These days, there are plenty of resources telling people with vulvas that all external genitalia looks different, that there is no right or wrong way for a vagina to look, and that misogyny is at the core of why people are taught to feel ashamed of their junk’s appearance. Now I get all that, and I totally love that message for the majority of ‘ginas, but just to be clear, my vagina IS objectively, horrifyingly ugly and I like it that way.
Most of the vulvas we have ready visual access to are from porn, and while theirs are as valid as anyone’s, there is a dearth of diversity in this vaginal representation. Most pussies are not so hairless, so symmetrical, so evenly toned, and we should all be aware of that for sure and you shouldn’t feel weird about your dangly right labia or whatever, but that all has nothing to do with me. Seriously, I don’t have a cute, shareable illustration of different types of vaginas vagina. My shit looks like the dog aliens in Stranger Things. I don’t mean their facial openings; I mean their whole bodies. Don’t ask me how. Is that your business? That’s my business, and I love it.
Destigmatizing vulvas and vaginas is important work. If Georgia O’Keeffe had seen my vagina, she would have quit painting.
As people begin the journey of reclaiming their junk, they may decide that their vagina is beautiful, and I fully support that feeling, but you must leave me and my powerfully hideous vagina out of it. My vagina casts not a mere physical shadow, but a permanent shadow of awe and abject terror that hangs over its beholder for a lifetime. To gaze upon my vag is to irrepressibly grapple with what it means to be made of flesh and blood. Francis Bacon could never. David Cronenberg wishes.
So here’s to all people of marginalized gender learning to love, celebrate, or even just feel a cool neutral toward their genitals. No nether regions are wrong, but if you even saw my pube growth pattern, you would pass out. Cheers, cunts!
