Vulvas are beautiful. All of them. The lovely labia. The mons, with hair or without. The little clitoral button that rears it’s head. We’re so often shown these genitals that are hairless, uniform in nature, and wholly unrealistic. But your vulva does not have to look like the ones in Playboy to be beautiful. In fact, if you ever wondered where the pornified standard of beauty came from, when smut mags began publishing full nudity, labia were considered “vulgar.” And so the models would tuck up their labia so that they were not visible from the front, creating a standard of beauty that revolved around very petite inner labia and pronounced outer labia.
If the models themselves were having to tuck in their lips in order to create that visual, it’s clearly not one that is as common as we are led to believe. But some women *do* have small inner labia that are engulfed by the outer ones, and that is perfectly wonderful, too! The point is that all our vulva are different, and they’re all beautiful. Their variety is part of their beauty, too. It gives each of us something that is uniquely our own. No one else has a vulva that looks like ours. It’s special.
In a testament to how “white” our standards of beauty in this culture are, it took me over an hour to find a nice, close-up picture of a black woman’s vulva. I wanted to include more, but just couldn’t find them. Any general search I did only pulled up white women, and any specified race turned up no results. Frustrating. And telling.
I'm Britni, a snarky bitch and generally awesome person. I write about sex, love, and bullshit. If sex-positivity, discussions about BDSM and kink, queer issues, and topics that are completely inappropriate by society's standards make you uncomfortable, then this blog is not for you.
Good Vibes 
16 Comments
I came across the same problem when I did my post about vulva standards of beauty. All the pictures of ethnic vulvae I found were porno stills…not really what I had in mind to say the least. You did find some great shots though!
These are great images; I’ve always hated my vulva HATE I tell you. You’re right your lack of vluva varieties is interesting? But like a lot of my porn and image searches; “ebony” just isn’t very desirable or at least that is what Google would have to believe.
The photos that you managed to find prove without a doubt that every kind is beautiful and sexy and deserves to be worshipped.
You probably have checked Sequoia Red out but in case you missed her most recent post what’s she has written is pertinent to what’s here. It’s really quite interesting.
http://sequoiaredd.com/blog/
Yeah, I actually used a picture from that post in this one, if you were paying attention.
Yes teacher, I was paying attention.
If all vulvae are beautiful, what does “beautiful vulva” say that merely “vulva” does not? We see objects as they appear, but their beauty is a function of their meaning to us. It is a mistake and a mean trick of language that we say of objects that they are beautiful, as if it were a feature they possessed, when it is so clearly the sensation of a subject, perceiving the object. And calling something “beautiful” gives it a further meaning, a further place in the net of our perceptions.
Rather, what is at stake here seems to be “normal looking”. And as in almost any way, norms of appearance, how one should look, seem distasteful to me. And even more so, when aspects of appearance are concerned that are either very difficult to modify or hidden from sight.
that doesn’t make any actual sense.
First of all, the point of this post is that women are told that their vulvas are NOT beautiful if they don’t look a certain way. And so, yes, I’m qualifying it with the word “beautiful” and showing a variety of them because I want to point out that they ARE beautiful. So what is at stake here is not, in fact, “normal looking.”
And even when it *is* generally accepted that something is beautiful (a flower, beautiful scenery, etc), people STILL call it beautiful. No one looks out over mountains and says, “Look at the view.” They gasp and say, “Wow, it’s beautiful!” So even when it’s generally accepted that something is beautiful, it’s still qualified with the adjective.
And even a beautiful person, not matter how many times they hear it, still loves t be told their beautiful. So even if 900 people had told me that my vulva was beautiful, it would still make me happy to be told that again.
I think your vulva is beautiful.
Me too.
I almost included mine in the lineup, but didn’t have a picture that would fit in well enough with the rest. For shame.
Wittgenstein would be proud.
Well thank you.
I think we should have a national Vulva Pride day, and swamp the blogosphere with pictures of our own vulvae.
For a very long time, I didn’t like mine. It’s only recently that I’ve grown to enjoy its aesthetic. Funny how much better that makes sex.
I’m all for vulva pride day.
An interesting thing that came from not being told anything about sex is that I never heard anything about vulvae being gross (hell, I didn’t even know what a vulva was!). In fact, I didn’t even know what my own labia really looked like until recently. It had never even occurred to me that I should look.
One Trackback
[...] And then, there’s body shaming! Not ALL WOMEN have smaller labia minora! Vulvas come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s shit like this that makes women self-conscious about their genitals. And for the [...]