Lots and lots of vaginas - NOT surgically altered!

Thanks to my friend Adele Castillo, I've found a couple of fascinating websites all about vaginas - well, vulvas, to be more physically accurate. 

In this blog, http://www.edenfantasys.com/sexis/adult-humor/cosmetic-vagina-surgery-0616111/, Jenny, aka The Bloggess, takes umbrage with the movement afoot to convince women that their vaginas need plastic surgery because they're too big, too lippy, whatever!  I agree with her 100%!  You go, girl!

Under the comments, there was a link to a website with photographs of women's vulvas.  Here's what the woman wrote about it: 

In Denmark we have the "Kussomat" (Pussyomat?) - a portable photo booth placed at selected places around the country. In the booth you sit in a special chair and have a photo taken of your pussy. The picture automatically uploads to a website "Woman, know your body" - now showing one more of all the wonderfully different pussies in the world! (Not safe for work!)

Can you imagine the uproar that would be caused if we had such photomats here in the US?  Maybe I should see about setting one up for my show Not Barbie, and see what happens.  I can hardly imagine women here being willing/able to show their private parts like that.

And then I am guessing you've already heard about the Great Wall of Vagina by UK sculptor Jamie McCartney.  This bold gentleman took plaster casts of 400 British women's vulvas and put them together as if they were tiles and is showing them all over the place.  Here's Saatchi Galleries description of his work:

Consisting of 40 casts of vaginas arranged in a grid, Design A Vagina is the third in a series exploring our relationship with our genitals.

Men tend to have seen more vaginas that women, who have often only seen their own and many have never looked that closely. Hence the exposure of so many, showing the variety of shapes is endlessly fascinating, empowering and comforting. For many women their vagina is a source of shame rather than pride and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different, everyone is normal, and everyone is beautiful.


The title is a play on words, commenting on the trend for surgery to create the 'perfect' vagina.

It is certainly true for me that I haven't seen many vaginas or vulvas, as would be a more accurate term.  I haven't felt comfortable asking my models if they wanted me/would allow me to photograph their vulvas straight on and haven't had an idea in mind of what I would do with the images if I had them.

Maybe that'll be my next step.  I never know where my fertile imagination combined with curiosity and my feminist outrage will lead me next...