I was just kicking back thinking about vaginas, and dilators. And then I suddenly found myself squatting over a mirror, sketching my own vulva.
I've had a bit of a strange weekend. Since I'm in a high risk area for Covid-19 and all but 1 of my friends are under restrictions, I have to find other ways to entertain myself. I'm a little embarrassed to admit, that I spent most of Saturday making illustrations of dilators. Some even had superhero capes.
This is THERAPY. Honest. Through ART.
Things escalated quite rapidly from there. I was just kicking back thinking about vaginas, and dilators, and writing. And then I suddenly found myself squatting over a mirror, sketching my own vulva. Yes, you heard me correctly.
It might be time for an intervention guys. It's finally happened. I've flipped over into being obsessed.
Using art as a way of getting to know your vulva
I spend quite a lot of my time drawing and painting. It kept me (relatively) sane through lockdown earlier in the year and I think its going to be my lifeline throughout winter. Normally my work is of plants, jungle scenes, and animals etc. but I got to thinking - why not use art as part of our therapy and recovery? Women are often invited as part of their therapy to undertake some activities to develop a more healthy relationship with their vulva. Frankly I can't think of a more FUN way of doing that, than creating a piece of art from it. And I'm all about making this fun!
So I picked up some pens.
Challenge 1 - Could I draw and label an anatomically correct vulva, from memory? The answer is YES my friends. Success. More or less (top marks, gold star).
How well do I know my own vulva?
I have read that often people hold negative feelings towards their vulvas because of their Vaginismus. While I've never particularly disliked looking at mine, I did avoid touching it for a really long time (except for hygiene). I was encouraged by my own therapist to spend some time looking at my vulva with a mirror, even while dilating. I drew the line at this last one because I just couldn't figure out the angles and it felt WEIRD (which probably means it's worth doing). I'm a lot more familiar with touching her now, but visually? Yeah. Couldn't pick her out of a line up.
This was Challenge 2 - sketching her.
Did she look anything like the anatomical/medical drawing of a vulva? Nope. I made a mental note of what surprised me - like the labia majora were bigger than I thought, and the labia minora cover what's underneath (namely, entrance to vagina). So I had a good look around, pulling things gently aside etc, then I picked up my pen and sketched her.
So now I'm better acquainted, I'd like to at some point paint her in all her vulvarey glory. I might need to plan a sneaky night time session to avoid being caught red handed painting female genitals in the dead of night.
How well do you know YOUR vulva? Are you on first name terms? Have you ever drawn her? Sketch her! Paint her! Send me the results - if that's not too creepy :) I'd love to get an art gallery of vulvas on here.
Side note: does anyone name their vagina?
I was just thinking about this. Should it be a good strong name so you think of it as a protagonist (like Storm, Darcy, Belle, Simba, Mulan) or should it be like a villain name (Ursula, Medusa, Loki, Voldemort, Magneto etc)? Definitely a good name right? I just read this back and the thought of calling my vagina Simba or Darcy is absolutely killing me and I can't stop laughing.
NARLA! Of course. Also has connotations to Beyoncé who is FIERCE. Could you also call your Vagina Beyonce.. or Queen Bey..? Queen Vey? Just Queen?
SO if you want something more neutral there's a bunch of great names beginning with V, cos Vagina.
Victoria (Vicky when we are on good terms?)
Violet
Valentina (Sounds Italian and sexy?)
Victory (yes, google says its a name, and well what better way to motivate your vagina)
Venus (naming my vagina after a supercool planet?! Yes please!)
Valerie
OK I'm going to try out 'Narla' for my vagina. I'm gonna think of some dilator names too.
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