Have ladygardens ever been so newsworthy? I think not. In the mid 1980s, when I was Women’s Studies major, before it became Gender Studies and we were all forced to share unisex toilets with the annoyingly earnest men in our classes, talking about c*nts was not something that happened in the mainstream press.
This was of course back in the dark ages when we still had pubic hair and prospective lovers felt privileged to catch sight of labia of any description, rather than considering themselves to be connoisseurs of the perfect inner lip. Plastic surgery was for patsies with lots of cash and the worst things happening to our genitalia were perpetrated by other people.
Many feminists at the time were aware that seeing vulvas in the wild was the only real way to get a sense of the amazing variety of lady parts in the world and the only way to counteract the engendered sense of shame of having a c*nt at all in this culture. So like our sisters years before us, we sat in lounge rooms with speculums and mirrors and goblets of wine and were astonished by each other’s bodies. I’ll never forget a Caribbean Canadian friend of mine, weeping beside me, “I didn’t know I was pink inside; I’ve never looked before”.
This is the reasoning behind The Large Labia project (NSFW), a collection of images and stories of women’s vulvas whose aim is to promote wellness amongst women. It’s being published at a time when record numbers of women are de-enhancing their labia minora in an attempt to look more beautiful, normal, porn star or clean.
zoekrupka.com 