Let's Hear It For Vag Pride!

It’s time to ignore the shamers and learn to love your lady parts. Your health (and sex life!) depends on it.

MOST OF US WHO lived through the aughts remember (with ire) the term “beef curtains,” which Spencer Pratt accused Lauren Conrad of having on The Hills. Fast-forward to 2017 and Amy Schumer is on Netflix joking about how her lady parts smell like a goat on their best day. Can’t a vagina get some respect? Not if it isn’t perfectly symmetrical and vanilla-scented. From a young age, our most private parts are held to ridiculous standards, and not just by pop culture.

“Women get the sense early on that their bodies are too embarrassing to talk about,” says sex researcher Debra Herbenick, PhD, associate professor at Indiana University and author of Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to the Vagina and Vulva. That shame can also be traced back to disparaging comments (one young woman we know still refers to her vulva as Joey, after a girl at a middle school sleepover said her “flappy” labia looked like a Sloppy Joe). Or to pervasive pornography, which only reinforces the Barbie-parts paradigm.

The consequences are long lasting: New research shows that women with low genital self-esteem miss out on sexual satisfaction, have a higher risk of infections, and are less likely to get regular gynecological exams. Meaning, yeah, all that negative chatter is putting your well-being at risk.