during which women were encouraged to acquaint themselves with their vulvas using hand mirrors.

 

According to Sarah Berry, founder and host of Fannies Rule, the aim of these intimate, women-only classes is to get women more familiar with their bodies. Unsurprisingly music and wine help proceedings along.

 

But much of the new "vag art" also stems from direct action. Shoreditch Sisters WI are making a quilt comprised of beautiful hand-sewn vaginas to support a campaign against female genital mutilation. Over the past year it has gone from strength to strength, with more than 100 patches contributed from as far as France and the US.

 

"The message we are trying to get across is that a woman's vulva is like a fingerprint, no two are the same," says Tara Scott, 24, who is overseeing the project.Tara and her half-sister Poppy, 24, have been busy sewing vaginas out of found materials - with a little pearl for the clitoris.

 

According to Scott: "The idea came about when I was reading Embroideries, a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi which follows a conversation between Iranian women. They use the term 'embroidery' to refer to the act of FGM/C (female genital mutilation/cutting). When I read that the word embroidery can be used to refer to the act it was a eureka moment, a creative campaign waiting to happen."

Poppy's mother, actress Anna Chancellor, has been following their progress. "She [Poppy] has been in our bedroom sewing these brilliant vaginas ... Me and Poppy are like, 'That's disgusting and it's amazing and it's beautiful and it's revolting' - we go through all the emotions. But I'm proud of her." The finished quilt goes on display in the Covent Garden window of upmarket erotic boutique Coco de Mer for a week in October.

 

Meanwhile, west London artist Carrie Reichardt makes vag-pants and vag stigmata gloves to wear as performance art pieces. Her vaginas are made of latex, with old vintage dolls' eyes in them. "What really is more beautiful that a women's vagina - a place were all human life springs from?" she asks.

 

She initially created the pants to draw attention to the plight of inmates on death row. "There is something quite powerful about exposing yourself in public - even when they are fake. We were taking our inspiration from the Sixties, putting surrealism into activism and asking people to question what is so shocking about the female genitalia compared with the terrible atrocities that are occurring daily across the world."

 

It's also proof that beautifully skilled craftwork can wrap itself round hard-hitting images and messages. "I guess that the incredible rise in craft has produced many female artists who are not held back by social norms any more and are working on subjects that interest them. What you're finding now is lots of people are feeling empowered because they're all joining up on the internet and finding that they're not alone."

 

Reichardt is a big fan of jeweller VulvaLoveLovely, who makes Vulva portrait pendants, which you can buy from the Esty online shop - the place to buy and sell all things handmade. Ashamed of her body as a young woman, the jeweller went to see a production of the Vagina Monologues, and started making pendants to celebrate her own body.

 

In many ways it's a reaction against the tyranny of waxing and vajazzling - porn chic culture where young men surfing the internet see only hairless models and are therefore surprised to discover that young women have pubic hair.

 

In her new book, How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran encourages us to sport a proper muff. "I can't believe we've got to a point where it's basically costing us money to have a fanny," she writes. "They're making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus."

 

For Reichardt , it's no surprise the new vag art is happening alongside the Slut Walks. "We are being bombarded with these messages that tell us that we should be ashamed of our bodies, and that they somehow need fixing. Yet in other cultures and other periods of time the vagina was worshipped and considered sacred. I think it is not just the porn industry that vaginas need reclaiming from but from the very misogynistic society we live in."

 

Scott agrees: "Our campaign is about reclaiming the female body. Not chasing an airbrushed representation, or surgically altering it in any way. In that way we are also campaigning against the popularity of labiaplasties. It is about reclaiming women's art practices such as needlework techniques and using them in a subversive way to fight for equality and liberate women from cultural injustice."

 

Of course there's an honourable tradition of representing vaginas in art through mixed media - from Georgia O'Keeffe's calla lily paintings to Judy Chicago's art exhibit, The Dinner Party. In the Seventies. Chicago created 39 place settings for famous female "guests" - including Sappho, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf - with labias rising up out of the plates themselves.

 

The new craft-led work is as much about playfulness as a po-faced "comment" on women's issues. Shoreditch Sisters often end up collapsed in giggles when they put a finger in a frilly patch or stroke a luxurious pearl. "We had to get over our shyness saying certain words."

 

And it's not anti-male. "One of my favourite pieces was actually done by a man," says Scott. "It is quite abstract and I find it really beautiful. It is important to us to have the support of men in this campaign because it is as much about men accepting real women as they are as women accepting their own bodies. Women can fight against gender inequalities but unless they have the support of men, social change is impossible. It takes a very strong and confident man to support a cause like this."

 

Yes, shock tactics work. But humour is a very useful tool in opening up people's minds to other ways of thinking, says Reichardt. "If you make someone smile for a second, you catch them off guard and you have an opportunity to share something with them."

 

Making a statement: half-sisters Tara Scott (left) and

Poppy Chancellor who along with Shoreditch Sisters WI

have co-ordinated the creation of a vulva blanket

[SamanthaEvans 166767]

This is good news, all in all.

 

But, frankly, could we do a little education about correct terminology? The clitoris is the bundle of erectile tissue and nerve endings at the top of a woman's genitals; a vagina is internal space into which penises, fingers, tongues and toys may be placed and from which babies may emerge; the labia are the lips that surround the clitoris and vagina; and the whole thing, all together, is called a vulva.

 

Words matter. They refer to specific parts which do particular things.

[datyaddict 2174]

Words matter. They refer to specific parts which do particular things.

 

I couldn't agree more. One question, which part is 'the road'? All I know is, whenever I go down on a girl and ask what she likes, I usually hear "It doesn't matter, as long as you hit the road as soon as possible."