Tiny Thoughts #3: That time I visited the house of vaginas
On talking about bodies – to ourselves and to children, plus radical theatre, feminist decor and the illusion of progress
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I recently found myself in a room shouting the word ‘vulva’ with 50 other women while truffle arancini balls were served on silver trays and an ice machine rumbled in preparation for cocktails later.
The location was AllBright – the women’s-only members’ club in London’s Mayfair – and I was there attending a panel event on women’s health topics often considered TMI – you know, heavy periods, incontinence, menopause, masturbation (so most of it then).
It was early in the evening when a doctor on the panel held up an object for the audience’s inspection.
‘What is this?’ she asked, pressing into the air a fabric replica of a vulva crafted from thick pink, brown and purple wool.
The room was hesitant to respond.
Hmm, I thought. Was it crochet? Or knitted? I never was good at haberdashery. I mean, of course I knew it was a vulva, but usually hate questions like this at events like that because they often feel like a trap.
A few gentle voices called out: ‘A… vulva?’
‘Of course,’ said the doctor. ‘Say it with me.’
And so we did. We said it once, then somehow kept going. And as we chanted in unison ‘vulva, vulva, vulva’ you could feel the room heat up with a particular kind of warmth that comes from a sudden evisceration of shame.
When the shouting stopped, people whooped. And I realised I was grinning, buoyed by this sense of sisterhood, and certainly more relaxed than I had felt when I’d rushed to the event, battling tight deadlines, feeling like a grotesque mess and worried about, well, everything. I had underestimated how much tension my body was holding, how anxiety made it buzz like a hive; tight shoulders, tingly limbs, even my small-talk at the start had felt forced, as if communicating through mud. Yet in that brief moment of reclamation, I felt my mind and body align and the tension release. It was liberating.
I sometimes feel cynical about these moments – the event was partly a showcase for a new range of products sold in Boots, including period pants and ‘intimate’ shower gel, so someone somewhere was capitalising on our liberation – but the reason for shouting was an important one. The way we talk about bodies matters. Genitalia should not be shrouded in euphemism. There is no benefit in calling a vulva a ‘flower’ or a ‘lady garden’ or a ‘noo-nee’ or, please, god, definitely not a ‘front bottom’ (or indeed, calling it a vagina – which is the internal passage that connects to the uterus, when you actually mean the vulva – the area on the outside, which includes the clitoris and labia – or vice versa).
Correct language removes shame, connects us with our bodies, enables us to feel in control of who we are. We should feel able to say the words ‘vulva’ and ‘vagina’ (and ‘penis’ and ‘testicles’) as easily as we would say ‘arm’ or ‘leg’. No whispers required.
And yet, sometimes… it does feel hard to say these words. It can feel awkward or clinical or embarrassing.
But this clarity is especially vital when talking to children. Recent studies show that giving children the proper terms for their body improves confidence, openness and body image. It can also help deter abuse. Accurate language empowers children to feel ownership of their body. It helps them communicate more easily if something awful were to happen. It’s an upsetting thought. But an essential one.
At the event, I could tell this public declaration felt significant for some people. Perhaps this was the first time they’d found themselves shouting such a thing. It doesn’t happen often, after all.
But this was not the first time for me. I remembered a similar moment some 20 years ago when I first saw the award-winning, zeitgeist-shifting play The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. Back then, it was the word ‘vagina’ we were shouting, and at one point, alongside several hundred people, I was also chanting ‘cunt’. (I would not hear that word shouted quite so loudly or so frequently again until I joined the staff of Glamour magazine in 2011 – but those days are stories for another time.)
I saw The Vagina Monologues in 2002 in a small provincial theatre when I was at university. I loved it so much that I wrote an essay on it for my degree and my boyfriend at the time (a Wolverine-haired town planner who was also the lead singer in a local rock band) bought me the script as a Christmas present.
The play, written in 1996, was radical. Ensler – who three years ago changed her name to V – has noted that people called her ‘the vagina lady’, a title she was happy to hold. And the play’s success – it ran and ran and, in fact, still runs – combined with her immense vision and heart, launched a global movement called V-Day in 1998, which campaigns and fundraises to end violence against women and girls.
By some unexpected twist, I met V nearly 15 years after I first saw The Vagina Monologues, when she came to the UK to see her new play The Fruit Trilogy, which had been directed by my husband. He and Eve had actually worked together on two plays before this, and I won’t lie – this respected feminist’s friendship with my husband, and their repeat collaborations, was certainly a green flag when he and I started dating.
The play opened in New York a couple of years later. During our stay, my husband and I hired a car to visit V, who lives beyond the thrust of Manhattan skyscrapers and upstate past undulating and verdant valleys. I’ve always been fascinated with how a writer works and which surroundings they choose for inspiration, so there was an undeniable thrill in being invited to her home. And the opportunity for an Architectural Digest’s-style nose around a veritable house of vaginas did not disappoint.
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