In a world where vaginas are still frequently considered taboo, an empowering podcast, The Happy Vagina Podcast, aims to open up a dialogue about fundamental issues, experimentation and lack of education around women’s experience and gynaecological health; aiming not only to entertain, but also to educate and enlighten listeners. The podcast, founded by Mika Simmons, asks unique and sometimes awkward questions, giving it and its guests an eccentric voice and opportunity to articulate their distinctive opinions. It doesn’t matter where you are from, or what your background or experience is, at some stage in their lives, all women have found it challenging to talk about intimacy and pleasure so Mika has written a piece for GLAMOUR on why we need to open up the conversation…
Shame has a lot to answer for – don’t you think?
In a world where vaginas are still frequently considered taboo, how can we be truly free to embrace the biological mysteries of our nether regions?
Free to have clarity about our health. Free to have a more refined relationship with our own bodies. Free to have more intimate sex with ourselves and our partners.
Shame about bodies, reproductive anatomy and sex is a desperately powerful force that often results in denial and silence. It can undermine us and make us feel unlovable. It can be exploited by others to manipulate and bend us to their will. And, when it comes to sex, a woman’s anxiety and shame about her body can lead ta type of dissociation, impairing the blood flow to the pelvic area meaning, once they try to have sex, they might not get genitally aroused. The longer term impact – dissatisfying or painful sex or, worse, an inability to have it at all for fear of ridicule or rejection.
And it is no understatement to suggest shame impairs our liberty and affects our choices as women – with life threatening consequences. My mother, Rosie Brennan, was a trailblazer in the second wave of feminism; leading development workshops for women, writing for feminist magazines, she championed freedom for women all over the world and threw a party for me when my periods started. Yet, as mother and daughter we still barely spoke about sex and the female reproductive organs.
She, like so many of her generation, found it hard to find the vocabulary. The consequence? When she had recurring symptoms of bleeding, bloating and cystitis at the age of 53, she didn’t demand her doctor tested her for cancer and accepted his suggestion that it was “probably fibroids”. She died a year later on 26th August 2000 of stage 4 ovarian cancer. The Doctor apologised to her before she died, but she’s still gone. Her shame and his incompetence left two children motherless and a family fragmented.
But where did it all start – this shame?
For a very long time, the reproductive organs have been shrouded in feelings of sin and humiliation. In the 1500s, during the Renaissance, anatomists started to explore inside the human body and began to publish drawings of genitalia along with other organs. But tragically, and I really do mean tragically, the images of the reproductive system were considered so scandalous by the church that, many books of the time hid the genitals under flaps of paper or omitted them entirely.
Worse, the anatomists concluded that the vagina was simply an inside-out penis. Back then, with no little physical research whatsoever, the clitoris was considered an anomaly and the uterus was believed to move around the body. #WTF.
Fortunately, shame’s power is completely dependent on secrecy and, as soon as the secret is out, its burden dissipates. I believe women, internationally, are waking up to the fact that the responsibility of change today, lies with us. It starts with being able to unlearn the shameful lessons history handed down to us and the reclamation of the word VAGINA that is no different from – let’s say, your navel.
OK, I know, it’s a tad different from your belly button, mostly because it’s much, much cleverer. Let me count the ways – it cleans itself, can facilitate up to 12 different types of orgasm and when pushed, can accommodate a baby’s head, the circumference of which at full term usually measures about 34 cm. Not small.
My point is – how can we possibly care for our gynaecological health if we don’t have a vocabulary to talk about it? And how can we teach our partners (or ourselves) how to give us the ultimate pleasure if we don’t know the difference between the vagina and vulva ourselves? Or that the nerves at the back of the clitoris are connected to our ever elusive G-spot. Like a sat-nav for your undercarriage, surely that will make it easier to find? Shining an invaluable spotlight on such matters, my new podcast, The Happy Vagina (recorded at the brilliant Allbright private members club for women in business) creates an opportunity for all women to speak openly about their personal truths and society’s lies about sex, vaginas, and all things ‘women’.
However, happy, healthy vaginas are not merely the domain of those with two X chromosomes. This is an important subject for all those who want to learn what women really get up to when left to their own devices in bed on a Sunday morning – and what can be done to understand what goes on and perhaps even join them. I hope the sharing creates an opportunity for many more open and honest conversations between us all, leading us all to better health, livelier sex and longer lives.
