{"id":2763,"date":"2008-09-20T01:15:06","date_gmt":"2008-09-20T06:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=2763"},"modified":"2010-11-24T00:43:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T05:43:48","slug":"how-vulvas-vary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/09\/20\/how-vulvas-vary\/","title":{"rendered":"How Vulvas Vary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Only recently in U.S. culture have rigid and narrow beauty standards for women extended to their vulvas. With the ascendance of cosmetic surgery (and its profits), marketing (and its effectiveness), and the visibility of pornography (and its mainstreaming), there is now cultural pressure on women to have the perfect vulva (see <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/07\/13\/when-vaginoplasty-meets-contemporary-television\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/07\/07\/pelvic-fitness-spa-more-things-for-women-to-worry-about\/\">here<\/a>). \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/02\/13\/caution-labiaplasty-vaginal-cosmetic-surgery-website\/#more-433\" target=\"_self\">This post<\/a> shows before and after pictures of labiaplasty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When teaching about this phenomenon, I find that my students balk at the idea that there isn&#8217;t, in fact, a &#8220;normal&#8221; vulva.\u00a0 They are incredulous that\u00a0vulvas would vary.\u00a0 This incredulity is somewhat understandable.\u00a0 If the women are heterosexual, they are unlikely to have seen many, or any, other than their own (and likely not even their own).\u00a0 Gay men are in a similar predicament.\u00a0\u00a0 Gay women and straight men, being so young, are also unlikely to have seen many.\u00a0\u00a0 In any case, showing them that vulvas do, in fact, vary is helpful.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The image after the jump is an art project\u00a0(image found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artnewsblog.com\/2008\/09\/vaginas.htm\">here<\/a>).\u00a0 The artist cast women&#8217;s vulvas, so what you will see is 28 plaster vulvas made from molds.\u00a0\u00a0 The image is after the jump because it is not safe for work&#8230; not likely, frankly, safe for home either!\u00a0 But it surely does make the point.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/09\/vaginas.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2762  aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/09\/vaginas.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"394\" height=\"347\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only recently in U.S. culture have rigid and narrow beauty standards for women extended to their vulvas. With the ascendance of cosmetic surgery (and its profits), marketing (and its effectiveness), and the visibility of pornography (and its mainstreaming), there is now cultural pressure on women to have the perfect vulva (see here and here). \u00a0This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,230,120],"class_list":["post-2763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-cosmetic-surgery","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29710,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions\/29710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}