We Need to Talk About Vulvas

Like most of the world, I’ve been quarantined at home for over two months. I miss a lot of things, including book clubs, writing classes and random Brighton events.

Last week, I saw an event by ohne x This is a Vulva and it was exactly the kind of event I’d drag my female friends to for a night of intimate art and crafts. Louisa, who organises ohne‘s events and Jo Corrall, the founder of This is a Vulva hosted a truly fun and informative vagina party. We were promised and received: a sex re-education class, myth-busting, FAQs answered, a period pub quiz and the opportunity to design a vagina.

I felt like we were in a modern biology lesson (COVID-Zoom teaching inclusive), planned by a cool, sexy aunty. We talked about the typical line-drawing diagrams of women’s genitalia and whilst this is suitable for biology lessons, it shouldn’t be the only pictures young men and women see of vulvas (accompanying the ones in porn). In these images, everything is “neat”, symmetrical and almost hairless – save for a small mound of hair “at the top”. Jo’s solution was an alternative diagram: hair everywhere, thicker at the top, a visible clit and inner lips uneven in size and sticking out further than the outer lips. I’m sure many women in their twenties have heard men use the words “neat”, “tidy” and “all tucked in” when describing their preferred vulvas, likely followed by mental turmoil and exacerbating low body confidence. In fact, Jo’s mission is to stem the rise of labioplasty.

I was shocked to learn that girls as young as nine years old are asking for designer vaginas from the NHS and 65% of young women are too shy to use the word “vagina”. Fancying myself as someone pretty clued up on all things genitalia, I still learnt a few new facts. For example, 75% of women’s labia minora protrudes outside of their labia major yet 75% of people think this is abnormal.

During the workshop, we discussed how we wished we knew this at school. How much teenage angst would so many of us have been spared if we were told that the vulvas we see in porn aren’t the norm? Fortunately, sex education in the UK is changing (although for the first time in 19 years…).

We don’t have to sing about how beautiful vulvas are, but we need to stop holding them to such high standards, especially as many of the vulvas on porn wouldn’t look out of place on a seven-year-old. Adult vulvas have hair on them, and, just like our faces, our boobs and entire bodies, they aren’t symmetrical. Knowing what’s normal for you is the important thing to remember. Much like how the penises we see in porn aren’t accurate reflections of the general cock-owning population, we need to accept that “designer vaginas” are not the gold standard of vulvas.