We Need To Talk About Why Society Is So Fkn Scared Of Vaginas

vagina

Vaginas! Lots of us have them, lots of us love them, but good god, if you asked me to draw one, I would not know where to start.

We draw dicks all the time. Like literally, *all* *the* *time*. Dicks are everywhere! But vaginas? Nowhere to be seen!

It’s blasphemy if you ask me! And personally, I blame the patriarchy.

As a card-carrying member of the vagina club, and somebody who has a laundry list of reproductive-related issues, I feel like I know my anatomy pretty well. Heck, I’ve had my legs spread for more doctors in my life than sexual partners.

But if you asked me to draw you a picture of what a vagina looks like, I would genuinely struggle.

However, I’m not alone because according to a 2016 study, only 35% of cis-women (yes, WOMEN) could positively identify different parts of their reproductive anatomy. Meanwhile, 60% of those same women could identify the major parts of the male reproductive system.

Why? Because we don’t TALK about it.

Heck, I should actually be using the term “vulva”, because that’s the part of the body we’re usually talking about. But most people don’t even know that because, like I said, we don’t talk about it enough.

If you’re a heterosexual woman, you’ve probably seen two types of vaginas in your life: your own, and those that you see depicted in porn.

Meanwhile, dicks are literally everywhere (including on the statues in your Nonna’s garden, probably). Penises can literally be out on display in your front garden without any sort of censorship and will be considered art.

According to The Conversation, vulvas used to be depicted in art too, but back in the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans, artists basically just… stopped drawing them. So, vulva censorship is literally as old as the Romans.

Because of their prevalence in art and culture, we *know* that dicks come in all shapes and sizes, and we’re constantly bombarded with the message that size doesn’t matter and all that jazz.

But when it comes to women, we just don’t talk about it, which leaves women to compare themselves to the vaginas we see in porn, with very little conversation around things like labiaplasty. You know, because not even our vaginas are safe from societal expectations.

Normalising and de-stigmatising vaginas is *so* important, not only for the sake of equality, but also so young women can actually understand that even if their body doesn’t look like that of a porn star, they’re not some freak of nature.

“Young women don’t often see each other’s genitals so they often don’t realise the large spectrum that is normal labial appearance. A lot of young women I speak to are surprised when they learn about the variety of shapes, sizes and colours that genitals can be,” gynaecologist Dr Charlotte Elder told the SMH.

Not only is our lack of vagina talk dangerous for body image issues, but it could literally be *killing* us, according to a spokeswoman for gynaecological cancer charity Save The Box.

“Girls get socialised not to talk about their genitalia. And then, when they need to talk about it (because they have a weird symptom or something has changed) they find that it’s too embarrassing,” Julijana Trifunovic told the SMH.

“We need to normalise conversations about female genitalia so that we can start smashing through taboos and saving women’s lives.”

To put it simply, we need to see more vaginas. In magazines, in art, on social media. And we need to have a conversation about why they’re so taboo and censored.

So, in an effort to normalise the female anatomy, we asked our beloved 27 Pedestrians to take a stab at drawing a vagina, and the results were… mixed.

Some people gave us a variety of different shapes and sizes of vajeen, stressing that all vaginas are different and all vaginas are ~beautiful~, while others had no fucking idea where to start.

Sure, it’s funny to watch a bunch of men try to locate (and draw) a clitoris, but all jokes aside, it’s really concerning how much we don’t know about ye ol’ pussy.

Scroll up to watch the video, and check out Giancarlo’s iconic drawing, which was so good it deserved a signature.

vagina
~ art ~

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV