To Thine Own Vulva Be True
by Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

I never realized how many people out there were making vulvic arts and crafts until I posted my online vulva museum ( http://resist.ca/~kirstena/pagevulvamuseum1.html). Since then, people have been recommending so many amazing vulva websites that I cannot keep up with them all! I am impressed at the wealth of positive, respectful, women-centered, genital imagery and text that is available online. It gives me hope for our future, honestly.

I remember once I was walking home from the Erotic Bakery in Seattle, with a cupcake that had a marzipan vulva on the top of it. It was for my lesbian lover’s lunch the next day. As I walked home with the lovely treat, I ran into a woman friend of mine. She asked what was in the bag. I showed it to her. She said “Ew.” I asked why she skrunched her face up and said “ew,” like a woman’s genitals are gross. She said it just was not her thing, as if me being a lesbian was why I thought the cupcake was nice. But no, whether I am dating men or women, I still think women’s genitals are beautiful because I HAVE those genitals! And SHE has those genitals too!

In a similar experience, I showed a gal friend a picture of a woman’s vulva blended into the floor of a forest (on page one of my vulva museum), and she kept looking at it and then said she did not see anything but a forest. I then pointed the vulva out. She asked what it was. I said it was a woman’s genitals. She then said there was no way she would know what that was because she is not a lesbian! But SHE has those genitals! I do not get this thing where women act like only lesbian women recognize women’s genitals. If those are the genitals we possess, shouldn’t we know what they look like and be proud of them? Why aren’t all women, no matter what their sexual preferences, proud of their own genitals? I blame patriarchal brainwashing for that thinking. When I began to do body esteem work for women (and myself), I found many women had irrational fears and shame about their genitals, and that respectful genital imagery can be really healing and empowering to reeducate ourselves about our own bodies.

I thought I was a freak, until I met my new comrades in online vulvic activism. For instance, check out these Velvet Vulva purses, pillows, hats, etc.! No longer am I the vulva-centric oddball! I have true competitors! Velvet Vulva products ( http://www.artgoddess.com/vulva-page.html) have vulvas made with layers of folds in an almond shape in the center. From framed cloth vulvas, to two different vulva pillow designs, to many different purse designs and even a vulva hat, this site let’s those of us women sitting at home, making vulva arts and crafts realize, we are not alone!

I stumbled upon the “Vagina Lady” and saw a true sister there. Her site says, “Welcome to VaginaLady.com, a feminist arts-and-crafts endeavor that pays homage to that loveliest of female organs. Shrouded in mystery, spoken of derisively, the vagina exerts a power that is fundamental but poorly understood. Women have been made to feel it is a shameful and unattractive thing, most often by the very men who were most shamefully attracted to it.

Unflattering analogies, critical partners, ethno-centric pornography, religious shame, traumatic experiences: these, with myriad other factors, conspire to extend women’s physical insecurities all the way down to their vaginas. And their pubic hair. And their labia. And everything else in the general vicinity of “down there.” This is ridiculous. Vaginas are beautiful. An essential part of birth and a time-honored favorite for sex, vaginas are so important to so many people in so many ways that they merit the utmost reverence.

And so the Vagina Lady makes vagina artwork of various sorts, They are different colors, different fuzzinesses, different shapes and sizes, but they are all pretty. Because you, vagina, you are pretty!”

Now, wasn’t I just saying that?! You can read a previous article I wrote called “Vulvas in Mythology, Art and History” ( http://resist.ca/~kirstena/pagevaginamyths.html) that echoes what the VaginaLady says above. I have gotten really weird and hateful lashings from feminist and conservative women for trying to talk about these things in the past. I have commented before that many a feminist website has a page on sex abuse, but few have pages on better sex or vulvas in positive circumstance! Many pagans dance around a Maypole at Beltane, but I got tired of dancing around the penis, so to speak. Although the more feminist pagan groups put an emphasis on the hole the pole went into to symbolize women, it still has a heterosexual and patriarchal overtone that is very weird. So, I threatened to bring a big vulva, with a slip and slide on the other side of it, so people could pass through the vulva and then slide on through, to the next Beltane celebration for some balance and alternatives. I decided it was time to celebrate women’s sexuality, not just males’, every spring in our community rituals. I have not gone to a Beltane ritual since thinking of the Sheela-Na-Gig Slip’N’Slide, but I intend to take something like that to the next Beltane event I attend where it is feasible.

All About My Vagina or Myvag.net is one of my new favorite websites! In the Summer 2004 Arts and Crafts Edition ( http://myvag.net/zine/2004summer/) of the “All About My Vagina” Ezine, we find a treasure chest of fun! At this Lucky Vulva link ( http://myvag.net/zine/2004summer/luckyvulva/), you can follow a pattern to make your own vulva purse! I cannot wait to do that! Learn how to make “knitted stirrup cozies” for your next gyno appointment, mirrored compacts out of discarded birth control pill containers, homemade sex toys, and more! Go to Sillygirl.com and find out how to make your very own Maxi-Pad Slippers ( http://www.sillygirl.com/words.php?PSerial=623)! You can buy a variety of vulva suckers and chocolates online ( http://store.adultcookiesandcandy.com/vaginapops.html), or learn how to fold a dollar bill into a vagina ( http://underground.zork.net/female_anatomy.html#Dollar%20Bill%20Vagina), a vulvic mound, or a female’s genital triangle!

Download a free zany Menstrual Flow Chart by Vinnie ( http://www.tamponcase.com/flow_refill.html) or send your loved ones an “It’s My Period! Send Chocolate!” epostcard ( http://www.chroniclebooks.com/Chronicle/excerpt/0811834409-e3.html). Download some of Vinnie’s “Music for Menstruators.” The mp3 download of Vinnie’s Bubble Beats is absolutely quirky and delightful. I smiled immediately upon hearing the soothing, splashing silliness. The music sounded like that song in Eraserhead where the woman sings “In Heaven, Everything is Fine…,” but instead of it being creepy, it is really fun and playful. And you have got to read Vinnie’s story ( http://www.tamponcase.com/truth_design2.html), about how he became a fully employed tampon case maker in a DIY home adventure. Vinnie is my new menstrual hero.

Vagina Art ( http://www.livejournal.com/community/vagina_art/) kicks some solid ass. If you are looking for other gals to talk about vagina art with, this seems like a grand group. Vaginarts ( http://www.vaginarts.com) has some incredible contemporary vagina paintings and graphics. There is an incredible amount of vulvic art and imagery at Yoniversum.nl. They have a gallery of photos of natural objects that look like vulvas that is quite impressive. Their small vulvic art gallery is also wonderful. Especially useful is a gallery of Baubo, Sheelanagig, and other openly sexual, but respectful, images on display. You can read about the myth of the Flying Yoni (or vulva) here as well.

I think people miss the entire reason I am involved with vulva activism quite often. I have been involved with women’s body esteem and feminism nearly my whole life. And women’s relationships with their own genitals eventually came into the picture. What I realized, myself, was that I knew 100% more about male genitals than my own, as a heterosexual woman raised in a Christian patriarchy. I knew how to please male genitals more than I knew how to please mine, as that is what I was taught. Like my friend who could not recognize her own genital type in a picture, and my other friend who cringed at a nice artistic representation of the genitals she possesses, I also had no connection to my own genitals, really, for most of my life. Sure, I had an abortion, and I had a birth, but still, I knew very little about my body.

My body was used mostly as a receptacle for men to masturbate in, in many ways, more than me being an equal participant in the sex, to be very blunt. It was not until I decided to take my sexuality into my own hands, to learn about my own anatomy, and to venture past rote heterosexual sex, that I became aware of my genitals in any real fashion. My mom always acted like male and female genitals were gross and disgusting. I wanted to learn a new way.

I found that by surrounding myself with positive imagery of genitals, and by playing sexually with people who cared about pleasuring one another, not just using the women as passive receptacles, I had a new pride in my own body. I had a new pride in womanhood once I became aware and in touch with my genitals. So, even though it may seem odd, there is great merit to women embracing women-centered sexuality and alternative genital symbolism. I have met other women who understand what I am talking about here, and I cited websites of many of those women in this article today. I know that the way women were experiencing their bodies in the past, such as my mom did, is not fun or healthy. If we need to make vulva hats and purses, to remind us that we are beautiful, then I say we make them. It is going to take a while to undo the decades of bad voodoo done to us in the male’s attempt to control women’s genitals, and the more playful we can make our liberation, the better.

That is why I support vulvic arts and crafts, and women-centered sexuality represented in lollipops, purses and pillows. For many of us, these images are a nice alternative to porn, which was the only place our genitals were viewed publicly before. We are reclaiming our own genitals with this vulva activism. We are saying our genitals are not just for males to use in sex. We have our own uses for our genitals, and we can appreciate them independent of heterosexual sex with men. It took me much of my life to learn this, and I envy younger women learning this stuff in their 20’s, rather than their late 30’s as I did. And I found sex was better with women or men, once I was in tune with my own genitals. Know your own genitals at least as well as you know your lover’s genitals. This is good advice not only for women, but also for men, no matter what your sexual preferences. Vulvic activism is helping women overcome negative patriarchal stereotyping of their own genitals, and I support that completely.