Are You BFFs With Your Vagina?

Why are women still so embarassed by their privates? Tracy Lee says it’s a shame we’re so ashamed.

- Tracy Lee

Vaginas . Half the world has them, so why do women find it so hard to talk about them? Her World believes it’s time to break the silence – the next few pages are dedicated to understanding what women and men think about vadges, and how to keep ’em healthy and (wink) happy. Go ahead – love and pleasure that V!

I had initially planned to write this under a pseudonym, but I soon canned the idea. I mean, the point of this article is to encourage women not to be coy about our amazing, wonderful reproductive organs!

Surfing the Net, I stumbled upon a write up promoting a female sexuality seminar organised by Australian non-pro t group Awakening Within. It read in part: “... the vagina is often shrouded in a veil of secrecy and shame ... sexual education typically focuses on the ‘perils of sexuality’ and omits key facts about female genitals ... most women still do not have a clear understanding of the details of this part of their own anatomy or how it works...”

Which reminded me of how I was never properly introduced to my lady bits growing up. Truth be told, how many of us were?

A COMING OF AGE

My mum and two elder sisters never prepped me for the arrival of That Time Of The Month. What I knew I learned from a book on female puberty an aunt had given my eldest sister, which I had secretly borrowed. While it proved an invaluable source of reliable information, the diagrams of female insides were hard to figure out – I had always wondered how there’s still space for the uterus, given that the stomach, intestines, bladder and bowels are already crammed in there.